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Conflict & disaster Personal Politics & government

[2938] From political to personal

Favored mindless slogan among Pas, Bersatu and Umno members and supporters early during the incompetent handling of the pandemic had something to do with politics. Despite the deeply political nature of the whole situation, they would say “jangan berpolitik.” That roughly translates into “don’t politicize the issue.” Do not politicize Covid-19. Do not politicize the handling.

They repeat the phrase while politicking, and eventually causing the state-wide Sabah by-election. Coupled with uneven enforcement of physical distancing, we are here today: a nearly collapsed healthcare system and continuing rising number of infection cases.

Failures in managing the case, and actions worsening the situation persisted, amid the mindless slogan: don’t politicize the issue.

Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

My grandmother died in her bed six days ago, a day before Eid. Initially, everybody thought she died of old age. She died in her sleep. Her death was shocking, but she was old. And she had a good life.

Post-mortem at the hospital revealed she had Covid-19.

She was unvaccinated. I am unsure why. I am just angry.

I could not go to her burial. I have not met her for nearly two years. No, too late. I had not met her.

Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

Five days after her death, I received by second Covid-19 vaccine jab. A slot I had to fight for. Such an inequity, created by an unscientific hunch.

Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

I am sure my experience is not unique. With nearly 8,000 deaths and counting, everybody must have known somebody who has died.
I wonder how they feel. Do they feel all those incompetence, mismanagement and failures political? Is 3-day quarantine political?

Is death of a family member political? Or is it personal, meant to be grieved privately?

Are these killings political, or are they a private matter?

Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

It must be politicized. It is the only way to make irresponsible, incompetent and unaccountable men and women of this government accountable.

Categories
Conflict & disaster Economics

[2937] Premature fiscal consolidation influences our vaccination strategy adversely

Our vaccination program is taking the big solution approach. Since the Covid-19 pandemic is a big challenge, it might be natural to come up with a big solution. Mega vaccination centers are a critical part of the program. Big space with hundreds if not thousands of personnel vaccinating hundreds if not thousands more individuals. Big, shinny glittering, big. It is as if Mahathir of the 1990s is back.

It has been a slow painfully slow start with some big mess made along the way, but the program is picking up steam. Vaccination pace is still below what is required but we are getting somewhere: on June 10, approximately 155,000 dosages were administered, and close to 10% of the population has received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccines.

Behind the headline numbers, stories are appearing that people are not showing up for vaccination despite registration. The authorities at first tied the no-show to vaccine hesitancy. Earlier rationale for separating Astra-Zeneca vaccines from the main public vaccination program was based on the understanding that the public distrusted that particular vaccines. After all, AZ had bad press for some time.

After a while, that rationale is starting to become weak, especially given logistical concerns on the recipients’ side. More and more, it sounds like that particular claim was based on a misreading of incomplete data, and hasty conclusion. The kerfuffle between the Selangor state government and the federal government regarding total dosage the former received, for example, does not inspire confidence in the analytical skills of those in power in Putrajaya. Hesitancy is a big problem, but it is becoming clear that it had been used as a catch-all excuse to brush aside other big problems faced by the vaccination program.

To me, the no-show cases and the government’s preference for the big approach raise a question regarding our vaccination philosophy: are our methods primarily designed to be the easiest for the central authority to deliver the vaccines, or for individuals to get vaccinated?

The first part of the question—is the method easiest for central planners?—has the program administrators firstly in mind. If the administrators are the primary focus of the process, then having big centers is the way. This is because the big approach pools resources and rides on economies of scale. Pooling makes the vaccination program cheaper for the side managing it. Also, easier. The big approach necessarily means having few centers. And having fewer centers means the logistics becomes simpler, given all else the same: manage 3,4 or 5 big centers is significantly less complex than dealing 30, 300, or 3,000 spread across wide geography.

The second part of the question—is the method designed to be the easiest for individuals to get vaccinated?—puts potential recipients as the primary focus. It makes it easier for individuals interested in vaccinating themselves get vaccinated. Instead of having to travel from one part of the city to the another, or worse, having to travel from one part of the state to another (which is common enough), a person would be able to get his or her dose from the neighborhood clinics, hospitals, public halls or anything that could function as a vaccination center. This path is more expensive compared to other approach because it is more complex: it requires hundreds or thousands of small vaccination centers all around the country. It will involve resources being spread as widely as possible. But it is easier for potential vaccine recipients.

So, why did we choose the big approach, i.e. the method easiest for the central planners?

There might be multiple reasons behind that. I suspect one of them is related to cost consideration.

This goes back to the November 2020 when Budget 2021 was tabled in the Parliament. In that Budget, the government of the day in all its wisdom decided to embark on fiscal consolidation immediately. That policy was made based on rosy assumptions: the economy was to experience a V-shape recovery as soon as possible. Things would return to normal soonish.

That consolidation plan has gone awry. Recovery, if it could be called as such, is proceeding slower than what the government expected. When the budget was unbelievably passed despite it grave flaws in December 2020, Malaysia was still in recession. In fact as of the first quarter of 2021, the country was still in recession.

Since then, the government has been spending additional resources little by little, but not enough to solve the pandemic problem comprehensively. It has been reactive as the crisis develops, always one or two steps behind, almost ways coming short to the challenge. With available resources limited by the badly designed Budget 2021, those planning for vaccinations had to resort to the big approach: pooling resources, economies of scale, cheaper method. They had to minimize the monetary cost.

That comes at a (different) cost of course: it makes logistically hard to some individuals to get to the vaccination centers. Some is an understatement as we race toward herd immunity. The big approach contributes to the no-show cases: no-show because the big approach needs the people to go to the central planners, instead of the central planners coming to the people. All this raises the risk of Malaysia failing to achieve herd immunity as soon as possible, and letting the economy to muck around longer.

In short, the premature fiscal consolidation planned by this government had influenced our vaccination strategy adversely.

Categories
Conflict & disaster Economics

[2936] Latest government Covid-19 spending plan is ‘dasar cukup makan’

Severely underwhelming.

Those are the words I would use to describe the financial assistance the government launched in conjunction of the latest round of lockdown. The government values the program at RM40 billion, with approximately RM5 billion involving actual government spending. The rest are exemption or postponement-based initiatives, with loan repayment moratorium being the biggest and borne by somebody else.

What we need is not a band-aid program with actual spending being slightly greater than the RM3 billion auditor KMPG has trouble tracing in brewing Serba Dinamik financial scandal. Malaysia needs a new comprehensive program cognizant of the trouble we are facing collectively. I have earlier suggested the government will need to ramp up its spending significantly by raising its deficit ratio from approximately 6% of 2021 GDP currently to 9%-10% or even higher, while making all the consequential legal changes. We need to do whatever it takes to resolve the crisis as soon as possible.

But this government has failed to do that. The latest program proves this government is reactive to events, and always one-step behind. Muhyiddin and his incapable ministers just cannot look beyond the molehill. They keep holding on to plans which foundation has been dismantled by the worsening crisis. Those earlier plans, encapsulated by Budget 2021, were based on rosy assumptions that did not come true. Even with flawed assumptions, they keep going at it. Worse, a huge chunk of spending under the previous plans has yet to be executed.

That mistake of inadequate actual and approved spending in favor of unthinking fiscal consolidation has hobbled Malaysia’s response to the Covid-19 crisis. The government is unnecessarily self-limiting public spending that is needed to raise the health system capacity immediately and hasten the pace of vaccination in the population.

This is a disappointing policy that the Prime Minister should be embarrassed of announcing.

What the latest program really is, is that it is a “at least we tried” policy. Dasar cukup makan.

This spending is not about resolving the crisis. It is the government providing talking points to unthinking political operatives on the ground. It is to show the government is at least is responding to public demand. Moratorium? Yes, half-hearted but at least it is included. Wage subsidy? Yea, it is minimal by at least it is provided. “At least we the government are doing something.”

To come on top of this crisis, at least we did something is not good enough. The leadership of this government is not capable of doing more than “at least we tried.”

“You’re dying, but at least we’re giving you a glass of warm water.”

How comforting.

Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

Awani interviewed me on June 2 2021 about my views. Here it is (when I said US and UK with respect to sovereign debt crisis, I meant Europe. I misspoke):

Categories
Personal

[2935] From BCG to Covid-19 vaccine

It is hard to remember it after all these years. I vaguely recall lining up along one of the corridors of my primary school building. The school had a mid-20th century architecture, with the present classrooms opened in 1964 in Kuala Lumpur. It had two symmetrical yellowish cream-colored long buildings running parallel and facing each other, with an open grass compound in the middle where little students would chase each other whenever the tropical sun was kind.

It was late morning I think, just after the 10AM recess. I may have made that up. But let us just say it was a bright sunny day because I do not remember it rained.

The school must have had 300-500 pupils aged from 7 to 12 years old. I do not know how old I was, but about a hundred were queuing up that day. My cohort was there to get our vaccination and health check-up. Was it BCG? I am unsure. Maybe.

What I remember best was the feeling I had while waiting. This line had no queue-jumper: everybody was scared. Some cried their hearts out and had to be consoled with an ice-cream cone or some candy. I did not cry despite my heart pounding, and I did not flee despite wanting to.

It did not help that the government of the day was running an anti-drugs campaign. The now-demolished old Pudu Jail had a long mural, purportedly the longest in the world along its walls for any would-be offender to see. The wall had images for drug abuses and its consequences painted in dark colors. Coloring contests were held about the evils of najis dadah. TV was telling us drugs were bad. Jangan hisap dadah. I want to hear that in Samy Vellu’s voice.

All that had the needle as a symbol of drug abuse and that symbol was strongly etched into my young mind.

On that day, I was confused. Why does my school want use a needle on me?

I was scared.

The queue had to end somewhere. It was not a wait forever. I did not look at it when the needle pierced through my skin, with a chemical concoction injected on my left arm. People told me it was like an ant bite. Either they were lying, or their ant was a huge killer-insect.

That is my memory when it come to injection. I may have grown up, but every time I have to face the needle for whatever reason, a little part of me shrinks in fear. “Please doctor, please, not the needle,” my little inner voice would shriek silently.

In this mismanaged pandemic, Malaysia is beginning to vaccinate our population seriously after a slow start. I had my first dose a week ago, and the line was a long one. My mind hovered around my old memory of vaccination and wondered if it still hurt while I was lining up.

I had several injections since that BCG vaccination. Funnily enough, I cannot recall any of them. My mind must have blotted them out. It must be traumatic.

As the line snaked into the main vaccination hall, I thought to myself, “antivax people are really antivax because they have a horrible injection experience. They have never grown out of it. ‘Never again,’ they said!”

I tried getting my mind off it by reading a book. But Hussin Mutalib’s Islam and Ethnicity in Malay Politics is not a titillating read. Interesting, but it is an academic work. Besides, it was hard to concentrate in the hall. Workers and volunteers were shouting out instruction, and people were talking to each other.

Eventually I found myself in a carrel where the vaccine would be administered. The vaccinator showed me the vaccine. There was a minor controversy just a day earlier where a person proved that he got less vaccine than he should. It should have been 0.5ml and no less.

The rumor machine went on an overdrive, suggesting somebody was purposefully giving less either to profit off it, or that supply was running out. Either way, for a program bedeviled by problems, the episode widened the trust deficit this government suffered, and this government suffers a deficit much bigger than the Najib administration.

I appreciated that the vaccinator showed me the volume, and I knew I should watch the whole procedure to ensure I got the whole 0.5ml.

But I did not.

I shut my eyes, trying not to think my BCG experience 20-30 years ago.

“All done. You’re good to go,” she said.

“Oh?”

Categories
Conflict & disaster Economics

[2934] Hindsight is 2020, myopia is 2021

We did not know many things about Covid-19 back in 2020. Early on, the authorities and health professionals were urging the public not to panic by highlighting the probabilities of dying from other causes were higher than Covid-19. The intention of avoiding panic was probably good: by end-January 2020, I was looking for face masks to buy but most stores ran out of it. We know better now that the logic was wrong. Covid-19 is serious business.

We made missteps. The Pakatan Harapan government was worried about border closure and its effects on the economy. Nevertheless, travel restrictions were imposed eventually, though not comprehensive.

Then as we were learning about the virus further, party politics got in the way. The unexpected political maneuvering stole from Malaysia several weeks’ worth of lead time to fight the pandemic. At this time, members of Perikatan Nasional and their collaborators appeared unconcerned with the virus and took time to buttress their political position. The new government was lucky because Pakatan Harapan’s last act before their fall was to launch an additional government spending to fight off Covid-19. That bought Muhyiddin Yassin, the Prime Minister nobody elected, a little time as the health crisis worsened quickly.

Eventually, his unelected government got it right: lockdown with financial assistance provided. Lockdown implemention was chaotic, and the accompanied assistance should have been bigger. But the mistakes were forgivable however angering. Year 2020 was a new reality altogether and the hesitance in bringing in the big bazooka was understandable although less than ideal.

Moreover, it was a new government facing a steep learning curve: new ministers on the job had little understanding of fiscal levers, while facing an unprecedented crisis. Like I said, less than ideal but we had to make do.

After several months of mucking around, it seemed Malaysia was succeeding, in large part due to the civil service. The public sector had handled outbreaks before albeit on a smaller scale. That institutional memory served the country well at a time when the executive was scurrying in the dark. Additionally, there were economic response templates from other countries to follow by April-June 2020. Malaysia copied it.

There was damage to many aspects of Malaysian life. Democracy and basic rights were sacrificed. It was a dangerous sacrifice with adverse long term repercussions, but we could argue we skipped the worst. Whether we would pay for our sins is yet to be seen.

In the meantime, we bragged about our success while multiple countries, particularly the US and UK, were bungling their responses.

We bragged so much that overconfidence overcame us. That led us to repeat the same mistake we made in February-March 2020 in the second half of the year. Just like when party politics interfered with crisis management at the start of the pandemic, unreasonable political ambition to take over Sabah state government in the middle of the pandemic brought in the second wave.

This time, the trouble was so not new. There was less excuse to be made. Double-standard regarding quarantine during and after campaigning, and other questionable decisions by the government, made things worse. It was during this period health measures suffered from serious credibility erosion.

But we all need reminding from time to time. Sometimes, we make mistakes because we forget our lessons.

The point is, in retrospect, throughout 2020 we probably would have done things differently. But things should be judged not by how we would have done it differently knowing now things we did not know then. Instead, it is only fair to judge previous decisions based on how they were decided based on the best available information at that time. And we did not have the best information for most of 2020. It was all too new.

We can be angry about 2020. I still am. But that was how the cookie crumbled. Things happened and decisions were made based on the best, or second-best available information.

That excuse can no longer be used for 2021.

If hindsight is 2020, then myopia is 2021. By this year, we know more and we know almost enough information to fight the pandemic effectively. Yet somehow, we refused to use the information.

The disastrous handling of 2021, I think, could be traced back to November 2020, when Budget 2021 was debated in the now suspended Parliament. The budget could have been used to fight the health and economic crises comprehensively.

But we did not use that opportunity.

The government of the day preferred to declare victory prematurely, and engaged in fancy public relations exercise. A sharp V-shape recovery was taken as the base case scenario: base effect was taken in as victory. “This is the biggest budget in history!” declared the government, somehow forgetting the budget of the current year almost always the biggest in history. Rarely does government spending fall. Such was the nature of the government’s meaningless sloganeering to invoke awe in the unenlightened minds.

The budget was big, but it was just not big enough. Budget 2021 rested on rosy assumptions. So rosy that the government intended to resume fiscal consolidation immediately while the economy was still in recession.

So intent the government was on fiscal consolidation that the RM5 billion meant to vaccine-related purchases were not actually included in the Budget. How outrageous could it be?

Constructive criticism came in quickly. The government was told the budget was not big enough. The government was told it should take a more precautionary projection. The government was told to widen the deficit significantly to fight the pandemic off.

Critics were proven right. Budget 2021’s rosy assumptions were dismantled just 4-5 months after it was passed. In November 2020, the government aimed to cut the 2021 deficit ratio to 5.4%. By March 2021, the figure was raised up to 6.0%. It is likely higher now given how things are going. Not only was fiscal consolidation was the wrong policy to pursue at that time, but now since it could not be achieved, the government’s credibility has taken a hit.

The budget should have been rejected: the failure of Budget 2021 is both the fault of the Perikatan Nasional government—including Umno for those still in denial—and Pakatan Harapan. The non-rejection in the House was mind-boggling: we live in a tragic comedy.

Now, as Covid-19 is making its ugliest spread yet, with death toll mounting, health workers exhausted, the Ministry of Finance approved another RM200 million for the public health sector.

What is RM200 million when a vaccine dashboard alone worth RM70 million? What is RM200 million when the total Health Ministry Budget is RM32,000 million a year, and that the public health sector is running out of capacity?

To solve this crisis, we require a much bigger deficit spending: boost the deficit to 9%-10% or even more. Do whatever is necessary to finance the fight. Do it properly instead of through half-baked measures. There is no time for dry powder.

The cost of failing to address this crisis is greater than the cost of higher deficit ratio.