Tag: Barisan Nasional

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Economics Politics & government

[3023] Addressing the supply crisis requires a renewed democratic mandate

I am a proponent of an early general election for Malaysia.

A distracted ruling class with a damaged reputation is working in a lame duck period

There are several reasons why I am so. The factor that I would like to highlight today is that we are entering a lame duck period as those in power and everybody else are already having an eye on the next election. With the Johor assembly dissolved recently and with several state elections to follow in the matter of months if not weeks, it is only natural for the political class to worry what comes next and shift to electioneering mode instead of the tasks of governing. That means the crisis is not getting the full attention it deserves. The crisis mostly is an FYI instead of an FYA as apparent from policymaking and the behavior of the general public.

More than that, those in power are quickly losing influence over everybody else that includes the business community, foreign governments, individual Malaysians and even members of the civil service. Even members of the ruling side with its complex multi-coalitional equation might take the government’s words and actions with a pinch of salt. Why should they not? They question and second-guess what would come next. Would this initiative be taken up by the next government? Do we still need to engage the current government or wait? Would he still be the Prime Minister after the election? Who would head this or that ministry? Would I want to associate with the ruling side now? More often than not, the safest course of action for most is to wait until the dust gets settled

The distraction and loss of influence are compounded by the government’s fear of voters’ backlash. As I have opined earlier, there is a lack of political capital to address the crisis as that capital has been used for various unhelpful episodes damaging the PH brand. Addressing the supply crisis would involve some economic pain (specifically higher prices and general living costs, and possibly some rationing too). We need to lengthen the availability of supply as long as possible that that means saving some resources instead of enjoying it all now. Nobody likes pain, but that pain is necessary in order to avoid greater complications that would definitely come if Malaysia is to take on business-as-usual path (which is what happening at the moment). Addressing the crisis comprehensively would intensify the backlash, even if compensating policy like greater cash transfers is put in place. With all these things in mind, the ruling coalitions are frozen to death about what this would mean at the ballot box. So, instead doing the right thing, the government has instead decided to coddle the voters policy-wise from what is to come.

Policymaking and execution are in stasis at a time when we need courage with all hands on deck.

There is not one, but two imminent economic crises

But what are the crises?

The first is well-known by now even as most Malaysians act as nothing is happening due to the very mild supply policy we have at the moment. It is the energy supply crisis centered around the Persian Gulf that is directly caused by the Israel-US aggression against Iran. The disrupted petroleum supply is sending ripple effects to various sectors in Malaysia (and around the world), as can be observed through the input-output model. The government has been communicating this very well to the public. Sadly, that communication runs at odds with actual policy, especially when it comes to petrol and diesel subsidies (and also… tourism).

The second is the very possible return of a strong El Nino that would hurt, among others, water supply, which in turn affecting agricultural and food production adversely. Already, fertilizer supply is a concern. El Nino would exacerbate the problem and raise market prices.

The first crisis is not being handled properly despite warning from the government’s own economists. The second crisis is largely going under the radar and would exacerbate the effects of the first crisis.

Renewed mandate is the way to go

It seems to me that in order to address the two crises effectively, the democratic mandate must be refreshed. Here, the general election is the way to shorten the lame duck and do-nothing policy period. Having the election as soon as possible could return us to the state of serious policymaking as quickly as possible democratically. There are other ways to do this, but democratically is the operating word here.

We have seen how prolonged policy inaction affected our lives before. The late February 2020 Sheraton Move caused Malaysia to lose weeks if not months’ worth of reaction policy time during the Covid-19 pandemic. That led to unnecessary deaths, overly deep economic downturn and the deepest of pain for everybody. We should heed the lesson of recent history. We need to move quickly and proactively.

No doubt, there is a risk that the election would also lead to a do-nothing period due to the need for power sharing negotiation immediately after election. The outcome of the next election would likely require multiple coalitions to work together yet again. The uncertainty involves the way the puzzle would fit together. Yet on the balance, even that government (whether PH would be in it or not) would have greater political capital than the current one, due to renewed mandate.

We must put the country first, party second.

Electoral messaging: the truth will set you free

To reiterate, Pakatan Harapan is so petrified of elections that in response to the ruling Johor Umno and Barisan Nasional dissolving the state assembly, PH-friendly social media accounts and some PH personalities have only one coherent argument: it is irresponsible to have an election during a crisis. But that argument would only work if the ruling side has the political capital to handle the crisis, which it does not. It is even more irresponsible to sit on it in fear.

Pakatan Harapan should take a different tack instead. Take the bull by the horns. They (or any coalition with national ambition) should be truthful of what lies ahead to the public going into the general election. Say it up front: the current government setup is untenable and fraying and that is preventing more effective solutions from being taken. They will be pain but it we will do the necessary to mitigate it. Tell the voters that Malaysia needs to come out of the crisis stronger and based on that, request a new mandate to take the necessary actions for the greater good.

That would be the manifesto: how would we deal with the crisis and how would we mitigate the pain. This would immediately avoid the kitchen sink manifesto that had caused Pakatan Harapan trouble in the past.

Pakatan Harapan can do this. The current government has a great record navigating global trends. Use this as a testimonial of competence. Tell voters Pakatan Harapan has the necessary plan to address the crisis but insufficient mandate to carry on. We have have the way forward and we would like you to approve the plan.

Further, doing this would allow Pakatan Harapan to regain the initiative instead of forever being reactive to its rivals. To carry on reactive as Pakatan Harapan is now would erode further the reputation of all parties in the coalition.

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Politics & government

[2961] Umno’s calls for stability is a racketeering slogan

Stability is Umno and BN’s rally cry for this general election. But it is a disingenuous political messaging given that all recent instabilities are directly caused by Umno and their allies.

Umno’s argument for stability is akin to racketeering. Wikipedia has a concise definition: when somebody offers “a service that solves a problem that would not exist without the racket.” One concrete example involves a shop paying protection money, which the protection is from violence perpetrated by the fee collectors. Yet another concrete example is, well, Umno’s version of stability.

Umno and their allies, and this included Pas until recently, manufactured ethnic tensions throughout the 2018-2020 Pakatan Harapan administration. The manufactured inter-ethnic crisis brought instability to the country, all with the hope that Pakatan Harapan would fall, and be replaced with a government that Umno would be part of. Pakatan Harapan government collapsed under the pressure as Bersatu—naive and shortsighted as they are—fell for the racket.

Ethnic tension quietened once Umno were back in power, which highlights the fact that high ethnic tension during that period was unnatural. It was manufactured by partisan forces that were Umno and Pas. It was a racketeering done at the expense of the country: a dishonest scheme to obtain power and money. To more than a few people, it was a scheme to avoid jail time.

Despite being part of the federal government after the fall of Pakatan Harapan government, Umno members were unhappy that they played second fiddle to Bersatu. To address their unhappiness, Umno sabotaged their own government for their own partisan benefits. Instability ensued until they won. Stability is something Umno want only when they are at the apex of power. When they are out of it, stability is a liability to them and must be pushed aside, regardless the cost to the country.

And the country paid the cost: Malaysia lost anything between 2 to 6 weeks of reaction time during the Covid-19 economic and health crisis. While Umno maneuvered for private partisan gains, thousands paid the price with their lives. More than 36,000 deaths in Malaysia are linked to Covid-19 up to this day. Millions more suffered economic hardship due to incompetent and late handling of the crisis, as the Umno raced to secure their political positions.

Ultimately, the 2018 change in power itself was, in a large part, caused by Umno and their corruption. 1MDB was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was the final factor that made public anger go bubbling. Without the 1MDB corruption and the subsequent power abuses to cover up the crimes, Malaysians would not have been so angry to do what they have done in 2018. And the people did not make a mistake in 2018 as Umno alleged. The people went out of the their way to make sure the check-and-balance mechanism worked, in spite of all the institutional abuses by Umno.

If Umno really want to label the 2018 democratic change as instability, then everybody should see through the veil: that the source of the so-called instability is Umno themselves. Truly, Umno has no moral authority to campaign for stability and their calls for stability is nothing but a racketeer’s slogan.

 

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Politics & government

[2793] Choice of words and the shaping of opinions

When I think of the terms “coup d’tat”, “overthrow”, “topple” and the like, I would think of a violent change in government. The revolutions in Egypt and Ukraine would come to my mind. Closer to home, having tanks rolling through the streets of Bangkok is another excellent example.

In contrast, when I think of the case of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi — backstabbed by his UMNO colleagues and pressured to resign what seems ages ago — the whole episode falls under the realm of peaceful power transfer.

It lacks the violence or coerciveness that colors the words “coup d’tat”, “overthrow” and “topple” so thickly. The events in 2008-2009 were messy but democracy is always unruly. It is never as clean as an autocrat dressed in a democrat costume would like. These autocrats think modern democracy is about having regular elections only while ignoring other prerequisites that are just as important.

I do not think the definition of “topple” I have outlined exists only in my mind. The violent undertone it brings falls within the everyday understanding of the word. If “topple” had been used to describe the end of the Abdullah-led administration, then I would think the term has been abused grossly.

And so I frown when Najib Razak’s supporters and the police chief especially throw around that word to describe attempts at removing the prime minister from power through a vote of no confidence in Parliament. So insecure they are that even calling for his resignation is a go at coup d’tat.

But perhaps after so much power and institutional corruption committed by UMNO and their BN allies in government, it is only natural for the same side to corrupt the language we use every day.

I would think they know they are twisting these words beyond their intended meaning. It is a purposeful exaggeration to meet their selfish political end, which is to stay in power even at the expense of the country.

The bigger problem is when the intended recipients of the political message, mostly men and women on the streets, accept the word subversion without critical examination and then blindly reuse it in that unnatural way.

To understand why this is an issue worth highlighting, we have to understand that language has the power to shape our opinion. Language is not merely a neutral medium of exchange but it also influences how we perceive information, and from there on shapes our views.

Since “topple” comes with the violent connotation, applying it in the context of peaceful power change would likely cause the uncritical message recipients to balk and recoil from any call for change. They would hesitate from supporting change out of fear, merely because the words used.

That is the purpose of word subversion. It tries to pollute the legitimate peaceful means of change with the created image of smoke, fire and death. It is done to instill fear in us, make us feel hopeless and convince us to do nothing even in the face of injustice. It is to discourage the case for peaceful power change.

The sages of old told us not to judge a book by its cover. But let us face it. We almost always act on the first impression. We read the headline and prejudge without reading the whole article. We live in the too-long, didn’t-read culture.

In the same line of reasoning, most of us do not think too much of how “topple” has been used. I have spotted too many innocent men and women reusing the word in the corrupted context without realizing it, thus perpetuating fear and serving the pro-Najib camp.

I am sure I am guilty of the same sin I warn of here in other cases elsewhere. It is truly tiring trying to be critical about every single word uttered, read and written all the time with a thick dictionary by my side.

But during this chaotic dishonest period when words are abused frequently, meanings are not so straight forward and outright doubletalk is the norm, we must stand guard for the tabula rasa that still exists in the corners of our mind. We just cannot afford to be the uncritical blind consumers of language waiting to be exploited in these deplorable days full of deceits.

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 Malay Mail on August 25 2015.

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Politics & government

[2691] Soon, Reformasi will fade

The wisdom of our age has it that young adults are more likely than not to vote against Barisan Nasional. A survey carried out by the Merdeka Center for Opinion Research backs this up. In a report it published on May 3, the poll agency found out that Malaysians in their twenties and thirties preferred Pakatan Rakyat to BN by a significant margin. In contrast, support for BN was the strongest among those aged 50 or older. In a country where the median age is younger than 30 years old, that offers some hints about the political future of the country.

While that is so, nothing guarantees that wisdom will last for too long.

The generational divergence Malaysia is witnessing now has a lot to do with the political turmoil of the late 1990s. The sacking of Anwar Ibrahim as the deputy prime minister and the subsequent events that followed made a lasting impression on the minds of these young Malaysians who then were still in school, in university or new to the labor market. Whether it was about Anwar or about a larger sense of justice — that something was extremely wrong — they were moved by the event.

These Malaysians are also the largest age cohorts that Malaysia has ever seen yet. It is not merely a coincident that BN comes under intense political pressure exactly when these generations are maturing and exercising their political muscles.

Each generation has an episode which defines their political belief and partly, their worldview. Those above 50 years old now remember the old Umno and hold dearly onto those nostalgias. Future young Malaysians, those in their teenage years and even younger, will no doubt have their very own episode.

Unlike the others however, these new young Malaysians have their book wide opened and its pages unwritten yet. There has not been any big wake-me-up moment for them so far.

One thing is certain though. Time has the power to make society forget the past. The old old generation will disappear into the background, hopefully bringing with them the ghost of May 13, among others. The old new generation — the young adults of today — will have their political views at the new bedrock of Malaysian society. The new new generations will challenge the prevailing views, as youth always do all around the world.

These new young Malaysians will not remember the events of 1998 because they will never experience it. It is much like how young adults today do not remember the events of 1988 when the old Umno was disbanded and the judiciary came under assault by the Mahathir administration. It is the exact reason why many young Malaysians today are not swayed by May 13 and scaremongering opportunists who fuel their sad career on racist politics.

History books alone are insufficient to influence a whole generation so comprehensively. No matter how moving words in the archives can be, reading them in a dark library room up in the stacks or deep in the basement is a passive, cold action. Words of history may work for a minority with true appreciation of history who read heavily but for the majority, they have to be in the dizzying mist of action before the essence of the era seeps into his or her being.

So the new new generation will forget. Society will forget. Slowly but surely, the what-we-call Reformasi era will take a bow, come down off the stage and be relegated to the pages of history.

That may be a comfort to BN. It is a second chance for them in what seems to be a contest between BN the rock and PR the water.

Nevertheless, BN will have to suffer the demographics and the momentum of time for now.

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 May 31 2013.

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Politics & government

[2684] For reconciliation, Najib needs to address UMNO first

It was a Pyrrhic victory for Barisan Nasional and Najib Razak’s post-election speech called for national reconciliation. That is perhaps admittance that his 1Malaysia policy has not been as successful as he had hoped. It is all a nice, humble speech but his call for national reconciliation suffers from credibility crisis.

Soon after, various UMNO leaders made it clear that they did not plan to take up the reconciliation tone. They immediately took up their racialist perspective and blame the Chinese for their loss. The bitter former Chief Minister of Malacca Ali Rustam who lost his election went as far as accusing the Chinese as being ungrateful. Only the heaven knows what Utusan Malaysia will spew out today and the days after.

Najib may be sincere about reconciliation but the party is always bigger than him even as Najib is proving to be more popular than everybody else in his party. The truth is that the majority in his party does not believe in an inclusive Malaysia. If Najib is honest in reconciliation, he has to address his party, not the wider Malaysians, about his reconciliation agenda. He needs to convince his party of reconciliation and not the wider Malaysians. The wider Malaysians hear both Najib and his parties and there are stark diverging themes going on there.

Besides, it was UMNO — the primate party of BN by far — who pushed the Chinese aside. Can you really blame the Chinese for rejecting UMNO and BN?

And the suggestion that BN lost because of a “Chinese tsunami” is not entirely true. BN lost the popular votes for the first time in a long time. That would not have been possible if it were all Chinese votes. There are just not enough Chinese voters to go around making that kind of shift. And the Chinese have been hostile to BN for quite some time now. Does the death of MCA, Gerakan and SUPP not tell you something?

Maybe it was something else. Maybe, it was the urban-rural divide. The urban-rural factor has more explanatory power to describe BN’s loss of popular votes.

Maybe BN believed in its lying media too much that they thought they would have performed better. Maybe, the lesson of 2008 of the importance of credible media has not been learned by BN. They ate their own propaganda and then when it tastes bitter, they begin to blame for someone else.

For reconciliation to happen, BN needs to look at the urban-rural factors. Looking through the racialist view and then talking about reconciliation just will not fly.