‘It’s the economy, stupid’

Helan Ang has a good take on the debate between Anwar and Shabery. The BN government after 50 years of uninterrupted rule is out of touch with the common people. Their policies are outdated and lacking creativity. Throughout the debate Shabery did not utter a single word on how best to help the poor but he did say, "...rakyat cukup makan", which I think is clearly showing their lack of imagination in setting the policy. Anyway, I am also amazed that after 50 years, the BN government is still stuck at aiming to provide enough food for the people, that I think is very low the standard of Governance.

Anwar's got the pulse on petrol
Helen Ang Jul 17, 08 5:19pm
‘Kita bercakap mudah bila kita di luar tetapi hakikat sebenarnya tak semudah yang dapat dihayati kita dalam keadaan sebenarnya dalam negara kita pada hari ini, tetapi percayalah bila saya katakan tadi, dalam kesusahan yang ada sekarang, rakyat cukup makan.’ (It is easy for us to talk when we’re on the outside but the real situation in our country is not as clear-cut; nonetheless believe me when I said earlier that even in their hardship now, people have enough to eat) – Information Minister Ahmad Shabery Cheek in live debate with Anwar Ibrahim on July 15

Sungai Siput MP – Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj of Parti Sosialis Malaysia – posed a question in Parliament recently on household income. Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Amirsham A Aziz responded with these figures: 8.6 percent of Malaysian families earn less than RM1,000 monthly, almost 30 percent earn between RM1,001 and RM2,000, while about 20 percent are in the RM2,001 to RM3,000 income bracket.

Altogether, two out of five Malaysian households have less than 2k a month to live on and feed their families. During the election, PAS presented its ‘Negara Kebajikan’ manifesto while DAP hammered home a simple message: BN equates ‘Barang Naik’. After the election, BN still did not get it. In an April postmortem, the MCA thinktank – Insap, Institute of Strategic Analysis and Policy Research, produced a ‘re-branding’ report which said, ‘What is painfully apparent is that we (BN, Insap CEO and like-minded) have allowed the opposition to dominate the social justice debate during the elections …’

Insap followed up it’s The Sun article by reiterating that populist thinking is not new ‘because such movements have been repeated in history many times over. Just because it happened in Malaysia it does not mean we have to fear it but to challenge the position taken by the opposition’.

Between the social justice positions taken by Pakatan Rakyat and ridiculed by the powers-that-be and their affiliates, the electorate made its preference known on March 8.
The 100 days after

Anwar in Tuesday’s debate asked why the government broke its pre-election promise not to raise oil prices, the drastic hike a heavy burden on Malaysians.

The concern of the man on the street is not really oil barrels tagged at US dollars in the international market; it’s the essentials at the wet market and sundry shop. Our select politicians are punching their calculators to tabulate billions of ringgit but Pak Long in Batu Rakit and Mak Ngah in Gong Badak are eking out their meagre ringgit to stave off inflation.

We heard Petronas CEO Mohd Hassan Marican on July 15, when releasing Petronas’ first quarter financial report, say that the state oil company paid RM67.6 billion the last financial year in taxes, royalties and dividends to the government. Petronas contributed RM52.3 billion to the federal coffers in the previous financial year.

Such staggering sums, I daresay, will be incomprehensible to 60 percent of Malaysians who are unsure how many zeros follow a billion. Anwar throws a rhetorical question: ‘Why don’t we manage our treasury better to ease the suffering of the people?’ But it’s also a straightforward query that’s uppermost in our minds; can the government give a satisfactory reply?

Anwar suggests as solutions a re-look at the IPPs (independent power producers), wiping out corruption and plugging the leakages. Gas subsidies to the power sector are RM14 billion, including RM8 billion to the IPPs, many of which are owned by companies linked to the politically-connected and wealthiest big business families.

Some schools of thought have made out ‘subsidy’ to be a dirty word or outmoded, for instance Insap’s assertion framed thus: ‘We have in existence an old system from a socialist ideology of using price controls and subsidies to ‘deliver to the poor’.

Capitalists have their ideological bias against subsidies as such but nevertheless practice ‘socialism’ for the rich and market discipline for the poor. Hence, I can well appreciate Anwar for saying, ‘What about infrastructure spending – isn’t that a form of subsidy for companies? But we call that ‘incentives’. On the other hand, aid for the people is called ‘subsidies’, which are given a negative connotation.’

Anwar could be referring to the profligacy of Petronas-funded infrastructure including a Petronas hospital - the Prince Court Medical Centre - reportedly price-tagged at RM544 million and other big ticket items as well as prestige projects.

Economic theories can come across as too abstract and not only that, some experts, for example the one who provided Insap’s analysis in The Sun, are happy to clarify ‘the fact that certain terms and expressions (the writer) used cannot be clear to every reader’. Or in other words, it’s the economy but you, dear reader, are too stupid to understand.

Joe Public unclear on jargon are naturally easier persuaded by our personal experiences, which is, having the rug pulled out from under our feet. The government claims it cannot afford the cost of oil subsidy but after the Abdullah administration’s many flip-flops, the excuse stretches our credulity.

Take the question posed to Shabery: ‘In 2006, when there was a price hike, the government said it would improve public transport. Now they are saying that they are going to use the substantial savings for the benefit of the people. Can we believe that?’

Nope. As for Shabery’s ‘believe me, people have enough to eat’; pray tell, eat what? Cake? What I’ve seen in the rural interior is that people have very little.

Penang for its small size could have had a system as good as Singapore if the authorities had been committed to public transport. As an islander, I can testify firsthand that public transport here sucks. Studies have been carried out which confirm that the bus service is terrible.

Anyway, if the government is sincere, why the removal of the monorail with no options offered for improving the transportation sector, despite plentiful suggestions from Penang’s civil society for cheaper, better public transport than the monorail?

The Abdullah administration claims it wants to discourage cars for the sake of environmental conservation; well, while they’re at it, why don’t they sell me the Brooklyn Bridge (or do I mean Petronas Twin Towers...)

What the government takes away with one hand, it throws back piecemeal with the other after the rakyat revolt. An estimated RM660 million is being returned to motorists in the form of the road tax rebate. The government has said it’ll announce another measure tomorrow to mitigate the effects of the fuel hike. Then next month’s Budget will supposedly unveil a ‘new social safety net’, which would include direct assistance for those most affected by the recent price increases.

Yet on Monday, PM Abdullah Ahmad Badawi admitted that the Consumer Price Index did not reflect true prices on the ground and would need to be reviewed.

Earlier, in February and a month before the country went to the polls, Second Finance Minister Nor Mohamed Yakcop said that inflation rate from 2004 to 2007 was 2.5 percent. Can we credit government pronouncements that do not tally with our lived reality?

Just as the 2.5 percent inflation is suspect, so too is the host of figures bandied about. Opposition leader Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail recounts Minister of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Shahrir Abdul Samad saying the oil subsidy was RM56 billion, Nor Yakcop saying RM28 billion, and the government’s own 2007 financial report saying RM12 billion. She estimates it to be closer to RM8-10 billion.

Ours is therefore a government short on credibility and long on irresponsibility. They should have controlled petrol prices instead of allowing the ripple effects from the hike to pitch more Malaysians onto the margins of poverty.

If we added the total cost of Abdullah’s slew of firefighting measures to appease an angry public, it might just turn out that the government could have ended up with a healthier balance sheet if only they’d planned properly to begin with.

Whatever one may think of Anwar, he at least showed empathy for the marginalised whose suffering is aggravated by sharp inflation triggered by the decision to reduce oil subsidy.