Tag: trust

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Politics & government Society

[2939] A unity government is a chance to rebuild trust among Malaysians

I prefer Pakatan Harapan to be the federal government. The 2018 general election gave the coalition the democratic mandate to be so, and there are plenty of reforms left to the completed. I know many are disappointed with the pace of reforms under the previous Pakatan government, as well as the incessant infighting. But as far as reforms are concerned, it is a long term project. It definitely cannot be done within less than two years. To expect so is naïve and unrealistic.

But my preference is an ideal, which must face the unattractive options in the real world. Realistically, only an election would reshuffle the deck, and allow Malaysia to start afresh. But a general election is out of the question for now. We have to live with our bad hands, instead of insisting of holding the cards that we do not have.

The red line

The likeliest of all options on the table seems to suggest Umno back at the driving seat. Meanwhile, Pakatan lacks the seats to form the government, and an earlier option of that happening one involving working with the criminals of 1MDB. Both options push up the possibilities of 1MDB criminals and their collaborators escaping justice. That is the red line for me.

Yet, Umno’s road to the Prime Minister’s Office is not as smooth as initially expected, with Bersatu imposing conditions, which dissatisfied the Agong. That happened today or yesterday. The condition Bersatu imposes is the same red line I have: no Najib and his merrymen.

Given the political impasse (and before it gets solved with Najib as part of the power broker), the anti-1MDB force from Pakatan and all other sides should come together as a unity government. That unity government would have access to the best talent among the 220 Members of Parliament (there are few despite the big number) while locking out 1MDB men from power.

The additional benefit of unity government is a chance to rebuild trust among Malaysians, which is the reason I am writing this post.

Political elites, groups and values

When we discuss contemporary Malaysian politics, inevitably there will be a charge, with a resignation tone, that the political elites are serving their interest alone.

That is hard to deny, but it is an incomplete assessment of the situation. The truth is, the political elites do represent groups holding on to certain values. We live in a representative democracy, however imperfect it is.

These values differ across groups: upper middle-class urbanites in general hold on to certain values (and interests) they do not share with low-income Malaysians. There are other dimensions to consider: religion, ethnicity, geography, class, etc.

So, political elites are manifestation of the masses.

Distrust among us

We are at the point where trust between these groups is low. It has been low for a long time, and it interacts with other factors like our trsut in our institutions. The trust deficit in our institutions, I would argue, is partly due to lack of trust among us (I would like to add that I am writing a book and a chapter of the book explains this is greater detail).

There is a metric we could use to understand the state of trust in our society. The World Values Survey has a set of questions assessing trust level in a society, and it has been measuring Malaysian level since the 2000s. Well, three times: 2006, 2012 and 2018.

One out of several relevant questions has it, “would you say most people can be trusted?”

The question approximates trust level in Malaysia. In 2006 and 2012, about 9% of Malaysian respondents answered yes in both years. In 2018, it rose to 20% but there is every reason to believe post-election euphoria had a role in pushing the rate up. Regardless, the suddent jump, that is a pretty low percentage. In other countries as recorded in the 2018 edition, the rates typically fell in the 30%-60% range. In Thailand, 29%. In Singapore, 34%. In Japan, 34% too. In the United States, 37%. In Sweden, 63%.

There are of course other countries with even lower trust than Malaysia, but that should not be our goal.

An avenue to rebuild trust

With that in mind, and that the political elites (more specifically, Members of Parliament) representing groups of different values, a unity government here is chance to bridge the gap between different Malaysian groups.

Theoretically, a unity government should bring about a more cooperative environment to groups at loggerheads.

Yet, I am under no illusion such unity government would work in such a way. The gap seems wide that it that building a bridge sounds like a hopeless exercise. Yet, we have to at least try to rebuild that trust. And a unity government provides such opportunity under a democratic system, however low the odds are.

Categories
Economics

[2819] Minutes to the MPC a trade-off between transparency and frank discussion

Bank Negara Malaysia does not publish the minutes to its Monetary Policy Committee meetings, unlike the Federal Reserve in the United States. This keeps the rationale behind rate-setting decisions murky to outsiders sometimes.

A few economists in the past several years have bugged the governor on the matter. Acquaintance Jason Fong from RAM Ratings yesterday asked Zeti whether BNM would release its MPC minutes. She provided the same answer she gave last year — I think, also asked by Jason — that maybe in the future, the central bank would allow certain PhD students to go through the minutes for their thesis. The short answer is, disappointingly, no.

The demand for transparency goes by back to professional economists’ attempt at understanding various decisions taken by the MPC. Detailed minutes would reveal who thought what, and explain the MPC statements clearly. A more transparent process would ultimately helps in projecting the Overnight Policy Rate or other aspects of monetary policy.

But yesterday, I suppose since it was her last big briefing with all the economists in town, she felt a bit generous and volunteered a longer answer. It is a good response I think, highlighting the trade-off between transparency and frank discussion.

She reasoned having published minutes could keep participants from discussing various issues freely during the meeting. Some may even be encouraged to state something just to be on record without sharing what he or she really thinks. The end result could be one where not all views will be shared and not all views are actually honest, leaving the final decisions incapable of aggregating views of the committee members accurately.  Zeti said MPC decisions are currently reached through consensus, which means, I guess, no voting.

I understand her point. I would also add having secretive element into the process protects meeting participants from political backlash, much in the spirit of Chatham House Rule, where privacy is the key to robust and frank discussions.

While I do not disagree with the governor, I can think an instance where her point could be weak.

The MPC can get away with that reasoning because there is a lot of trust in the competency and the motive of the committee members. If the next governor is one who does not inspire confidence, I think the importance of transparency will outweigh the importance of having frank and robust discussions.

These days, after all, the trust deficit is not merely a mere gap anymore. It is a gaping hole.

While Zeti is respected in the industry and everywhere else, the next governor — as well as the Finance Minister (the office which effectively appoints the governor) who is also the Prime Minister of multiple conflicts of interest —presents us all with a big question mark.

Categories
Politics & government

[2783] Public officials do not deserve privacy

Privacy very is important to me. It is important not just in the practical sense but also as a matter of principle with the context that I am a libertarian. Even in the internet age when doxing and hacking are almost normal and easily done, surveillance and privacy breaches are still a concern.

Now, the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal involves a lot of violations of individual privacy. Details of individuals’ bank accounts have been leaked out. Yet, I do not take it as violation in the libertarian sense.

Does this mean I am applying double standard in this case?

No.

So, why does the privacy for these individuals weigh less than that of others’?

These individuals — public official and their close relatives — do not deserve the typical privacy protection granted to the common men and women because they are in power. They are public officials. The higher up they are on the echelon of power, the less protection they deserve and the greater scrutiny the they should come under.

If they were accorded the same protection, it would create great opportunity for corruption and makes it harder to detect actual cases of corruption. For a clean government to exist, power must always survive skepticism. And so too for men and women holding public offices.

In fact, it should be the practice for public officials to declare their income and wealth to the public in the first place to reduce the opportunity for corruption. That very practice refuses them the right to privacy as far as income and wealth are concerned.

But in Malaysia, we do not have that declaration system and the public cannot access existing incomplete, inadequate asset declaration records. And this doubly means that these individuals of power do not deserve privacy that they are demanding.

Truly, leaks targeting 1MDB and others in power are now the only means for the public to ascertain the various allegations of corruption. These allegations are no more about sensationalist tabloid gossips. They are a matter of state administration and corruption.

Worse, sadly, the leaks have more credibility than most Malaysian institutions. I hold that it is these leaks that are forcing our institutions to investigate 1MDB finally. Without the leaks, these institutions compromised as they are, would have done nothing. The leakers, whoever they are, are providing public service.

This leads to another point. Our institutions suffer from trust deficit. Years of abuse by the government have robbed our institutions from the neutrality and the credibility they need to do their job.

And on top that, there is also conflict of interest just by the way our institutions are designed. In the case of 1MDB specifically, the attorney general who is leading the investigation suffers from conflict of interest. The AG office is both the public prosecutor and the legal counsel for the government. Since the AG office itself is under the Prime Minister’s Department, I fear the political reality means the AG will act more of a legal counsel to the government than as a reliable public prosecutor.

If the lack of very public asset declaration practice, trust deficit and conflict of interest has yet to convince you why individuals of power (public officials and their close relatives) do not deserve the typical privacy protection, then perhaps the awkwardness of them using the privacy laws to prosecute the leakers and prevent the public from finding out if there is indeed has been any wrongdoing.

At the very least, there is a very strong suspicion of abuse in 1MDB, a government-linked company. Any individual benefiting from the abuse deserves no privacy protection. They, instead of the leakers, should face the full force of the law instead.

Categories
Politics & government Society

[2398] Bersih and the wider trust deficit

Somewhere in Streatham, south of London earlier this year, I found myself slouching lazily on a couch watching the BBC with a friend and his still lazier cat. On television was the Egyptian revolution ”live”, with protesters and government supporters throwing rocks at each other. Such was the lamentable state of Egypt that used to be the apex of human civilization not once, but twice. Its deeply flawed institutions had reduced Egypt into a state of anarchy.

”Don’t you find this impossible?” I think I asked my friend. ”We know these protesters want Mubarak out but what about his supporters? Are their wishes less legitimate than those protesting on the streets?”

The reply came promptly, ”The importance of a credible election. Credible elections are important in determining popular opinion. Nothing in Egypt has enough credibility or the competence to ascertain the popular opinion right now.”

The Arab Spring is an extreme example but it does highlight the importance of a working electoral system. It highlights the importance of individuals trusting a system to aggregate popular opinion fairly and peacefully.

For this reason, the effort at electoral reforms by Bersih is important. Some of its demands add transparency in the electoral process and transparency goes a long way in creating credibility.

Bersih, of course, is about electoral reforms but the question of confidence in institutions is really part of the larger trust deficit problem in Malaysia. The problem of trust deficit is this: a considerable portion of Malaysians distrusts the government. And they are not libertarians. Rather, they are part of the everyday people.

It does not matter whether that portion makes up the majority of Malaysian society or not. The point is that they are big enough that they cannot be ignored, or banned just like that. There is no place for an ostrich if the country plans to solve the deficit.

For Malaysia, distrust in public institutions will not degenerate to the deplorable level seen in the Arab world recently anytime soon. It is an exaggeration to say otherwise. That is a long way down the canyon. Yet, various other not-so-ideal things can happen with the lack of confidence in public institutions.

When the public distrusts the courts, the police and everything that is commonly understood as the typical uncontroversial functions of the state, the government will have a hard time doing its job.

Take distrust in the police, for example. Crime cannot be the responsibility of the police alone. Crime fighting requires co-operation from the public. In an overly distrusting environment, is there a reason for a person to aid the police? Be a witness for the police? Is there a reason for the person to report the occurrence of crime to the police? Is there a reason for the person to believe the police will protect them?

All that will see individuals investing in their security, taking resources away from more productive activities. They make redundant activities typically funded by taxes.

This is already happening. Drive around Petaling Jaya and other neighborhoods and one can see what effectively are gated communities. Residents are pooling their resources to hire private firms to secure their property.

It shows they are distrustful of the police. Or at least how they do not believe that the police are competent enough to serve them, the taxpayers. What, one might ask, is the point of paying taxes to support the police force when one has to employ private security firms to keep one’s house safe?

And just to be naughty, if there was enough trust between the public and the government, the government would not have to spend millions of public funds for public relations exercises. That money can better be spent elsewhere. Yet, in times of great skepticism, what would be wasteful during normal times could become a necessity to keep the government running.

It is good to keep a healthy dose of skepticism against the government and the state in general. Yet, there is some optimum level of skepticism before destructive cynicism sets in.

Quite unfortunately, the current government of Malaysia — the Abdullah and the Najib administrations alike — is too good at inculcating public cynicism against itself. Given how the government tries hard to erode the independence of public institutions, the government is undermining public confidence in public institutions.

Bersih is a modest effort at trying to ultimately restore credibility to public institutions. In its little way, it is an effort to tackle the wider trust deficit.

The Najib administration, however, disagrees and demonizes Bersih instead. Maybe that is not at all surprising. The flawed institutions of status quo benefit the incumbent. The administration and its fiercest supporters are happy with the status quo. In jargon-speak, they have captured the public institutions.

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 July 16 2011.

Categories
Society

[1430] Of trust between individuals and institutions

As I was racing toward the final pages of Beinhocker’s The Origin of Wealth, among the public, there was a growing distrust against the judiciary in Malaysia. Coincidentally, the final chapter of The Origin of Wealth discusses how trust is an important component in building a successful society. Trust is one of many important ingredients toward cooperation and greater economic activities between individuals.

Beinhocker states that a society of trustworthy individuals encourages cooperation. He strengthens his assertion with a correlation between trust level of societies and level of gross national product or roughly in layman’s term, wealth of societies; the correlation is positive. The rationale is quite logical.

In any dealing, especially under which past dealings are considered, many would try to avoid entering into any agreement with those of low reputation or untrustworthy. This scenario could easily be illustrated by a repeated game with players utilizing adapted tit-for-tat as a strategy. In this scenario, bad reputation or untrustworthiness leads to uncooperative behavior by the cheated player. The behavior acts as a punishment by the cheated onto the cheating player.

Although Beinhocker is referring to trust between individuals in his book, his conclusion could be adapted to accommodate relationship between individuals and institutions.

Referring to the alleged corruption of the Malaysian judiciary, the players in the game could easily be comprehended as civil society and the judiciary. When the judiciary exhibits actions which lower its reputation, the civil society has little reason to trust with the judiciary.

The judiciary is the arbitrator of conflict between individuals and the perception of neutrality is important to convince relevant individuals of the trustworthiness of the judiciary. Without neutrality, there is little reason for individuals to trust and approach the arbitrator to solve any conflict. If such outcome which the perception of neutrality is absence is repeated overtime, individuals, who may initially grant the arbitrator their trust, will update their expectation and become distrustful of the arbitrator. The final result will be a complete disregard and dismissal of the arbitrator.

The lack of trustworthy judiciary takes away a reliable neutral arbitrator from the society. Without a good institution to govern relationships between individuals, transactions between individuals will fall in volume, as each individual now becomes wary of being cheated by the other without recourse to justice. Economic activities will decrease, making the society as a whole worse off.

Distrust against the judiciary may even lower the possibility of peaceful resolution to any conflict. When the law through the judiciary is unable to dispense justice, one will take justice into his own hands. This among others would give way to the rise of vigilantism. If vigilantes patrol the street, then it will challenge the state’s monopoly to legitimate use of force.

The integrity of the state itself is at stake, adversely affecting stability and in turn hurt economic growth in compounding manner.