Bumiputras – the _

[2807] Break-up the Bumiputra category into finer details

Race politics dominates Malaysia and our deplorable politics have us Malaysians as Bumiputras, Chinese, Indians and others.

At the center of it all is Malay politics. Yet, public statistics on Malay welfare are imprecise. This is true for household income and expenditure surveys conducted and published by the Department of Statistics. The surveys are the most comprehensive snapshots we have on the welfare of Malaysian households.

It is imprecise because the best we have to describe Malay welfare are not Malay statistics, but Bumiputra statistics.

The way the statistics is presented (or even measured) strengthens the flawed notion that the Bumiputras are Malays. Yet, we know the Bumiputras comprise not just the Malays but also the Orang Aslis in the Peninsula, and the Borneo natives.

Foreigners in particular are guilty of this but more unforgivably, so do the locals. When ethno-nationalist Malays want to back their point with hard data for instance, they would go to the household surveys and cite the Bumiputra figures as proofs, casually suggesting all Bumiputras are Malays with no hesitation as if there is nothing wrong with the statistics.

Our contemporary politics also means the recognition is not merely a pedantic concern. Sarawak parties especially are becoming increasingly important nationally, possibly convincing the federal government to spend more money there.

How can this be relevant? For example, I would like to know change in welfare of those Borneo native households as federal spending increases. It is not enough to claim they would do better because of the spending. We need data and it is certainly not enough with the Bumiputra net cast so widely.

So, as far as the category Bumiputra is concerned, I think it should be broken into its finer components to allow us to see exactly the state of various groups’ welfare.

After all, is it not ironic that for all the centrality of Malay politics, statistics on Malay welfare is not available on its own? We can know the income of the median Chinese and Indian households but we cannot know the median for Malay families. To belabor the point, what we know instead are Bumiputra statistics, which are at best a proxy to the state of the Malays. And we know it is a proxy because we know the Malays make-up the majority within the group. How big a majority? Interesting question, is it not?

And we also know how mean and median behave mathematically. Change in population will change both easily.

I have a lingering suspicion that the Malays are doing better than the reported Bumiputra average/median. My suspicion is based on the fact most Malays live in the Peninsula while the statistics show the Peninsula as a geographic group does better than the Malaysian Borneo (even when certain states such as Kelantan can do worse than Sarawak). The only way to conclusively address the suspicion is to look at the Bumiputra components cleverer than what we have been doing so far.

At the very least, regardless of my suspicion, improvement in reported welfare statistics with the Bumiputra category split into its constitutions can lead to better public debates and better policies. Without the split, we are forever condemned to debate from imprecise premises.

[1122] Of lefties’ unconvicing argument against FTA

Opponents to the possible Malaysia-US FTA come from various backgrounds and some they have expressed legitimate concerns against the FTA. When I met Ronnie Liu of DAP several months ago, he expressed transparency as a reason to object the FTA. I could accept transparency as as reason but yet, I am convinced that transparency is not the main reason behind DAP’s objection to FTA. This is because transparency was only mentioned after I demonstrated an inconsistency in DAP’s stance in a wider context.

There are many arguments against the FTA that are simply based on simple misunderstanding of economic concepts. I will not touch on that simply however. What I am interested in discussing is the inconsistent.

DAP opposes the Bumiputra policy, in particular the NEP, because it is discriminatory. I myself am against the Bumiputra policy due to how it prevents the market from working freely. But this is not about me.

Proponents of the policy cite that the Bumiputra and really, the Malays, need time to build up its capacity to compete against other economically superior ethnic groups. Hence, the protection and privileges given to the Malays. It is common for the other side, not necessarily DAP but the lefties in general, to come back and say such protection and privileges do not build up the competency the Bumiputa needs to compete against others; it only encourages complacency among the Bumiputra.

Despite not buying into the argument for Bumiputra policy as well as stating how the policy is not helping, many of the same lefties employ the same argument used by the proponent of Bumiputra policy to support protectionism and oppose the FTA. This group argues that Malaysia needs time to build up its capacity to compete against other economically superior countries. When proponents of the FTA cites that protectionism does not encourage Malaysia to become competitive but instead, sowing complacency, they shrug it off, seemingly implying that such inconsistency as a minor inconvenient.

In the case of Ronnie Liu, he ran away from the subject and cited transparency instead.

Lefties will need to sort that out if they are to convince others to oppose the Malaysia-US FTA. Else, lefties that oppose both the Bumiputra policy and the FTA are giving the supporters of Bumiputra policy a leeway. Perhaps, stripping the lefties that moral authority to talk about one issue or the other.