The general election marked the end of an era UMNO. Never again a political party like UMNO can win a majority on its own has the political air been as putrid as it is today.
Democracy is still the best known civilized form of governing a country. Sure it has many flaws depending on each country. Unfortunately over the last 50 years, our democracy has become more flawed rather than improving.MALAYSIA has its own share of aberrations piled up during the last fifty years.
Democracy is still the best known civilized form of governing a country. Sure it has many flaws depending on each country. Unfortunately over the last 50 years, our democracy has become more flawed rather than improving.MALAYSIA has its own share of aberrations piled up during the last fifty years.
The point I am trying to make is in our anger against the flaws of democracy we should not be tempted to throw away the system itself. Anything that follows will be worse. The need of the hour is to have vigilant civil society groups to protest and bring about corrections at local, state and centre level.
There are countries which do not charge any tax to the citizens. It sounds good, but then there the citizens have no voice in the system and are unable to protest against government atrocities
With no end to food inflation and petrol prices rising faster than you can drive, the question every Malaysian citizen is asking is: How do we manage the household budget? Forget saving for a rainy day, even surviving a sunny day is fraught with soaring prices and a hundred other financial potholes
On the 3rd of November, an interview with Malaysia’s Finance Minister II, Ahmad Husni, which could only be described as baffling, appeared in the Star.
Malaysia, he declared, had enough funds to cushion the economy, should the European debt crisis hit the country. It was a strange statement considering that the European debt crisis, by which we suppose he means the Greek debt crisis, will without doubt hit Malaysia and the world in short order.
Ahmad Husni then went on to describe his sources of funds like a housewife pulling out cash from sugar containers and kitchen drawers. RM4 billion from the contingency fund, RM6 billion from Kumpulan Wang Amanah Nasional, 30 billion from trust funds and oh, we can sell off our landbanks. And after that, what will he sell? He has neither strategy nor plan, other than selling off all the nation’s assets.
Where Malaysia needs a brilliant economist, we are foisted with 2nd rate accountants. Ahmad Husni is not the kind of person we need running Malaysia’s Finance Ministry in this terrifyingly testing time for the global economy. Of course, we have Prime Minister Najib Razak as the Finance Minister I, but what could Najib possibly know about the economy?
Mirror image of Greece
The Greek debt crisis continues to spiral out of control. For those who are unsure what it is all about; Greece has borrowed more money than it can repay, very much like what the BN is doing in Malaysia today.
Greece therefore is forced to request a write-down of its debts in return for which it must implement strict austerity measures. The problem is that the Greek people are uninterested in accepting any further austerity measures. They do not wish to suffer for what they see as problems caused by irresponsible and incompetent politicians.
The situation appears insoluble. Add to it the fact that Germany and France are making what can only be described as luke-warm efforts to solve the problem, and we have a very real crisis on our hands.
The EU wants private-sector lenders to write off 50% of what Greece owes them. The result of this is that private sector lenders are going to be very reluctant to lend money to Spain and Italy, countries which are still solvent, but labor under a high debt burden. This would inevitably result in a default by Spain and Italy. Which is how the sovereign debt crisis will spread.
Say goodbye to your money in the Banks and EPF
So why should Malaysians care? Because we are an export driven nation and when demand goes down for our goods and services, we will be affected. It may cause us to go into a recession.
Some analysts appear to think that Malaysia is protected because most of the debt (96%) is domestic. But this only means that if the government defaults, the banks will go under. Where your money is. And the EPF will be unable to collect all the dubious loans that it has been making on the instructions of BN Ministers. And the EPF is where the rest of your money is.
The MOF is also guilty of awarding projects without a tender even for products which have multiple vendors capable of supplying it. Recently, a RM20 million project was awarded to Century, a company with a reputedly close relationship to Ahmad Husni. We do not know many other projects have been awarded in this manner.
The EPF has also been investing in all kinds of dubious projects on the instructions of the MOF. Ahmad Husni therefore cannot claim that he is being a careful custodian of the nation’s funds. It is precisely this kind of profligate spending that got the Greeks into their mess.
Ahmad Husni would be better occupied in planning a holistic strategy on how Malaysia can continue to grow in the face of a global crisis. Instead he seems to be spending his time spinning politically motivated fairy tales that everything will be all right, so that the BN can win the next election.
Everything will not be all right, certainly not if Ahmad Husni is in charge.
When Bofors struck in April 1987, there was no 24×7 news TV, no Internet and no social media. The press played a significant role in uncovering the scam. But Bofors was a relatively uncomplicated scam with half-a-dozen pivotal players and kickbacks – siphoned off through proxies in Europe – totalling Rs. 64 crore. Adjusted for inflation, that would be equivalent to around Rs. 950 crore today.
The 2G spectrum case is more complex – and more diabolical. Whatever the actual loss to the public exchequer, the manner in which the 2G spectrum scam was plotted right from May 2007 by a cabal of UPA ministers, civil servants and corporate executives, as the special CBI court has observed, shows how brazen our political, business and bureaucratic class has become in the two decades since Bofors.
But will the 2G spectrum trial – which, along with appeals in various higher courts, could easily stretch to beyond 2014 – undermine the Congress in the next Lok Sabha poll as dramatically as Bofors did in 1989 – decimating the party’s parliamentary seat tally from 404 to 197? Public memory is short but not as short as politicians would like it to be. Despite taking ownership of a flurry of anti-corruption and pro-poor legislation over the next two years, the Congress will be punished electorally in 2014. The top leadership of the Congress knows this. The only question is: how severely?
The UPA government is up against an opponent – Anna Hazare – who has a track record of fighting corruption cutting across party lines. He has battled and defeated both Congress and BJP-Shiv Sena leaders in Maharashtra and, despite controversies dogging his team, continues to enjoy wide public support. The accusation that Anna is a mask for the BJP-RSS is so palpably false that UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi must herself be embarrassed to hear her general secretary, Digvijay Singh, spew such nonsense.
But if she were embarrassed, wouldn’t she call off this particularly foolish line of attack on Anna? She could. The fact that she hasn’t speaks volumes for how deeply the Congress fears the BJP electorally and the RSS ideologically – and how far it will go to demonise them.
The strategy used by the Congress to “partner” sections of the media in villifying Anna’s campaign has already proved counter-productive. The newspapers, TV channels and senior editors who act as surrogate mouthpieces of the Congress have succeeded only in damaging their own reputations built over decades. That damage is irreparable.
For the UPA government, the loss of faith among voters will not lessen with the passage of time. The 16th Lok Sabha election, which will probably be held over five phases, must be completed before early-May 2014. Voting in the first phase will therefore begin in March 2014. By September 2013 the Election Commission’s model code of conduct would kick in. That is just 22 months away – around the time several skeletons would have tumbled out of the UPA’s closet during the course of the 2G spectrum trial.
Does the Congress have the stomach to lead a third successive coalition government in 2014 – even assuming, optimistically, it gets 160-170 Lok Sabha seats? In 2004, the Congress formed the coalition government (UPA-I) with just 145 seats but had, among others, the Left’s hefty chunk of 61 seats and a Common Minimum Programme (CMP) to fall back on. In 2009, if won 207 seats and could thus do without the Left and a CMP.
In 2014, given the problems of coalition adharma it has faced over the past few years, the Congress could well choose to sit in the Opposition if it wins less than 160 seats. If it wins more than 180 seats and decides to form a minority government, such a government will be inherently unstable. In such an eventuality, Rahul Gandhi may opt to take his ailing mother’s place as Congress president/UPA chairperson and let a new CEO-PM do the thankless job Manmohan Singh has now done for over seven years. Power without direct accountability is an acquired taste.
Sonia and Rahul’s long-term problem is that the Congress’ national voteshare has been stuck in a narrow range between 25% and 28% since the 1996 Lok Sabha poll. The Muslim vote contributes at least 10% (over a third) to this voteshare and hands the Congress more than a third of its Lok Sabha seats. The mainstream Hindu vote has deserted the Congress – only around 16% of the 83% majority (around one in five) now vote for it. Following Anna’s movement, the erosion in majority support to the Congress is set to deepen. The Muslim vote, as a consequence, has become even more critical to the Congress’s future electoral viability.
This is the background against which Digvijay Singh’s anti-BJP/RSS tirade has to be seen. As the Gandhi family’s unofficial ventriloquist, he is tasked with pandering to the most regressive symbolisms in the Muslim votebank – Batla House, Azamgarh, saffron terror, etc. This cynically exploits Muslim paranoia and heightens the community’s siege mentality.
Instead of encouraging Muslims to join the mainstream, the Congress’s strategy keeps Muslims on the margins of Indian society. It also makes them easy vote fodder. Obviously, this strategy will fail in the long run. Apart from alienating Hindu voters, Muslims too will – as education seeps through the community – see through the secular duplicity that keeps them imprisoned in their socio-economic ghettos in order to keep the Congress in power.
The “Mother of All Issues in Malaysia” is the economy which is bedeviled by the Fat Cat Syndrome – read the politics of patronage – fostered by gross distortions of the marketplace initiated by the ruling elite in Umno.
Again, the favoured parasitical few of their Political Masters from Umno are leeching off the rest of the nation and sucking our blood dry through the Licence Raj – inspired by the long discredited Socialist India model – of permits, concessions, quotas, Applied Permits and the like so that a few can “makan atas angin” in perpetuity.
This is a revisiting of the ancient caste system of India where the temples became centres of great wealth and the Brahmins, the priestly class, lorded over the great unwashed masses for several thousand years. In Malaysia, it’s a case of a small group of Muslims, forming the ruling elite, distorting the message of Islam to foist a latter day caste system of sorts on the country.
The Fat Cats and their political masters are the new Brahmins in Malaysia.
‘Constitutionalized’ plundering
The formula that is driving the Licence Raj basically calls for plundering the public treasury through government procurements and contracts which finally cost the tax-payer anything between double, triple to ten times what it should actually cost them.
To pull the wool over the eyes of the people, while the plundering is going on, Umno indulges in the politics of distraction and disruption by twisting and turning every issue into a racial issue. The hidden agenda is to scare the Malays into circling the wagons and gather under one political platform – Umno – so that the Fat Cats and their political masters can continue to live it up at the expense of all.
In short, the Federal Government is running amok in the marketplace through deviations and distortions in the implementation of Article 153 in the Federal Constitution, and by extension, the New Economic Policy (1970-1990). (scroll below for the full definition as laid out in the Constitution)
The NEP, if seen correctly, reads well on paper. In reality, it’s not worth even the paper it’s written on.
The 3rd prong of the NEP, observed more often than not in the breach, calls for the eradication of poverty irrespective of class, race or creed.
The 2nd prong of the NEP, again observed more often than not in the breach, calls for the elimination of the identification of race with economic function and place of residence.
The NEP and where it has taken the races
The vast majority of Indians, when not in the squatter areas, continue to endure slave-like existence in the estates and have since been joined by the Dusuns and Dayaks. The Malays who are not in the shanty towns are still in their kampung shacks, while the Chinese remain in their dilapidated houses in the new villages which haven’t seen many improvements since the British left.
The 1st prong of the NEP is an extension of one of the four pillars of Article 153 of the Federal Constitution i.e. that the Orang Asli, natives of Sabah and Sarawak and the Malays – not described as Natives by law – should be provided with a reasonable proportion of business opportunities created by Government.
The 1st prong itself of the NEP speaks of the Orang Asli, natives of Sabah and Sarawak and the Malays “owning, controlling and managing 30 per cent of the nation’s corporate economy – publicly listed companies – by 1990. Soon after the NEP was announced in 1970, the Orang Asli and the Natives were given the short end of the stick by the ruling elite and the percentage was re-read as 30 per cent of the entire economy.
The other business opportunities created by Government under Article 153 should go to the non-Malay communities. The second part of Article 153, the power over which is vested solely in the King, speaks of the legitimate aspirations of the non-Malay communities.
Sapu bersih
In reality, the ruling elite usurped the power of the King over Article 153 and made it and the NEP into a sapu bersih (clean out) policy for themselves and their favoured few, the Fat Cats.
The other three pillars of Article 153, like the fourth, speak of a special position for the Orang Asli, the Natives of Sabah and Sarawak and the Malays. The special position translates into reserving for them a reasonable proportion of jobs in the civil service; intake into institutions of higher learning owned by the Government and training privileges; and Government scholarships.
The emphasis is on a “reasonable proportion”. This is the special position which Umno has distorted to read as special privileges. Today, ninety percent of jobs in the civil service, an example, are monopolized by members drawn from one community. Likewise, intake into institutions of higher learning owned by the Government and training privileges is monopolized by the same community.
It’s the same story with Government scholarships. This brings us to Hindraf Makkal Sakthi’s beef with Umno on Article 153 and the NEP as implemented in its distorted version. If nothing else, this ad hoc movement has had the courage to point out that Article 153 had a shelf-life of 15 years from independence in 1957.
Likewise, the NEP was to have ended in 1990. Obviously, the Fat Cats and their political masters in Umno are not going to end the deviations and gross distortions of Article 153 and the NEP. Obviously, the Fat Cats and their political masters in Umno are not going to do away with Article 153 and the NEP.
Therein lays the dilemma for all Malaysians as they go to the polls for the forthcoming 13th General Elections.
Article 153 stipulates that the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, acting on Cabinet advice, has the responsibility for safeguarding the special position of the Malays and the indigenous peoples of the Sabah and Sarawak, and the legitimate interests of all the other communities.
Originally there was no reference made in the Article to the indigenous peoples of Sabah and Sarawak, such as the Dusuns, Dayaks and Muruts, but with the union of Malaya with Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak in 1963, the Constitution was amended so as to provide similar privileges to them. The term Bumiputra is commonly used to refer collectively to the Malays and the indigenous peoples of Sabah and Sarawak, but it is not defined in the Constitution.
Article 153 in detail
Special position of bumiputras: In relation to the special position of bumiputras, Article 153 requires the King, acting on Cabinet advice, to exercise his functions under the Constitution and federal law:
(a) generally, in such manner as may be necessary to safeguard the special position of the Bumiputras[21] and
(b) specifically, to reserve quotas for Bumiputras in the following areas:
1. positions in the federal civil service.
2. scholarships, exhibitions, and educational, training or special facilities.
3. permits or licenses for any trade or business which is regulated by federal law (and the law itself may provide for such quotas).
4. places in institutions of post secondary school learning such as universities, colleges and polytechnics.
Legitimate interests of other communities: Article 153 protects the legitimate interests of other communities in the following ways:
1. civil servants must be treated impartially regardless of race – Clause 5 of Article 153 specifically reaffirms Article 136 of the Constitution which states: All persons of whatever race in the same grade in the service of the Federation shall, subject to the terms and conditions of their employment, be treated impartially.
2. Parliament may not restrict any business or trade solely for Bumiputras.
3. the exercise of the powers under Article 153 cannot deprive any person of any public office already held by him.
4. the exercise of the powers under Article 153 cannot deprive any person of any scholarship, exhibition or other educational or training privileges or special facilities already enjoyed by him.
5. while laws may reserve quotas for licences and permits for Bumiputras, they may not deprive any person of any right, privilege, permit or licence already enjoyed or held by him or authorise a refusal to renew such person’s license or permit.
Article 153 may not be amended without the consent of the Conference of Rulers (See clause 5 of Article 159 (Amendment of the Constitution)). State Constitutions may include an equivalent of Article 153 (See clause 10 of Article 153).
The Reid Commission suggested that these provisions would be temporary in nature and be revisited in 15 years, and that a report should be presented to the appropriate legislature (currently the Parliament of Malaysia) and that the “legislature should then determine either to retain or to reduce any quota or to discontinue it entirely.”
New Economic Policy (NEP): Under Article 153, and due to the 13th May 1969 riots, the New Economic Policy was introduced. The NEP aimed to eradicate poverty irrespective of race by expanding the economic pie so that the Chinese share of the economy would not be reduced in absolute terms but only relatively. The aim was for the Malays to have a 30% equity share of the economy, as opposed to the 4% they held in 1970. Foreigners and Malaysians of Chinese descent held much of the rest.[22]
The NEP appeared to be derived from Article 153 and could be viewed as being in line with its general wording. Although Article 153 would have been up for review in 1972, fifteen years after Malaysia’s independence in 1957, due to the May 13 Incident it remained unreviewed. A new expiration date of 1991 for the NEP was set, twenty years after its implementation.[23] However, the NEP was said to have failed to have met its targets and was continued under a new policy called the National Development Policy. – ENDS
Posted 7 minutes ago by the headhunter
No comments:
Post a Comment