Tag: The Malaysian Insider

Categories
Economics

[2335] Free trade in rice is good for Malaysia

The Food and Agriculture Organisation recently warned food prices are at record levels in both nominal and real terms since the entity first published its Food Price Index in 1990. The International Monetary Fund stated this is unlikely to be a temporary trend.

Rice generally has not shown the kind of increase exhibited by other foodstuffs, however. For Malaysia, where the majority considers rice a staple food, this is good news. Yet, it is probably just a matter of time before prices begin to increase.

Rice prices did hit outrageous levels in the past years. In 2008, it rose so high that it triggered some kind of a panic in a number of rice-consuming countries.

In Malaysia, shortage was reported in some places. The Abdullah administration tried to address the concern by purchasing an emergency supply from Thailand.

Implementation of rice exports ban by several of the world’s largest exporters of rice exacerbated the increase in price. Two particular countries that imposed the ban were India and Vietnam. Both make up more than 25 per cent of the world’s rice exports currently.

The impact of high rice prices, the role of rice as staple food and the implementation of exports ban are important while considering the following fact: According to the agriculture and agro-based industry deputy minister, imports fulfilled 30 per cent of Malaysia’s domestic rice consumption in 2010. Malaysia sources some of its rice supply from India and Vietnam.

The protectionist policy works for exporting countries by isolating domestic prices from international ones, if the goal is to have low prices in the domestic market. With less competitive demand for domestic rice, domestic prices will fall or at least it will not rise as fast as world prices given specific circumstances.

Governments around the world are aware of the adverse effects of high food prices for their respective society. Examples are aplenty.

In 2007, Mexicans took to the streets protesting against rising corn prices. Rising food prices — specifically bread — is partly fuelling the ongoing protests and revolution in the Middle East.

In short, at the macro level, a ban benefits the exporting countries at the expense of the importing ones.

What solved the issue of rising world prices was the financial crisis that began soon afterward. The protectionist policy gave way to other pressing concerns.

The respite from expensive rice is appearing to end. Eventually, the concern for rice supply and prices will take centre stage again and so will the protectionist policy of exports ban.

The concern is not theoretical. India continues to maintain an exports ban on non-basmati rice. Myanmar recently imposed a ban to slow the rising price.

For importers of rice, it is in their interest to have exporters remove the exports ban. That will mitigate the rise of global prices. This is a concrete example of how free trade benefits Malaysians and how protectionist policy hurts.

There is a silver lining to all this, if it could be called that. Rising prices coupled with the prevalence of exports ban is causing countries like Malaysia to boost its own rice production. Yet, a domestic production boost is at best a second best alternative to the free trade scenario.

The free trade scenario is cheaper in terms of opportunity cost. Trade enables specialization and that frees up resources for other more productive endeavors that Malaysia might embark upon.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

First published in The Malaysian Insider on March 24 2011.

Categories
Society

[2329] Just one ticket, please

I have been to a number of cities with superb rail networks before but I hardly took any notice of them. I simply took the convenience that came along with them for granted. I have come to conclude that any good big city will always have a good rail network servicing the city and its suburbs. The fact that a city has one is not something that quickly impresses me anymore.

While I was wandering the streets of Paris, the issue of the planned mass rail transit system in Kuala Lumpur began to dominate Malaysian headlines. Paris is famous for many things and one of those things is its dense rail network called the Metro. With the MRT in mind, I began to compare the Metro to the existing rail network in Kuala Lumpur.

It is probably unfair to make that comparison. The French capital began building its system nearly a century earlier than Kuala Lumpur did. The French had a lot of time to build and to perfect their network while Kuala Lumpur is still building its network. Nevertheless, there are things Kuala Lumpur can learn from Paris.

One of them is definitely how the lines are integrated, given how badly the network in Kuala Lumpur performs in this respect. Prime examples of lack of integration are the monorail line at KL Sentral, the light rail transit stations at Masjid Jamek and the distance between the Bukit Nanas monorail station and the Dang Wangi station on the Kelana Jaya LRT line.

The planned MRT is poised to repeat these past mistakes. One station belonging to the MRT line is not going to be constructed at KL Sentral but somewhere near to the transportation hub of the city. The distance between the hub and the planned MRT station appears to be farther than the distance between the hub and the nearby monorail station.

The need to travel the distance to change trains is an annoyance for commuters but sometimes it is understandably unavoidable. The issue of cost, land ownership or other innocent constraints may prevent perfect integration between lines. In Paris, there are places where one has to walk for a considerable distance to change trains.

The ticketing system in Paris fortunately makes the action less of a chore. Whatever the train line a commuter needs to take, he or she simply needs to buy the ticket once. There is no need to buy a different ticket for a different line. That means there is no need to queue at the counter or machine multiple times. It also means a commuter need not pass through a ticket verification barrier one time too many.

In Kuala Lumpur, different lines have their own tickets. The need to purchase multiple tickets because one needs to change trains causes long queues. Add to that the fact that these machines in Kuala Lumpur tend to accept exact change only, never mind that some of these machines tend to be offline typically; riding the trains can be an extremely stressful experience.

There is of course the Touch ”˜N Go and other cards that partially address the problem of lack of ticket integration across all the intracity lines.

Yet, not everybody can afford to store considerable credit in those cards and even if affordability is not an issue, not everybody wants to use it. Many times, individuals need to ride the intra-city train infrequently. That makes these cards a relatively expensive investment for a person in a country where a lot of individuals earn less than RM2,000 per month.

My suggestion for the new MRT line and together with the LRT network is this: if the intracity lines cannot be integrated physically with verification barriers placed everywhere, at least integrate its ticketing systems. Since the LRT is under Syarikat Prasarana Negara and so too the MRT eventually, surely such an integration will not be too hard to do.

And yes, please make those machines a little bit more flexible in accepting bills.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

First published in The Malaysian Insider on March 2 2011.

Categories
Education Society

[2318] Increasing the appeal of national schools by reducing the role of religion

Prejudice against any group depends on generalization for it to take root successfully in one’s mind.

Although I have to admit that sometimes there are voices in my head whispering ethnic prejudice and stereotype, I typically find it hard to harbor such sentiment for long. I have friends of ethnicities different from mine. If I succumbed to such prejudice, I must necessarily think badly of them. I appreciate my friends and thinking badly of them disturbs me.

I take comfort that I know many of them do not fit into prejudicial descriptions that exist out there. I know my friends violate such prejudicial generalization, hence falsifying it. This forms my first barrier against such prejudice.

I am only one person, whose preference and experience are not necessarily shared by others. Yet, I do think the idea that a person’s familiarity with individuals of different ethnicity acting as a contradictory force to prejudicial generalization can be extrapolated to others’ thinking. The idea encourages one to evaluate a person based on his or her action or words instead on others’ who share the person’s ethnicity.

This is why I support any platform encouraging interaction between individuals of different ethnic backgrounds. This is why I support the national school system and frown upon any system contributing to ethnic segregation, despite the shortcomings of the national schools, and despite my appreciation for choices within the Malaysian education system.

While tuning in my blue iPod to the BBC in London recently, I caught David Cameron announcing that multiculturalism has failed. He lamented the policy of passive tolerance that has caused individuals to segregate themselves according to their ethnic background. From far, British society is multicultural but a closer look may justify Cameron’s concern.

Although the situation in Britain is different from that in Malaysia, there are communities in Malaysia that segregate willingly.

The education system in general does not help in breaking this trend. The Malays mostly go to national schools, which are Malay or Muslim-dominated. The trend repeats itself in the vernacular streams.

There are exceptions. Some national schools are diverse, especially those that are well-endowed and located in urban areas. Some vernacular schools are diverse as well. It is worth stressing again that these are exceptions, however. There are simply not enough children from different ethnicities learning in the same classroom when one assesses a majority of these schools individually. This limits the opportunity for interaction.

There are many reasons why that trend prevails in the national schools. I will not go into all of them. I intend to highlight only one of them in hope of bringing focus. Others can highlight other factors if they wish to do so.

Religion, specifically Islam, plays too much of a role in the national schools. That erodes the idea that the national schools are national, hence inclusive. When one religion appears to dominate, the idea of inclusivity bows down to exclusivity. The dominance may cause parents with other religious beliefs — as well as those without belief — distrust in the national schools being able to provide their children with the necessary education without instilling Islamic belief.

Worse, the heavy presence of Islam in the system creates the perception that non-Muslims are second-class citizens. This is best demonstrated when Islamic prayers are said during school assemblies. While students of other beliefs are encouraged to pray in their own way when the Islamic prayers are said, the practice does say a lot about which religion takes the foremost position.

Another example is the segregation that happens during Islamic lessons. Non-Muslims typically are asked to shift to a different class where they are expected to go for moral studies while Muslim students stay in the same class. That happened during my time as a student in a national school.

While the practice more than anything else is a matter of convenience — most students are Muslims — it does create the perception that, again, Islam is the religion of the national school and other religions do not deserve attention. Still, the ultimate reason they were segregated is that one group is labeled by the state as Muslim and the other as, well, others.

The perception is dangerous because children learn something about inequality. The greater danger is that these students may accept the lesson as simply the way things are in Malaysia, when such inequality should be fought instead of condoned.

There are other more sinister examples. One includes an incident several months back when a student was caned because he brought pork for lunch to school. Islam prohibits Muslims from consuming pork and that wrongly guided the action of the responsible school official to cane the non-Muslim student. The wider implication is that the example suggests that non-Muslim students should follow Islamic teachings. This links back to the issue of trust mentioned earlier.

The perception that non-Muslims are second-class citizens is not something non-Muslim parents would want or should let their children accept. Malaysia belongs to all Malaysians. Religion should not matter.

If attendance at the national schools encourages acceptance of inequality by these young students, then non-Muslim parents who believe in equality have a reason — likely another reason out of many — not to enroll their children in the national schools. This ultimately hurts the national schools’ function as an unofficial social integrator within Malaysian society.

One solution is to separate religion from schools. The national schools should be made blind to religion in a way that religion stays only within the necessary lesson. Religion should not be included during school functions and not in science classes, but only in religious classes.

The separation can remove the apprehension non-Muslim parents have about the national schools with respect to religious belief, hence making the system more appealing to non-Muslim parents. Muslim parents meanwhile can continue to be assured that their children will learn about Islam during Islamic lessons, if they wish their children to learn it.

Perhaps as part of larger liberal values, all students should be allowed to choose what they wish to learn, regardless of their religious beliefs in the spirit of free inquiry. This also includes the arts and the sciences. No longer will students be segregated during lessons based on religious beliefs but they will be separated based on their interests and curiosity.

Hopefully, after making national schools neutral of religion, we will be a step closer to becoming an inclusive national system to encourage interaction, where individuals of one ethnicity befriend those of another to acquire the idea that his or her friend contradicts many of the prejudicial generalizations that exist out there.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

First published in The Malaysian Insider on February 16 2011.

Categories
Politics & government

[2307] Of the option off the ballot

There is speculation that there will be a general election in the near future. Political parties across the board are shifting gears, as if they needed to after all the by-elections.

I had a conversation with a friend several months back about the general election. Being away from Malaysia, I caught up with him, among others, to find out the latest about Malaysian politics. There is, of course, the Internet but it can get you only so far. Nothing beats face-to-face conversation. The facial expressions, the intonations and everything that matters are something that articles, podcasts and videos do not relay.

Among the topics discussed was the disillusionment that both of us had with the current political reality where both Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat dominate. Although I do believe that this is the stage for Malaysians to strengthen the newly established, effectively competitive two-party system before any further steps are taken to improve the Malaysians political system, I despise the options that I face.

It was then that I contemplated the idea of refraining from voting in the next general election.

Where I am registered to vote, it has always been a contest between UMNO and PAS.

I do not believe in UMNO. I do not believe in their core values and I do not trust them for all of their abuse, regardless of the presence of some good individuals in it. I do honestly believe that for UMNO and its partners to change, they must be out of power at the federal level.

Nothing is more powerful as a driver of change than failure itself. Without power, the worse and the corrupt will be flushed out, leaving the competent and clean to work their way up, at least hopefully.

Besides, Malaysia needs to experience a proper and peaceful change of political power. The actual experience will test the country’s institutions. The outcome of that test will inform Malaysians at large whether the institutions are capable of handling peaceful transition, or that the institutions themselves needed to be changed.

Malaysia has experienced change at the state level. There are kinks but the institutions are handling it reasonably well. Federal change, however, is likely to be a different beast altogether.

While I do not think highly of UMNO and its junior partners in Barisan Nasional, the other viable alternative is not too convincing either.

Specifically, I distrust PAS. While PAS may have allayed the fears of the non-Muslims in issues like the controversy on liquor sales, they have not done so for the more liberal Malays like me. For instance, PAS has insisted that Islamic laws should not be imposed on non-Muslims. While that is more progressive relative to a more suffocating encompassing view regarding Islam and the state, that communal thinking leaves the liberal Malays trapped.

While the status quo with BN in power is not fantastic to say the least, the way PAS and Pakatan Rakyat explain the issue of Islamic laws — about how Islamic laws affect only the Muslims, hence non-Muslims need not fear — desensitizes such communal thinking.

Of perhaps larger concern is the rumor that UMNO and PAS are discussing a possible pact, either in the name of Malay unity or an Islamic one, none of which appeals to me. I thought the issue was dead long ago but it persists. That worries me. What is the point of voting against UMNO by voting for PAS only to have PAS join UMNO?

Then there is the Pakatan Rakyat coalition in general. In Selangor recently, the Pakatan Rakyat-led state government announced that they would grant PR state lawmakers RM1 million each in preparation for election while excluding those from other parties.

The state government justified this by saying that BN also does this at the federal level. The selective provision levels the field, so the state government argues. I completely understand the crass reality of politics but I also believe that state resources belong to voters, not to the parties of the day. Seeing PR stooping to the level of BN disturbs me. It forces me to reassess my premise for voting for Pakatan Rakyat.

I fully recognize some of the good that Pakatan Rakyat state governments have done. Yet, I do not want to give them a blank check. The good work should not be used to justify other less admirable actions. I gave them a blank check in the last election because the situation then was dire. Things have changed so much since then. The situation today does not warrant old premises.

In the past, I overcame this problem by resorting to voting for the lesser evil. The lesser evil was PAS. Furthermore, the idea of giving somebody new a shot appealed to me. Since PAS was — and still is — in alliance with DAP and PKR, a vote for PAS was a vote for DAP and PKR; I thought of both DAP and PKR better than any other parties in Malaysia at that time. I worked on the premise that DAP and PKR would outnumber PAS when it matters always. PAS would be powerless where it matters.

I was wrong about power and PAS within Pakatan Rakyat.

Now, I am tired of choosing the lesser evil. I am also tired of others asking me to vote for the lesser evil. They are effectively telling me that I have no option. Imagine how excited I was when they told me that my only option is PAS. Hooray.

They are wrong though. I do have an option, except that it is not on the ballot.

I told the friend that I was thinking of refraining from voting in the next election. “This would not be indifference,” I told him. “It’d be an active choice. No more blank check.”

To which he replied, “You might not be the only one who is thinking of that.”

Although I consider myself as sitting on the fringe of the Malaysian political spectrum, there are many dissatisfied voters out there if the talk of the so-called third force is of any indication.

That makes me wonder about the turnout of the next general election in absence of other options on the ballot. How high, or low, will it be?

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

First published in The Malaysian Insider on January 26 2011.

Categories
Liberty Society

[2300] Of living without fear

I feared being alone as a child. One could say I was spoiled.

I remember bugging my parents every time I needed to go the bathroom or the kitchen at night. Activities in the house died down as the night progressed. Both the bathroom and the kitchen were located at the back of the house and both became very dark and very quiet late at night.

Sometimes it was just hard to get them to accompany me, especially when everybody was fast asleep. Whenever I had to go there alone, I would run to the switches and light up the entire house brightly so I could see everything. In my head, there were devils and monsters lurking under the table and behind the cupboard. Somewhere, something was going to get me somehow, when there was no light.

I could not bear the thought of my parents leaving me by myself then. They did exactly that for the first time when I went to kindergarten. It was a tearful experience for me. I cried so badly for at least a week that even the headmistress recognized me. “There he goes again,” I could imagine her saying.

During my late teenage years, I attended a boarding school in Kuala Kangsar. The small royal town is very different and over a hundred miles away from my home city, which was the slick and modern Kuala Lumpur. To me, Kuala Kangsar was rural and it was right in the middle of the jungle. I did not cry but I did feel melancholic for the first couple of months.

There were large trees within the school compound that stirred my already wild imagination. Just outside of my dorm was a swimming pool dating before the Second World War as well as the only Eton Fives court in the country that had fallen into disuse.

The floor of the corridor of the dorm itself was red, supposedly to cover the blood of the victims of the war that could not be washed away despite rigorous scrubbing. Beyond the fence was thick jungle that I dared not look into during the night.

Worst of all, I lived in the middle of a wing and the bathrooms were located at the ends of the wing. The long walk to the bathrooms at night was scary. The horror stories, one which involves a green lady that walks around the school, or flies if you wish, under the full moon, simply did not help matters. Yet, one has to do what one has to do.

I grew up and got over those fears eventually. I later spent slightly over six years of my life abroad in two foreign countries alone, never missing home even one day. I spent a week in the Sierra Nevada, where I once had to camp alone in the Tuolumne Canyon due to some misadventure. And I camped with a group of strangers in the jungle of Endau-Rompin just because it was a fun thing to do.

These so-called achievements are of enormous importance to me. It boosted my confidence to inculcate the independence that I should have, if I was to claim myself a libertarian. It enabled me to do many great things and to live the life I am living right now, which was beyond the grasp of my teenage mind. I have met fantastic people, seen beautiful sights and become part of great institutions, none of which would have occurred if I had stayed meek.

However real those fears were to me, they pale in comparison to others’ fears.

The religious institution in Malaysia recently prosecuted Shiite Muslims. Many Malaysians reacted negatively to a recent confession of a gay Malay. Some have even threatened to hurt him. To escape prosecution and discrimination, they have to hide some aspects of their life. The prejudice of the majority in the society forces these minorities to hide, hence forcing them to live life meekly and in fear.

A friend, journalist Poh Si Teng, produced a documentary on the transsexual community in Malaysia some time back. I helped a little with the production. It was through her and the documentary that I learned that many transsexuals in Malaysia resort to prostitution because they cannot find other jobs. Society in general discriminates against transsexuals so much that they, the transsexuals, have to go to the margins of society and have no other real choice to support themselves.

The Malaysian government — and the society at large — place systematic prosecution and discrimination against these minorities. That exacerbates the issue of equality of opportunity that already exists in the natural state of no government intervention. Some people are prevented by the state and the society at large from having merely a decent life, just because of who they are.

Just imagine for a moment what these minorities can achieve in the absence of their fears? What can they contribute to society?

If I can overcome my silly fears and achieve a lot, I am betting that they can achieve a lot more if only the source of their fears could go away.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

First published in The Malaysian Insider on January 12 2011.