As I walked from Brickfields to Dataran Merdeka, weaving through Central Market, Tun Perak and Dataran Maybank, I spotted curious immigrants watching Malaysians marching down the streets, witnessing democracy in action.
Some of them stood by the entrance to whatever shops that were opened. Others climbed up the roof to see the vastness of protesters filling Kuala Lumpur up.
This was on Jalan Tun Perak.
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.
Some dystopian science fictions rest on absurd premises.
Terry Gilliam’s Brazil is a statist world of paperwork. There is a form to fill up for everything you do. The story begins with a naming mistake in a government ministry.
Instead of Tuttle printed on the warrant, it was Buttle. That leads to the arrest and the eventual death of an innocent man the authority believed was a terrorist.
When a person discovers that the authority had the wrong person, everybody else refuses to correct or even admit the mistake for fear of having to face the impossible mountains of paperwork. And so the bureaucracy covers it up rather.
Mistakes or not, the bureaucracy is always right. Adherence to the system is so paramount that any attempt to rectify the error is an act of rebellion against the state. The state, meanwhile, does not look kindly on rebellion.
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is more ominous than Brazil. While people of Gilliam’s world are free as long as they fill their forms correctly, Orwell’s is a totalitarian universe with the one party controlling every facet of your life.
The truth is whatever the government ”• the Big Brother ”• says. The government rewrites history however it sees fit. If anybody has a different opinion or remembers history differently, the government will put him through a special rehabilitation program to change his or her mind, forcefully.
There are other brilliantly absurd dystopian works out there.
These absurdities are fictions only to a healthy civilized society when the government is decent. We can laugh at these fictions because they are entertainingly absurd and so far removed from reality.
But the farther down the hole we are from a decent government, the less fictional these absurdities become. In them lie the seeds of truth.
Whenever I think of Malaysia today, my mind wanders to these old dystopian science fictions. I sigh at the ridiculousness of our situation that might as well be the target of mocking and satire of these works.
Our very own Big Brother (is he Ah Jib Gor?) proclaimed back when 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) was established that the fund was the centerpiece to his transformation.
It would help to create a new financial center for Kuala Lumpur. It would help reform the power sector. It would push Malaysia into the dreamy First World list.
Drive by the long Jalan Tun Razak, you will read the pretentious phrase ”For a Greater Kuala Lumpur” printed on aluminum hoarding surrounding the prime land 1MDB bought so cheaply from the government. ”1MDB is strong,” the government said.
Today, financial troubles and corruption scandals beset the fund. The strong 1MDB now is in need of government support to survive. The financial center stands unbuilt. The power authority is scrambling to meet Malaysia’s future energy demand because 1MDB failed to build the necessary power plants despite winning the tenders. Amid all this, the government is trying to convince us all that 1MDB is too small compared to the Malaysian economy. ”The fund is inconsequential now,” they claimed.
It took four to five years to change the storyline from it’s-a-big-thing to it-doesn’t-matter. One should be forgiven for not noticing the changing deceit told over such a long period.
But another episode is more shocking. Only a person of dulled senses and soft mind would not notice it.
Remember when all of those corruption allegations backed by various leaked documents implicating 1MDB, the prime minister and several other individuals first came out? They were tampered documents, the government said. The implicit defense was that the allegations were untrue.
Now, as the official government story goes, the money transfer did happen and the accounts did exist. All that was an all-legal multibillion-ringgit donation from someone unnamed. Suddenly, it was all true. Meanwhile, everybody who seems to be trying to right the wrong is arrested.
So, what about those tampered documents? The government is silent on that, instead preferring to talk about political donation reform, which by the way UMNO the ruling party itself rejected while blaming the Opposition for the reform failure. Such is the prevalence of doubletalk in Malaysia.
That blatant defense change happened in the pages of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The fascist party said ”We’ve always been at war with Eurasia.” The masses nodded and they understood they had always been friends with Eastasia.
Suddenly at the same event, the party said ”We’ve always been at war with Eastasia,” The masses were oblivious to the switch in name and nodded dutifully.
We have already that one party, the volte-face, a hint of corrupt bureaucracy along with the inane rationale and excuses today. It is up to us Malaysians to not nod lest Malaysia becomes these dystopias tomorrow.
Apart from the slowdown in consumption, I was wrong. The Malaysian GDP grew 4.9% from a year ago, considerably higher than what I thought it would be at 4.1%-4.2% YoY. Still, economic growth is decelerating quite drastically.
Trade surplus did not improve as exports contracted worse than imports, and not the other way round as I wrote previously. Service trade and price factors have something to do with it since trade values published monthly had suggested otherwise. I had naively taken the number without taking into account export and import prices.
Meanwhile, investment growth crashed, becoming much weaker than what I expected. The Pengerang project has not created much dent yet.
But the two big things that caused me to miss the actual growth figure are inventories and government spending. I should have raised my inventory projection when the industrial figures come out respectably okay but the pessimistic me refused to do so. And I had expected with all the rage for deficit targeting, government expenditure would have taken a big hit (yes, I know the GDP government spending does not correspond exactly to actual federal government spending and there are other states’ government spending to account for). It grew in annual terms instead.
The thing that was really hard to get it wrong was consumption. The GST collected its toll. It was a stark slowdown, growing only 6.7% YoY after the 1Q15 8.8% YoY spike. Domestic demand growth decelerated to 4.6% YoY from 7.9% YoY in the same period.
A lot of people had expected a dip after the spike and they were right. The frontloading theory is right.
That has led me thinking about how much did consumers stock up on their foodstuff and other typical consumer non-durable goods. None of us has a warehouse to store a whole year worth of supplies.
This is a hard and important question. Whatever the answer is, it is the key to knowing when will spending normalization take place. When it happens, I think it is reasonable to expect a massive spike in consumption, at least on quarter-on-quarter basis.
If I had to guess, the normalization would probably start this quarter. We could see complete normalization by the end of the year.
Still, preempting the typical data for 3Q15, this quarter would likely be weak too and I feel we would only start getting better in 4Q15. The GST impact itself should be gone completely by 2Q16, if only because of mathematical artifact.
The Malaysian GDP figures for the 2015 second quarter will be out next week on Thursday.
I think it will be bad because of how the GST has hit consumption. This will be the focus next week as people write out their commentary. I am a believer of the frontloading theory but admittedly there are some problems with it as I have highlighted yesterday: consumption imports have been growing strongly much against expectations.
The trend in trade is not great either. The funny thing is trade surplus is improving in the quarter. The widening is not something to be celebrated however. Imports raced against exports to the bottom. Imports won that race no thanks to weak consumption.
The industrial index has been doing quite well despite the gloom all around. That is another funky stats that refuse to line up cleanly. The excellent EconsMalaysia believes it is really inventory build-up. That hypothesis can easily be assessed with the GDP figures.
I think, the only real good news will come from investment, especially with the Petronas Pengerang project down south. I have been there myself and it is truly massive. Still, I struggle to think of any other new big public infrastructure project that started recently. I have not heard any large scale work for the Pan-Borneo Highway despite earlier fanfare. MRT and LRT are old news. New water treatment plant? Ask Selangor. New power plant? Ask 1MDB. There are some (an understatement?) residential construction in Danga Bay but…
I could talk about inflation but with the GST in the way, it is hard to be confident about the exact CPI message. My core inflation is out of whack. The Stats Department produces a seasonally-adjusted CPI series but I have no learned to trust it just yet.
On the balance, I think our GDP growth for 2Q15 will probably be in the region of 4.1%-4.2%. I think there is an upward risk with the the weirdness in import composition and the industrial index.
What do you think?
How fast do you think did the Malaysian economy grow in 2Q2015 from a year ago?
Total Voters: 18
Loading ...