Categories
Books & printed materials Fiction

[2943] From Afghanistan to Algeria

These days, I generally prefer reading non-fiction to expand my knowledge. So far, it has been mostly history, mixed with a little bit of politics and economics. And it has been Malaysiana-heavy. So, I thought I needed a break from this and picked up some fictions for a change.

I recently finished reading two of them. One was The Art of Losing by Alice Zeniter, which is set in Algeria and France. The other is Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, set in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States. Both have the protagonists having lost their country to armed conflicts, and ended up as refugees in foreign but adopted lands.

I enjoyed them. And I thought I learned a little bit about Algeria and Afghanistan.

After completing almost every chapter, I found myself consulting Google Map and Wikipedia trying to comprehend the context sets by the both authors in their respective work. In The Art of Losing, I was attracted to paragraphs of Hamid the little boy remembering Algeria as Algiers, the white city on the coast of the Mediterranean despite only passing by the capital and having not living there, ever. He and his family were fleeing the country, and hectically catching a boat in order to cross the sea to get to France. That was the last time he saw Algeria.

Zeniter’s description of Algiers made me curious. A white city by the Mediterranean. That made me read more about it and searched for pictures of the city from the sea. On Google Map with its 3D feature, Algiers looks as described: a city of layers of white 3-4-5 storey buildings lining up the Algerian coast. And I did not realize the northern part of Algeria was quite green. When I thought of northern Africa, I could only think of mountains and deserts. I had extrapolated wrongly.

There is a scene in The Kite Runner where Hassan and his father were escaping Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. They were smuggled out of the country in a truck through the famed Khyber Pass. They needed to reach Peshawar in Pakistan that lies on the eastern end of the pass. I watched a couple of Youtube videos to understand the geography of the pass and comprehend the difficulty of the journey.

I have never been to either country, although I think I have flown above Afghanistan before en route to Europe several times. From what I could make from high up in the sky, the Afghan terrain is absolutely rugged.

But between Algeria and Afghanistan, I know the latter more. I was in the United States when the September 11 Attacks occurred, and Afghanistan was a constant feature in American politics for much of my time in Michigan. The Kite Runner makes reference to the US invasion and occupation of the country. More than that, the characters in the Kite Runners celebrated the fall of the Taliban:

That December, Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras gathered in Bonn and, under the watchful eye of the UN, began the process that might someday end over twenty years of unhappiness in their watan. [Khaled Hosseini. The Kite Runner. Page 316. 2004]

People have been telling me The Kite Runner is an emotional book. Some cried. I did not, but I felt some sadness upon reading the sentence above, knowing the Taliban has returned, twenty years later. I personally feel the US leaving Afghanistan is a mistake. But never mind.

Algeria is more of a mystery to me. I know where it is located: sandwiched between Tunisia and Morocco. know the capital, and I know it is a Muslim country. I recognize its national flag. I may know a little bit about general classical history involving the Romans. But little else. Ask me about modern Algerian history and I will draw a blank. I have an Algerian French friend that I have not met for a long time, but I was not about to bombard her with questions. So, I read additional material online about modern Algeria, about the FLN that fought for Algerian independence and other relevant topics.

I have a copy of Tournament of Shadows by Karl Ernest Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac sitting on my book shelf. The book would tell me about Afghanistan much more than The Kite Runner could. But the non-fiction is 700-page long, and has been left unread and untouched for more than 5 years. Moreover, I do have a long list of other books I want to read. So, until the day I start reading that thick book, The Kite Runner (and The Art of Losing) will do.

Are the two poor substitutes to non-fiction as far as learning goes? Maybe, but I enjoyed them thoroughly.

Categories
Books & printed materials Personal

[2942] How’s your book?

The most common question I get these days is, “how’s your book?”

I think it is done. It is at the really, really tail end as far as writing is concerned. I have been re-reading it several times to keep myself happy with the arguments I made. Yes, there are several more feedback to come, and forever reading papers and books to convince myself of the stuff I wrote. But really, I don’t think I will make big changes to the document anymore.

Still, I keep editing it. I have lost track how many rounds of edit from front to back I have done. I keep telling myself, I am editing the manuscript closely to make it perfect. For this latest round, I am editing the penultimate chapter.

But maybe, I am forever editing it because I do not want it to end. After 5 or 6 years working on it, it has become a routine I am comfortable with. I do not want to break the routine.

Such a perverse incentive.

Categories
Politics & government

[2941] Ismail Sabri does not deserve 100-day honeymoon

In his speech revealing the Cabinet line-up, Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob said each ministry had to prove their early achievements within 100 days. He said that after stressing the Cabinet needed to have short and long-term plans.

That 100-day period might have been acceptable under normal circumstances. And it might be acceptable, if the Cabinet had a new line-up.

But this Cabinet is the same as the last one that failed miserably, with minor changes inspiring no confidence. The clueless Minister of Education is still the same. Ditto for MITI, and almost all other ministries. One improvement might be the promotion of Khairy Jamaluddin to the Health Ministry, but this could be negated by the silly switch: the ridiculous former Health Minister now takes over Khairy’s old portfolio. The health ministry under Adham Baba had been the source of dark comedy since March 2020, and only god knows what the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation has in store now. Good luck all the technologists out there.

So unchanged the line-up, that it is impossible to divorce the failure and incompetence of the previous Cabinet from the new one. The Prime Minister himself is the source of the current Covid-19 wave with his lack-of-quarantine mistake.

The largely disappointing line-up does not deserve space to breathe. This government does not deserve 100 days. They should be judged now. They must be put under pressure.

For heaven’s sake, there is an ongoing pandemic and we just do not have 100 days.  Thousands have died. If this government needs 100 days more, then we collectively as Malaysians have made a mistake and will pay a heavy price for it.

Categories
Economics Politics & government

[2940] Immediate fiscal agenda for the new (old) government

The next finance minister is unlikely to be thinking too far ahead since election is just less than 2 years away. It is short time to set any long-term agenda. There will not be enough time for learning and there will not be enough to start implementing. For the most parts, the new finance minister will likely be carrying on with established policy until the general election is called. Even if he or she dares introduce new long-term measures, there is a good chance it would be overturned once a new minister takes the Level 12 office in the Treasury Building in Putrajaya after the election.

Nevertheless, given the situation we as a country are in, the 2-year period is important. I think there are two items of concern during this period that could affect the long-term fiscal policy of the country:

  1. The 2023 fiscal cliff
  2. Fiscal consolidation.

The Perikatan Nasional government that Umno was committed to a quick fiscal consolidation exercise that necessitates a 2023 fiscal cliff and I think there is a question whether the same policy would be taken up.

What is the 2023 fiscal cliff?

To handle the Covid-19 crisis, the government changed certain law that allowed it to practically have a current deficit. Without the changes, the government’s current balance must always be in surplus, or in balance. In other words, total revenue must exceed all operating expenditure. Here is a restatement of: the government can only borrow for investment purposes (or in public sector jargon, development expenditure).

More specifically, the government created a Covid-19 fund that officially neither operating or development expenditure (but in fact, mostly operating expenditure). It was a necessary accounting trick that bends the law. Revenue dropped substantially during 2020 and 2021 relative to previous immediate years, while the need for spending rose dramatically. If the laws were not changed, we would have faced a worse version of this already bad recession. Even so, actual spending done was insufficient (the comic I drew below) due to the then policymakers’ naïve belief in V-shape recovery, and failure to adopt precautionary approach. This was the costly mistake of Budget 2021.

This fund is set to expire on December 31 2022. Upon expiry, the normal way of doing things—current balance cannot in deficit—becomes the rule again. This means any borrowing must be repaid (or from what I am seeing, I suspect it would be absorbed into development fund despite a large chunk of it is not developmental in nature. The 2020-2021 RM21 billion drop in Covid-19 is almost as large as the sudden RM19 billion increase in the corresponding development expenditure).

Based on Ministry of Finance publication, the fund had RM17 billion in it as of end-June 2021. It is likely higher given additional spending announcement made during the quarter. Expiry would mean (assuming it is not reclassified lock, stock and barrel as development expenditure) paying off that RM17 billion to meet the current balance requirement. It could also mean a percentage point worth of government spending unmade if it is paid off. That RM17 billion is roughly equivalent to a percentage point of 2021 deficit ratio.

So, if the fund expires in 2022 and the borrowing gets paid off (instead of reclassified as development expenditure), there will be a fiscal cliff: a stark drop in spending, which would take some steam off GDP growth, and more importantly, recovery.

Remember, economic recovery is not merely about growing again after a recession. Neither is it just about returning to pre-crisis level (which by the way, we are a risk of not doing so in 2021). A comprehensive recovery is one where current level would match the level it would be if no crisis had happened. Our insufficient spending had left the gap big, and catching up with that pre-crisis level and trend is hard.

Inappropriate time for fiscal consolidation

This is on top of fiscal deficit-to-NGDP ratio that the government might target. It is unclear now what the deficit ratio target is. Former Finance Minister Zafrul Abdul Aziz had stated that the figure for 2021 after accounting additional unplanned Covid-19 spending could rise to 6.5%-7.0% of NGDP, from the unrealistic Budget 2021 projection of 5.4%. It is unclear if this accounts for lower-than-expected GDP growth. If it does not, it will go higher.

If the new government (if it could be called new given the composition is… the same) insists on fiscal consolidation still, there will be pressure to let the Covid-19 fund expire while cutting services to keep spending under control.

Two immediate agenda for the next finance minister

Malaysia is clearly behind the curve by a big margin in terms of economic recovery. Getting recovery on track is the immediate concern. Unfortunately, as much as I hate to say it, the government is likely the main driver of growth in these times.

The government can start playing that role properly by first, extending the expiring date for Covid-19 fund and second, postponing any fiscal consolidation exercise. The second can be done by maintaining deficit ratio high, possibly in the range of 6%-8% in the next several years.

Ideally, this should followed by a long-term agenda of tax reform to increase government revenue, which the Pakatan Harapan government, and the previous Perikatan Nasional government, as I understand it, was willing to go ahead with parts of it.

Categories
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.