Let Ministers declare their assets
Corruption has become institutionalized in our political system. It is ruining this country. This is not just my private belief. Malaysians from all walks of life believe that corruption has become a way of life and know that many of their leaders are corrupt. They know that corruption is so widespread that it has been normalized. They know it deprives them of what is rightfully theirs in the present and stunts their children’s future.
The MACC has a huge task in overcoming corruption. They have had to overcome the perception that they are not serious about pursuing corruption wherever it is found. They would have a lot more credibility with the public if their chief commissioner’s call for transparency of Minister’s assets were heeded.
Nobody is going to believe that members of the cabinet are above corruption, let alone serious about addressing the problem, if they refuse to declare their assets.
In the same measure the assets of former Ministers should also be made public.
Make BN a multiracial party *
Thank you for inviting me to speak with you. I am truly honoured. I have played some small role in the life of this nation, but having been on the wrong side of one or two political fights with the powers that be, I am not as close to the young people of this country as I would hope to be. History, and the 8 o’clock news, are written by the victors. In recent years the government’s monopoly of the media has been destroyed by the technology revolution.
You could say I was also a member of the UKEC. Well I was, except that belonged to the predecessor of the UKEC by more than fifty years, The Malayan Students Union of the UK and Eire. I led this organization in 1958/59. I was then a student of Queen’s University at Belfast, as well as at Lincoln’s Inn. In a rather cooler climate than Kota Bharu’s. We campaigned for decolonization. We demonstrated in Trafalgar Square and even in Paris. We made posters and participated in British elections.
Your invitation to participate in the MSLS was prefaced by a an essay which calls for an intellectually informed activism. I congratulate you on this. The Youth of today, you note, “will chart the future of Malaysia.” You say you “no longer want to be ignored and leave the future of our Malaysia at the hands of the current generation.” You “want to grab the bull by the horns… and have a say in where we go as a society and as a nation.”I feel the same, actually. A lot of Malaysians feel the same. They are tired of being ignored and talked down to.
You are right. The present generation in power has let Malaysia down. But also you cite two things as testimony of the importance of youth and of student activism to this country, the election results of 2008 and “the Prime Minister’s acknowledgement of the role of youth in the development of the country.”
So perhaps you are a little way yet from thinking for yourselves. The first step in “grabbing the bull by the horns” is not to required the endorsement of the Prime Minister, or any Minister, for your activism. Politicians are not your parents. They are your servants. You don’t need a government slogan coined by a foreign PR agency to wrap your project in. You just go ahead and do it.
When I was a student our newly formed country was already a leader in the postcolonial world. We were sought out as a leader in the Afro-Asian Conference which inaugurated the Non-Aligned Movement and the G-77. The Afro-Asian movement was led by such luminaries as Zhou En-lai, Nehru, Kwame Nkrumah, Soekarno. Malaysians were seen as moderate leaders capable of mediating between these more radical leaders and the West. We were known for our moderation, good sense and reliability.
We were a leader in the islamic world as ourselves and as we were, without our leaders having to put up false displays of piety. His memory has been scrubbed out quite systematically from our national consciousness, so you might not know this or much else about him, but it was Tengku Abdul Rahman established our leadership in the Islamic world by coming up with the idea of the OIC and making it happen. Under his leadership Malaysia led the way in taking up the anti-apartheid cause in the Commonwealth and in the United Nations, resulting in South Africa’s expulsion from these bodies.
Here was a man at ease with himself, made it a policy goal that Malaysia be “a happy country”. He loved sport and encouraged sporting achievement among Malaysians. He was owner of many a fine race horse. He called a press conference with his stewards when his horse won at the Melbourne Cup. He had nothing to hide because his great integrity in service was clear to all. Now we have religious and moral hypocrites who cheat, lie and steal in office, who propagate an ideologically shackled education system for all Malaysians while they send their own kids to elite academies in the West.
Speaking of football. You’re too young to have experienced the Merdeka Cup, which Tunku started. We had a respectable side in the sixties and seventies. Teams from across Asia would come to play in Kuala Lumpur. Teams such as South Korea and Japan, whom we defeated routinely. We were one of the better sides in Asia. We won the Bronze medal at the Asian games in 1974 and qualified for the Moscow Olympics in 1980. Today our FIFA ranking is 157 out of 203 countries. That puts us in the lowest quartile, below Maldives (149), the smallest country in Asia, with just 400,000 people living about 1.5 metres above sea level who have to worry that their country may soon be swallowed up by climate change. Here in ASEAN we are behind Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, whom we used to dominate, and our one spot above basketball-playing Philippines.
The captain of our illustrious 1970’s side was Soh Chin Aun. Arumugam, Isa Bakar, Santokh Singh, James Wong and Mokhtar Dahari were heroes whose names rolled off the tongues of our schoolchildren as they copied them on the school field. It wasn’t about being the best in the world, but about being passionate and united and devoted to the game.
It was the same in badminton, except at one time we were the best in the world. I remember Wong Peng Soon, the first Asian to win the All-England Championship, and then just dominated it throughout the 1950. Back home every kid who played badminton in every little kampung wanted to call himself Wong Peng Soon. There was no tinge of anybody identifying themselves exclusively as Chinese, Malays, Indian. Peng Soon was a Malaysian hero. Just like each of our football heroes. Now we do not have an iota of that feeling. Where has it all gone?
I don’t think it’s mere nostalgia that that makes us think there was a time when the sun shone more brightly upon Malaysia. I bring up sport because it has been a mirror of our more general performance as a nation. When we were at ease with who we were and didn’t need slogans to do our best together, we did well. When race and money entered our game, we declined. The same applies to our political and economic life
Soon after independence we were already a highly successful developing country. We had begun the infrastructure building and diversification of our economy that would be the foundation for further growth. We carried out an import-substitution programme that stimulated local productive capacity. From there we started an infrastructure buildup which enabled a diversification of the economy leading to rapid industrialization. We carried out effective programmes to raise rural income and help the landless with programmes such as FELDA. Our achievements in achieving growth with equity were recognized around the world. Our peer group in economic development were South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, and we led the pack. I remember we used to send technical consultants to advise the South Koreans.
By the lates nineties, however, we had fallen far behind this group and were competing with Thailand and Indonesia. Today, according to the latest World Investment Report, FDI into Malaysia is at a twenty year low. We are entering the peer group of Cambodia, Myanmar and the Philippines as an investment destination. Thailand, despite a monthlong siege of the capital, attracted more FDI than we did last year. Indonesia and Vietnam far outperform us, not as a statistical blip but consistently. Soon we shall have difficulty keeping up with The Philippines. This, I believe, is called relegation. If we take into account FDI outflow, the picture is even more depressing. Last year we received USD1.38Billion in investments but USD 8.04 Billion flowed out. We are the only country in Southeast Asia which has suffered nett FDI outflow. I am not against outward investment. It can be a good thing for the country. But an imbalance on this scale indicates capital flight, not mere investment overseas.
Without a doubt, Malaysia is slipping. Billions have been looted from this country, and Billions more are being siphoned out as our entire political structure crumbles. Yet we are gathered here in comfort, in a country that still seems to ‘work.’ Most of the time. This is due less to good management than to the extraordinary wealth of this country. You were born into a country of immense resources both natural, cultural and social. We have been wearing down this advantage with mismanagement and corruption. With lies, tall tales and theft. We have a political class unwilling or unable to address the central issue of the day because they have grown fat and comfortable with a system built on lies and theft.
It is time to wake up. That waking up can begin here, right here, at this conference. Not tomorrow or the day after but today. So let me, as I have the honour of opening this conference, suggest the following:
Overcome the urge to have our hopes for the future endorsed by the Prime Minister. He will have retired, and I’ll be long gone when your future arrives. The shape of your future is being determined now.
1) Resist the temptation to say “in line with” when we do something. Your projects, believe it or not, don’t have to be in line with any government campaign for them to be meaningful. You don’t need to polish anyone’s apple. Just get on with what you plan to do.
2) Do not put a lid on certain issues as “sensitive”because someone said they are. Or it is against the Social Contract. Or it is “politicisation”. You don’t need to have your conversation delimited by the hyper-sensitive among us. Sensitivity is often a club people use to hit each other with. Reasoned discussion of contentious issues builds understanding and trust. Test this idea.
3) It’s not “conservative” or “liberal” to ask for an end to having politics, economic policy, education policy and everything and the kitchen sink determined by race. It’s called growing up.
Don’t let the politicians you have invited here talk down to you. Don’t let them tell you how bright and “exuberant” you are, that you are the future of the nation, etc. If you close your eyes and flow with their flattery you have safely joined the caravan, a caravan taking the nation down a sink hole. If they tell you the future is in your hands kindly request that they hand that future over first. Ask them how come the youngest member of our cabinet is 45 and is full of discredited hacks? Our Merdeka cabinet had an average age below thirty. You’re not the first generation to be bright. Mine wasn’t too stupid. But you could be the first generation of students and young graduates in fifty years to push this nation through a major transformation. And it is a transformation we need desperately.
You will be told that much is expected of you, much has been given to you, and so forth. This is all true. Actually much has also been stolen from you. Over the last twenty five years, much of the immense wealth generated by our productive people and our vast resources has been looted. This was supposed to have been your patrimony. The uncomplicated sense of belonging fully, wholeheartedly, unreservedly, to this country, in all it diversity, that has been taken from you. Our sense of ourselves as Malaysians, a free and united people, has been replaced by a tale of racial strife and resentment that continues to haunt us. The thing is, this tale is false.
The most precious thing you have been deprived of has been your history. Someone of my generation finds it hard to describe what must seem like a completely different country to you now. Malaysia was not born in strife but in unity. Our independence was achieved through a demonstration of unity by the people in supporting a multiracial government led by Tengku Abdul Rahman. That show of unity, demonstrated first through the municipal elections of 1952 and then through the Alliance’s landslide victory in the elections of 1955, showed that the people of Malaya were united in wanting their freedom. We surprised the British, who thought we could not do this.
Today we are no longer as united as we were then. We are also less free. I don’t think this is a coincidence. It takes free people to have the psychological strength to overcome the confines of a racialised worldview. It takes free people to overcome those politicians bent on hanging on to power gained by racializing every feature of our life including our football teams.
Hence while you are at this conference, let me argue, that as an absolute minimum, we should call for the repeal of unjust and much abused Acts of Parliament which are reversals of freedoms that we won at Merdeka.
1) I ask you in joining me in calling for the repeal of the ISA and the OSA. These draconian laws have been used, more often than not, as political tools rather than instruments of national security. They create a climate of fear.
2) I ask you to join me in calling for the repeal of the Printing and Publications Act, and above all, the Universities and Colleges Act. I don’t see how you can pursue your student activism with such freedom and support in the UK and Eire while forgetting that your brethren at home are deprived of their basic rights of association and expression by the UCA. The UCA has done immense harm in dumbing down our universities.
We must have freedom as guaranteed under our Constitution. Freedom to assemble, associate, speak, write, move. This is basic. Even on matters of race and even on religious matters we should be able to speak freely, and we shall educate each other.
It is time to realize the dream of Dato’ Onn and the spirit of the Alliance and of Tunku Abdul Rahman. That dream was one of unity and a single Malaysian people. They went as far as they could with it in their time. Instead of taking on the torch we have reversed course. The next step for us as a country is to move beyond the infancy of race-based parties to a non-racial party system. Our race-based party system is the key political reason why we are a sick country, declining before our own eyes, with money fleeing and people telling their children not to come home after their studies.
So let us try to take 1Malaysia seriously. Millions have been spent putting up billboards and adding the term to every conceivable thing. We even have Cuti-cuti 1Malaysia. Can’t take a normal holiday anymore. This is all fine. Now let us see if it means anything. Let us see the Government of the day lead by example. 1Malaysia is empty because it is propagated by a Government supported by a racially-based party system that is the chief cause of our inability to grow up in our race relations. Our inability to grow up in our race relations is the chief reason why investors, and we ourselves, no longer have confidence in our economy. The reasons why we are behind Maldives in football, and behind the Philippines in FDI, are linked.
So let us take 1Malaysia seriously, and convert Barisan Nasional into a party open to all citizens. Let it be a multiracial party open to direct membership. Pakatan Rakyat will be forced to do the same or be left behind the times. Then we shall have the vehicles for a two party, non-race-based system.
If UMNO, MIC or MCA are afraid of losing supporters, let them get their members to join this new multiracial party. Pakatan Rakyata should do the same. Nobody need feel left out. UMNO members can join en masse. The Hainanese Kopitiam Owners’ Association can join whichever party they want, or both parties en masse if they like. We can maintain our cherished civil associations, however we choose to associate. But we drop all communalism when we compete for the ballot. When our candidates stand for Elections, let them ever after stand only as Malaysians, better or worse.
Now let’s have a discussion
–
* Speech delivered on Saturday, July 31 at the Fourth Annual Malaysian Student Leaders Summit, Nikko Hotel, Kuala Lumpur
Corruption
CORRUPTION
The word “corruption” comes from a Latin word meaning “to break” or “to destroy”. Corruption is a cancer that steals from the poor, eats away at governance and moral fibre, and destroys trust. Although corruption exists in both the private and public sector, the corruption of the public sector is a more fundamental evil. This is because the public sector is the enforcer and arbiter of the rules that hold us together, the custodians of our common resources.
Corruption is the abuse of public office for personal gain.
• Corruption exacts a huge toll on our economy
o In a survey of more than 150 high ranking public officials and top citizens from over 60 developing nations, these officials ranked corruption as the biggest obstacle to development and growth in their countries.
o Corruption empties out the public purse, causes massive misallocation of resources, dampens trade and scares away investors
o The World Bank estimates that corruption can reduce a country’s growth rate by 0.5 to 1 percentage points per year. Where there is a lack of transparency and a weak court system, investors stay away.
o Corruption is a form of theft. But it is a form of theft that also damages what is not stolen. This is because corruption involves the capture of decisions involving public funds. Corrupt decisions mis-allocate public resources and cause tremendous waste in the expenditure of public money. Public money is poured down the drain when projects are selected not because of the value they deliver to the public but because of what can be skimmed from them.
• But corruption is more than an economic cost. It is a curse that attacks the root of the tree. Corruption destroys trust, which is nothing less than the glue holding a society and its institutions together. When it becomes rampant and is conducted with impunity, it also demoralizes even those public servants not involved in it. The common people’s experience with government breeds the expectation that they need to pay before things will move. Small businesses suffer as city hall officials come on their rounds to collect mandatory “donations.”
It is time we recognized corruption as the single biggest threat to our nation. In our economy, corruption is the root of our inability to to make the economic leap that we know we are capable of. There is no other reason why a country so blessed with natural resources, a favourable climate and such immense talent should not have done a lot better than we have.
In our political system, corruption is the real reason why our political parties refuse to reform. In the party I belong to it has debased a once noble nationalism and a concern with the welfare of marginalised people into a rush for the gravy train. The economic development we must bring our people is reduced to nothing more than patronage, and patronage is inflated into a right.
The root cause is in our political parties. It is an open secret that tender inflation is standard operating procedure. Within the parties and among politicians, it is already an understood matter that party followers must be ‘fed’. Politics is an expensive business, after all. Where else are we to get the funds? Thus theft of public goods is normalised and socialised among an entire community, and what we had planned to attain by capability is seen by some as something to be attained through politics.
Politicians are the villains in this piece, but they themselves the villains but they themselves are also trapped. The leadership is trapped because they are beholden to political followers who demand that they are looked after. They demand patronage, and the turn the party’s struggle for the welfare of a community into their sense of entitlement to that patronage. So they take their slice of the project. By the time they they and each person down the line all the way down to the contractor takes a lot and there is not enough left to do a decent job, bridges collapse, highways crack, stadiums collapse, hospitals run out of medicine, schoolchildren are cheated in their textbooks. Corruption may look to its perpetrators like a crime without victims, but it leaves a trail of destruction.
No domain seems safe. The humble school canteen is the domain of Umno branch chiefs. The golf course become a favoured way to pass the cash over. We can place bets for RM5000 a hole. For some reason one party keeps losing. And there are 18 holes. Money thus obtained is legal. It can be banked.
We spend billions on the refurbishment of defence equipment; on fighter jets, frigates and submarines. Whe a supplier lays on an exorbitant commission to some shadowy middleman, that commision is built into the price the government pays. That money comes from the ordinary Malaysian.
Military toys are very expensive. I remember from my time in the Ministry of Finance. Even then, patrol craft cost about RM280mil each.
We loved Exocet missiles. As Minister, I had to sign each time the military fired an Exocet missile for testing. Every time we test fired one of them, RM2mil literally went out with a bang. When the UK went to war against Argentina, the UK Government came back to borrow them from us because outside of the UK we had the most of them in the world. We must have been under some extraordinary military threat which I did not understand.
The list is long: procurement of food and clothing for the military, medicine for hospitals and so on. In all these things the Government has been extraordinarily generous. And paid extraordinarily high prices.
Government servants have to face pressure from politicians who expect to be given these contracts because they need money for politics. This corruption is justified because the party’s struggle is sacred. The civil servants can either join the game or be bypassed.
For every government job big or small that goes down, someone feels entitled to a slice of the pie, not because they can do the job, not because they have some special talent or service to offer, but because it is their right. They do not realise that what they demand is the abuse of power for the sake of personal gain, or party gain. They elect those leaders among themselves who are most capable of playing this game. So we get as our leaders people who have distinguished themselves not by their ability to serve the public but at their long proven ability to be party warlords, which is to say, distributors of patronage. And that is a euphemistic way of saying that because of corruption the old, stupid and the criminal are elevated to positions of power while young, talented and honest individuals are frozen out. Corruption destroys national wealth, erodes institutions and undermines character. And it also destroys the process by which a community finds its leaders.
The consequence of this is that the majority are marginalized. Government contracts circulate among a small group of people. Despite all attempts at control and brainwashing, the majority soon catch up to the game.
This game cannot last forever. The longer it is played the more people hate the government and the governing class. They vote against the government, not for the Opposition. They resent the government of the day. In 2008 we saw how the Malaysian people feel about the abuse of power and incompetence caused by corruption.
Since party funding has become the excuse and the vehicle for wholesale corruption, any measure we take to fight it must include the reform of political funding.
It is time we enact a law regulating donations to political parties. Donations must be capped. No donor is to give more than a specified limit, on pain of prosecution. This it to try to prevent special interests from dominating parties. Such money is source of corruption.
Let us limit political donations by law. On top that let the government set up a fund to provide funding to registered political party for their legitimate operational needs. This money can be distributed based on objective criteria and governed by an independent panel. This would close off the excuse that the parties need to raise political funding through government contracts.
Another idea is that we should freeze the bank accounts of people who are being investigated for corruption. Public servants and politicians are by law required to be able to demonstrate the sources of their assets. Those with suspiciously ample asssets should have these assets frozen until they can come up with evidence that they have accumulated them by political means.
This may sound harsh, but only because we live in a country in which almost no one ever gets nabbed for corruption. In China, those found guilty are shot.
In Malaysia we read about MACC investigating this and that but there are no convictions. No one has been punished. We are the nation with no consequences. The MACC finds no fault. The courts do not convict. And our newspapers do not have the independence and vigour to follow up.
We have an MACC with no results. It was a good idea to model our anti-corruption agency after one of the most successful in the world, Hong Kong’s ICAC. However we have taken just bits and pieces of that model. So really this will be no more than PR exercise unless we adopt the model wholesale.
We should repeal the OSA so that people can go to the MACC and the authorities with documentary information on corrupt practice. As things stand, any document which might be incriminating to corrupt public officials is stamped an Offical Secret. A whistleblower risks 7 yrs jail for being in possession of such documents.
We need to identify rot eating through our roots as a nation. It is corruption. We cannot expect the corrupt to embrace reform. It is time for our citizens to stand up and call corruption by its name, and demand reform.
Tengku Razaleigh
—
Speech at the launching of the book The Shafee Yahaya Story – Estate Boy to ACA Chief by Datin Kalsom Taib
Saturday, 19.6.2010
Kelab Golf Perkhidmatan Awam Malaysia, Bukit Kiara, Kala Lumpur
No Cowardly Past
James Puthucheary lived what is by any measure an extraordinary and eventful life. He was, among other things, a scholar, anti-colonial activist, poet, political economist and lawyer. The thread running through these roles was his struggle for progressive politics in a multiracial society. His actions were informed by an acute sense of history and by a commitment to a more equitable and just Malaysia. James was concerned about economic development in a way that was Malaysian in the best sense. His thinking was motivated by a concerned for socioeconomic equity and for the banishment of communalism and ethnic chauvinism from our politics.
The launch of the Second Edition of this collection of James Puthucheary’s writings, No Cowardly Past, invites us to think and speak about our country with intellectual honesty and courage.
Let me put down some propositions, as plainly as I can, about where I think we stand. We
1) Our political system has broken down in a way that cannot be salvaged by piecemeal reform.
2) Our public institutions are compromised by politics (most disturbingly by racial politics) and by money. This is to say they have become biased, inefficient and corrupt.
3) Our economy has stagnated. Our growth is based on the export of natural resources. Productivity remains low. We now lag our regional competitors in the quality of our people, when we were once leaders in the developing world.
4) Points 1) -3), regardless of official denials and mainstream media spin, is common knowledge. As a result, confidence is at an all time low. We are suffering debilitating levels of brain and capital drain.
Today I wanted to share some suggestions on how we might move the economy forward, but our economic stagnation is clearly not something we can tackle or even discuss in isolation from the problem of a broken political system and a compromised set of public institutions.
This country is enormously blessed with talent and natural resources. We are shielded from natural calamities and enjoy warm weather all year round. We are blessed to be located at the crossroads of India and China and the Indonesian archipelago. We are blessed to have cultural kinship with China, India, the Middle East and Indonesia. We attained independence with an enviable institutional framework. We were a federation with a Constitution that is the supreme law of the land, a parliamentary democracy, an independent judiciary, a common law system and an independent civil service. We had political parties with a strong base of support that produced talented political leadership.
We have no excuse for our present state of economic and social stagnation. It is because we have allowed that last set of features, our institutional and political framework, to be dismantled, that all our advantages are not better realized.
So it makes little sense to talk glibly about selecting growth drivers, fine-tuning our industrial or trade policy, and so on, without acknowledging that our economy is in bad shape because our political system is in bad shape.
A case in point is the so called New Economic Model. The government promised the world it would be announced by the end of last year. It was put off to the end of this month. Now we are told we will be getting just the first part of it, and that we will be getting merely a proposal for the New Economic Model from the NEAC. Clearly, politics has intruded. The NEM has been opposed by groups that are concerned that the NEM might replace the NEP. The New Economic Model might not turn out to be so new after all.
The NEP
The irony in all this is that there is nothing to replace. The NEP is the opposite of New. It is defunct and is no longer an official government policy because it was replaced by the New Development Policy (another old “new” policy) in 1991. The “NEP” was brought back in its afterlife as a slogan by the leadership of UMNO Youth in 2004. It was and remains the most low-cost way to portray oneself as a Malay champion.
Thus, at a time when we are genuinely need of bold new economic measures, we are hamstrung by by the ghost of dead policies with the word New in them. What happens when good policy outlives its time and survives as a slogan?
The NEP was a twenty year programme. It has become, in the imaginations of some, the centre of a permanently racialized socio-economic framework.
Tun Ismail and Tun Razak, in the age of the fixed telephone (you had to call through an operator), thought twenty years would be enough. Its champions in the age of instant messaging talk about 100 or 450 years of Malay dependency.
It had a national agenda to eradicate poverty and address structural inequalities between the races for the sake of equity and unity. The Malays were unfairly concentrated in low income sectors such as agriculture. The aim was to remove colonial era silos of economic roles in our economy. It has been trivialized into a concern with obtaining equity and contracts by racial quotas. The NEP was to diversify the Malay economy beyond certain stereotyped occupations. It is now about feeding a class of party- linked people whose main economic function is to obtain and re-sell government contracts and concessions.
The NEP saw poverty as a national, Malaysian problem that engaged the interest and idealism of all Malaysians. People like James Puthucheary were at the forefront of articulating this concern. Its present-day proponents portray poverty as a communal problem.
The NEP was a unity policy. Nowhere in its terms was any race specified. It has been reinvented as an inalienable platform of a Malay Agenda that at one and the same time asserts Malay supremacy and perpetuates the myth of Malay dependency.
It was meant to unite our citizens by making economic arrangements fairer, and de-racializing our economy. In its implementation it became a project to enrich a selection of Malay capitalists. James Puthucheary had warned, back in 1959, that this was bound to fail. “The presence of Chinese capitalists has not noticeably helped solve the poverty of Chinese households.. Those who think that the economic position of the Malays can be improved by creating a few Malay capitalists, thus making a few Malays well-to-do, will have to think again. “
The NEP’s aim to restructure society and to ensure a more equitable distribution of economic growth was justified on principles of social justice, not claims of racial privilege. This is an important point. The NEP was acceptable to all Malaysians because its justification was universal rather than racial, ethical rather than opportunistic. It appealed to Malaysians’ sense of social justice and not to any notion of racial supremacy.
We were a policy with a 20 year horizon, in pursuit of a set of measurable outcomes. We were not devising a doctrine for a permanent socio-economic arrangement. We did not make the damaging assumption of the permanently dependent Malay.
Today we are in a foundational crisis both of our politics and of our economy. Politically and economically, we have come to the end of the road for an old way of managing things. It is said you can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all the time. Well these days the time you have in which to fool people is measured in minutes, not years.
The world is greatly changed. The next move we must make is not a step but a leap that changes the very ground we play on.
The NEP is over. I ask the government to have the courage to face up to this. The people already know. The real issue is not whether the NEP is to be continued or not, but whether we have the imagination and courage to come up with something which better addresses the real challenges of growth, equity and unity of our time.
At its working best the NEP secured national unity and provided a stable foundation for economic growth. Taken out of its policy context (a context that James helped frame) and turned into a political programme for the extension of special privilege, it has been distorted into something that its formulators, people such as the late Tun Razak and Tun Ismail, would have absolutely abhorred: it is now the primary justification and cover for corruption, crony capitalism and money politics, and it is corruption, cronyism and money politics that rob us and destroy our future.
No one who really cares about our country can approve of the role the NEP now plays in distorting the way we think about the economy, of our people, of our future, and retarded our ability to formulate forward-looking economic strategy.
The need for a wholistic approach to development based on the restoration and building of confidence.
We need a wholistic approach to development that takes account of the full potential of our society and of our people as individuals. We need an approach to development that begins with the nurturing and empowerment of the human spirit. Both personally and as a society, this means we look for the restoration of confidence in ourselves, who we are, what we are capable of, and the future before us.
I return to the question of the Middle Income Trap that I alluded to some time ago. I am glad that notion has since been taken up by the Government.
The middle income trap is a condition determined by the quality of our people and of the institutions that bind them. It is not something overcome simply by growing more oil palm or extracting more oil and gas. Our economic challenge is to improve the quality of our people and institutions. Making the break from the middle-income trap is in the first place a social, cultural, educational and institutional challenge. Let me just list what needs to be done. Before we can pursue meaningful economic strategy we need to get our house in order. We need to:
1) undertake bold reforms to restore the independence of the police, the anti-corruption commission and the judiciary. Confidence in the rule of law is a basic condition of economic growth.
2) reform the civil service
3) wage all out war on corruption
4) thoroughly revamp our education system
5) repeal the Printing Presses Act, the Universities and Colleges Act, the ISA and the OSA. These repressive laws only serve to create a climate of timidity and fear which is the opposite of the flourishing of talent and ideas that we say we want.
6) Replace the NEP with an equity and unity policy (a kind of “New Deal”) to bring everyone, regardless of race, gender, or what state they live in and who they voted for, into the economic mainstream.
These reforms are the necessary foundation for any particular economic strategies. Many of these reforms will take time. Educational reform is the work of many years. But that is no excuse not to start, confidence will return immediately if that start is bold. As for particular economic strategies, there are many we can pursue:
· We need to tap our advantage in having a high savings rate. Thanks to a lot of forced savings, our savings rate is about 38%. We need more productive uses for the massive funds held in EPF, LTH, LTAT and PNB than investment in a low yielding stock market in which they are already over-represented. One suggestion is to make strategic investments internationally in broad growth sectors such as minerals. Another is that we should use these funds to enable every Malaysian to own their own home. This would stimulate the construction sector with its large multiplier of activities and bring about a stakeholder society. A fine example of how this is done is Singapore’s use of savings in CPF to fund property purchases.
· The Government could make sure that the the land office and local government, developers and house-buyers are coordinated through a one-stop agency under the Ministry of Housing and and Local Government. This would get everyone active, right down to the level of local authorities. The keys to unleashing this activity are financing and a radical streamlining of local government approvals.
· We have been living off a drip of oil and cheap foreign labour. Dependence on these easy sources of revenue has dulled our competitiveness and prevented the growth of high income jobs. We need a moratorium on the hiring of low skilled foreign labour that is paired with a very aggressive effort to increase the productivity and wages of Malaysian labour. Higher wages would mean we could retain more of our skilled labour and other talent.
· Five years ago I called for a project to make Malaysia an oil and gas services and trading hub for East Asia. Oil and gas activities will bring jobs to some of our poorest states. We should not discriminate against those states on the basis of their political affiliations. No one is better placed by natural advantage to develop this hub. Meanwhile Singapore, with not a drop of oil, has moved ahead on this front.
· We should ready ourselves to tap the wealth of the emerging middle class of China, India and Indonesia in providing services such as tourism, medical care and education. That readiness can come in the form of streamlined procedures, language preparation, and targeted infrastructure development.
These are just some ideas for some of the many things we could do to ensure our prosperity. Others may have better ideas.
Conclusion
We are in a foundational crisis of our political system. People can no longer see what lies ahead of us, and all around us they see signs of decaying institutions. The country will continue to haemorrhage wealth and talent
To reverse that exodus we must restore confidence in the country. We do not get confidence back with piecemeal economic measures but with bold reforms to restore transparency, accountability and legitimacy to our institutions. Confidence will return if people see decisive leadership motivated by a sincere concern for the welfare of the country. The opposite occurs if they see decisions motivated by short term politics. Nevermind FDI, if Malaysians started investing in Malaysia, and stopped leaving, or started coming back, we would see a surge in growth.
In the same measure we must also break the stranglehold of communal politics and racial policy if we want to be a place where an economy driven by ideas and skills can flourish. This must be done, and it must be done now. We have a small window of time left before we fall into a spiral of political, social and economic decline from which we will not emerge for decades.
This is the leap we must make, but to make that leap we need a government capable of promoting radical reform. That is not going to happen without political change. We should not underestimate the ability of our citizens to transcend lies, distortions and myths and get behind the best interest of the country. In this they are far ahead of our present leadership, and our leadership should listen to them.
*Speech on the launch of the Second Edition of No Cowardly Past: James Puthucheary, Writings, Poems, Commentaries
PJ Civic Centre
March 22, 2010
A federation in name only*
Malaysia was formed in 1963, when the eleven states of the previous Malayan Federation came together with Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore to create the Federation of Malaysia.
Federalism is a system of government in which legislative power is divided between a central or federal legislature and a number of state legislatures. Both levels of government derive their authority from a written Constitution.
Unlike in a unitary state, sovereignty in a federal state is decentralized. Thus the rights of citizens are secured at two levels, federal and state. In Malaysia, Federation was a way to accommodate the different histories and pre-existing sovereignty of the member states of the Federation.
Federalism is a way of dividing and sharing power. In the system envisaged in our Constitution, this division and sharing of power is part of a system of checks and balances meant to protect the rights and freedoms of our citizens. The separation of powers between the judiciary, the legislature and the executive are part of that complex interlocking system.
People often remark at how complex this country is, made up as we are of a patchwork of ethnicities and religions. But we are also complex in our political history. The nine sultanates of peninsular Malaysia, did not suddenly acquire their sovereignty upon the Federation Agreement of 1948. Instead it is by their voluntary coming together in that agreement that the federal authority was created. Federal sovereignty and authority, although wider than that of the member states, is derived from the prior sovereignty of the states. In the nine sultanates of the peninsula, for example, we had sovereign states before we had a federation, and before the various forms of colonial rule. The Federation derives it powers by the voluntary and binding agreement of the states, not the other way around. This conviction was well tested in the way the Malayan Union proposal was rejected.
Thus we had an auspicious start as a country, because our political arrangement guaranteed our rights within a system that reflected and protected our cultural and historical diversity. Federalism provides for the right measure of local autonomy. Decision-making, particularly about the allocation of resources, could be made in a way that more closely reflected the interests of people on the ground, that is to say, more efficiently.
This system did was not born overnight. The sovereignty of our member states is hundreds of years old. Our Constitution was established on an 800 year old tradition of constitutional law. These are solid foundations for constitutional democracy. If Malaya were not already a Federation, Sabah and Sarawak would not have come together with us to form Malaysia in 1963. Federation is the only political basis on which Malaysia is a viable political venture.
In present company these facts must seem so well-established that I hope you will forgive me if I come across as stating the obvious. Today we find ourselves in the position of having to state and re-state foundational truths about our country.
As a country we have come unmoored from our foundations in constitutionalism and federalism. We are now, for most intents and purposes, a federation in name only. The central government hands out allocations that belong by right to the states as if these were gifts from on high. State governments are starved of resources, particularly if they are governed by the Opposition. How has this happened?
We have undergone two and a half decades in which, while hard infrastructure has sprung up everywhere, the deep infrastructure of the constitution has suffered great damage. Our federal arrangements provide for a fine balance between state and federal powers which provide multiple levels of assurance for the rights of citizens. That balance has been removed as power has been concentrated in the federal government. Within the federal government that power has come to be centralized in the executive. In the executive, that power is concentrated in the hands of the Prime Minister
This forum addresses the question “should states be given more power?” , but really what needs to be done is to restore the constitutional rights of the states first.
The constitutional rights of the states are clearly violated in the way petroleum profits are being distributed and managed.
The federal government says Kelantan and Terengganu have no right to the “cash payments” agreed between the states and Petronas. These denials have been published in the newspapers and are repeated by official representatives of the government. The full implications of their denial are not trivial. The Federal government’s authority over these resources, as in all other things, is an authority derived from the original sovereignty of the states. By the Federation Agreement of 1948, the states of the Malayan peninsula came voluntarily into a federation and created a common federal government. As part of that agreement, the Federal government had jurisdiction over waters beyond 3 nautical miles. The states had jurisdiction within 3 nautical miles. Oil had not been discovered in Malaya at the time. Had it been found, however, anything within 3 nautical miles would have belonged in its entirety to the state, and anything beyond that to the federal government. In 1974, we formed Petronas as a common trust between the federal and state governments for all petroleum found anywhere in Malaysia, onshore or offshore. We did this by persuading the states governments, one by one, to vest their entire rights and claims to petroleum, onshore or offshore, in perpetuity to Petronas. The federal government did the same. By design, this obliterated any considerations of whether the oil was found within or beyond 3 or 12 nautical miles. So long as Malaysia had any share in the oil, the profits would be divided between the federal government and the relevant state government according to a simple formula: five percent to each.
That series of vestings was secured through deeds signed according to the Petroleum Development Act. As the founding chairman of Petronas I signed these deeds with each chief minister and with the federal government.
The federal government’s refusal to pay Kelantan, and it’s arbitrary treatment of Terengganu’s oil money – on and off according to whether the state was in Opposition hands—is in violation of a solemn contract, sealed in an Act of Parliament, between the State governments and Petronas. The federal government is reneging on a contract and in contempt of Parliament. Its attitude to these oil payments is transparently based on one criterion: those states whose legislatures are not controlled by Barisan Nasional are denied payment. This practice punishes citizens for their choice of state government. This is an attack on the right of the people to choose their own government within our system of parliamentary democracy. Oil payments are just one form of selective denial of funds to the states.
Putrajaya behaves as if we are a unitary state and not a federation. Ironically we have become in practice the Malayan Union which an earlier generation resisted and defeated. The autonomy of the states, their rights to development and to the husbandry of their own resources, and the proper role of the rulers and the way in which religion is governed in public life are displaced in favour of increasingly centralized and absolute power. This is unconstitutional and must be resisted with just as much vigour as we resisted the Malayan Union. Malaysia is not viable in the long run as a unitary state.
*Remarks made at
CONVERSATIONS ON THE CONSTITUTION:
“Federal–State Relations: Should states be given more power?”
sponsored by the Constitutional Law Committee, Bar Council of Malaysia.
isu royalti kelirukan, cetus implikasi baru
Ku Li: Iklan isu royalti kelirukan, cetus implikasi baru
Oleh G. Manimaran
TheMalaysianInsider.com
KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 22 — Iklan penjelasan tuntutan wang royalti yang disiarkan kerajaan pusat menerusi akhbar-akhbar Bahasa Malaysia semalam menimbulkan lebih banyak implikasi dan kekeliruan berbanding penjelasan, kata Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah (picture) hari ini.
Justeru tegas beliau, iklan satu halaman itu sekali gus menunjukkan tiada negeri yang mempunyai hak untuk mendapatkan bayaran tunai ataupun royalti termasuk Sabah dan Sarawak.
Kata beliau, iklan muka penuh yang diambil oleh Kementerian Penerangan, Komunikasi dan Kebudayaan berhujah Kelantan juga tiada hak kepada bayaran minyak di bawah Akta Kemajuan Petroleum kerana sumber minyak yang menjadi persoalan terletak di kawasan tiga batu nautika, yang menafikan hak kesemua negeri.
“Iklan itu gagal untuk menyatakan bahawa kesemua minyak yang diperoleh di Malaysia ditemui di kawasan pesisir lebih dari tiga batu nautika, dan bagaimanapun Petronas (terus) membuat pembayaran kepada negeri-negeri ini.
“Dengan hujah yang diturunkan dalam iklan (semalam), Terengganu, Sabah dan Sarawak juga tidak layak menerima bayaran tunai lima peratus (biasanya dan dengan kurang tepat dirujuk sebagai royalti minyak).
“Kesemua terletak pada budi bicara kerajaan persekutuan,” kata beliau dalam pandangannya dikeluarkan hari ini.
Pada 28 Jan lalu beliau menegaskan pada satu ceramah perdana bahawa Kelantan layak menerima wang royalti lima peratus.
Pun begitu kata beliau, pada tahun lalu Petronas telah membayar RM6.2 bilion dalam bentuk bayaran tunai dengan RM3 bilion kepada Terengganu, RM2.3 bilion kepada Sarawak dan RM0.9 bilion kepada Sabah.
Ahli Parlimen dan Ketua Umno Bahagian Gua Musang ini menambah, oleh itu ada pihak tertanya-tanya atas dasar apa bayaran itu dibuat memandangkan petroleum hanya ditemui di kawasan luar pesisir tiga batu nautika.
Oleh itu tegas beliau, hujah untuk menafikan hak Kelantan daripada memperoleh bayaran tunai lima peratus atas dasar minyak berada di kawasan tiga batu nautika sebenarnya “satu penghinaan kepada kebijaksanaan” seseorang.
Semalam kerajaan pusat mengiklankan penjelasan isu tersebut dalam akhbar-akhbar Bahasa Malaysia dengan menyasarkan pendirian Tengku Razaleigh dan juga Ketua Pembangkang Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
Dalam iklan satu halaman yang disiarkan di Berita Minggu, Mingguan Malaysia dan Sinar Harian kerajaan pusat mendakwa kenyataan Tengku Razaleigh berhubung isu bayaran royalti kepada Kelantan hanya perlu dilihat sebagai pendapat peribadi beliau semata-mata.
Oleh itu, kerajaan pusat berkata sebarang keputusan yang diambil berkenaan hak pembayaran royalti perlu dibuat berasaskan peruntukan undang-undang yang berkaitan serta perjanjian-perjanjian yang ditandatangani di antara Petronas dengan kerajaan-kerajaan negeri.
Tengku Razaleigh, bekas pengerusi dan pengasas Petronas, menambah bahawa pembayaran wang tunai lima peratus adalah manfaat dinikmati rakyat tetapi telah dinafikan oleh Umno Kelantan selepas 34 tahun bekas perdana menteri Tun Abdul Razak Hussein meninggal dunia.
Katanya, tiada pihak dengan fikiran waras akan melakukan ini sebagai satu tindakan, yang kononnya akan memanfaatkan kedudukan jangka panjang Umno di Kelantan, malah di mana-mana sahaja orang memerhatikan perbuatan seperti ini.
“Saya dituduh meletakkan kepentingan negeri berbanding kepentingan parti. Bagaimanapun isu ini melangkaui (kepentingan) Kelantan.
“Hujah yang diletakkan dalam iklan semalan mengetepikan hak semua negeri dalam soal sumber alam semula jadi, yang merupakan hak kedaulatan mereka,” katanya.
Ia juga menafikan perjanjian antara Petronas dan negeri-negeri terbabit dan mengetepikan tujuan asal penubuhan syarikat tersebut, kata beliau.
“Salah satu implikasi segera diturunkan dalam iklan penjelasan rasmi oleh Kementerian Penerangan semalam ialah Terengganu juga tidak layak untuk mendapatkan bayaran minyak (tunai).
“Ini bermakna selepas memotong kesemua bayaran apabila Terengganu jatuh ke tangan pembangkang (pada 1999) dan digantikan dengan wang ihsan, tiada asas sama sekali bagi janji kerajaan untuk kembali kepada bayaran tunai.
“Kesemua minyak Terengganu ditemui jauh di kawasan pesisir pantai,” katanya.
Disebabkan itu menurut beliau, apa yang terpakai kepada Kelantan juga diguna pakai ke atas Terengganu.
“Pada akhirnya, ia bukan persoalan politik ataupun personaliti.
“Ia bukannya pasal saya atau sesiapa berkata, ataupun di mana PAS dan Umno berdiri,” kata Tengku Razaleigh sambil menambah, ia sebenarnya berkaitan dengan pematuhan kerajaan dengan perjanjian bertulis yang diluluskan oleh Parlimen dan sama ada menghormati prinsip demokrasi berparlimen.
Tegas beliau, sama ada hak orang ramai dipenuhi ataupun tidak ia bergantung kepada siapa mereka mengundi.
“Melayan Terengganu dan Kelantan dengan cara ini, kita menafikan hak mereka kepada wang yang mereka berhak untuk memiliki, menafikan hak kedaulatan negeri mereka dan mengikis demokrasi berparlimen,” katanya.
Do the right thing
I see the Ministry of Information has taken out full page advertisements in the major Malay newspapers to argue that Kelantan has no right to oil payments under the Petroleum Development Act because the oil resources in question lie outside the 3 nautical mile limit that delimits state versus federal jurisdictions. The advertisement fails to point out that almost all the oil found in Malaysia is located more than 3 nautical miles offshore, and Petronas has nevertheless been making oil payments to the states.
By the argument deployed in the advertisement, Terengganu, Sabah and Sarawak too are not entitled to the “cash payments” of 5% of profit oil (commonly and a little inaccurately referred to as “oil royalties”). Everything is at the arbitrary behest of the Federal Government.
Yet last year, according to its annual report, Petronas paid out RM6.2 Billion in petroleum cash payments, with RM 3Billion to Terengganu, 2.3Billion to Sarawak and 0.9Billion to Sabah. One wonders what basis this payment was made on since none of this was for petroleum found within 3 nautical miles offshore of these states. The argument for depriving Kelantan of 5% cash payments on the basis of its petroleum resources being found beyond 3 nautical miles is an insult to the intelligence.
I have spoken and written at length on this issue and had been reluctant to say more on it. Moreover, as a member of the ruling party I am embarrassed to have to belabour elementary points against the government. This information campaign, whether through a leaflet campaign in the schools or through newspaper advertisements paid for with taxpayer money, implies either culpable stupidity or gross deceitfulness on the part of agents of the Federal Government. I had hoped to avoid that implication.
The government’s advertisement also exhumes a ten year old mis-quotation in a government newspaper to allege that I once denied that Terengganu had any right to the 5% cash payment. I said no such thing. If the government media is to be believed I also once converted to Christianity by wearing Kadazan headgear just in time to be exposed amidst a General Election campaign. Why does the government rely on a ten year old misquotation? Well, these days we have our own blogs.
In fact, as a BN backbencher at the time I opposed the Federal Government’s intervention to prevent Petronas from making oil payments to Terengganu and the move to channel those funds instead into “wang ihsan”. Tun Salleh Abbas and I offered ourselves as witnesses to the Terengganu state government in the suit it filed against the Federal government to recover those oil payments. Between the 2000 and 2009, 15.8 Billion was paid out through the legal black hole of wang ihsan, not to the rightful party as specified under the Petroleum Development Act, which is the state government’s consolidated fund, but to agencies more amenable to vested interests linked to the central government. The outcome of that spending is the Monsoon Cup, a Crystal Mosque in which it is impossible to pray, a leaking swimming pool, a collapsed bridge and a collapsed stadium. The people of Terengganu remain poor while Billions have been paid out in their name.
I am said to have changed my mind or become suddenly ignorant of the fact that Kelantan’s petroleum resources all lie offshore when the fact is that, on the instruction of the late Tun Razak, I drafted the Petroleum Development Act in such a way as to ensure that Kelantan, Terengganu, and potentially Pahang and Johor would benefit from the 5% cash payments from oil found offshore. We did this precisely because we knew even then that these states did not have oil onshore or within their territorial waters.
The device we used was a Vesting Deed by which the states vested, in perpetuity, all their petroleum resources to Petronas, onshore and offshore. In return for this Petronas guaranteed the cash payment of 5% from oil found anywhere, offshore or onshore, of the state. This rendered any consideration of federal/state boundaries whether at 3 or 12 nautical miles or whatever irrelevant for the purpose of reckoning the payment. I traversed the country to sign this agreement with each Chief Minister of each state government. Tun Razak was driven by the nation-building concern that these poorer east coast states, with their predominantly Malay population, should benefit directly from offshore oil, and I drafted the Petroleum Development Act to reflect that concern.
It is this benefit to the people which Umno Kelantan opposes 34 years after the death of Tun Razak. It is also Razak’s legacy that they make a mockery of. It is a mark of how far Umno has strayed off course that the leadership of Umno, and in particular of Umno Kelantan is doing its utmost to deprive the people of Kelantan of sovereign rights secured by an UMNO-led government of another day. No one in their right mind could mistake this as behaviour that is beneficial to Umno’s long term standing in Kelantan, let alone elsewhere as people observe these antics.
I am accused of putting state interest before party interest. However the issue goes far beyond Kelantan. The arguments used in yesterday’s newspaper advertisement undercut the rights of all the states in respect of a natural resource which is theirs as a sovereign right. It violates a contract between Petronas and the states, denies the Petroleum Development Act, denies the raison d’etre of Petronas (which was in the first place formed to ensure the integrtiy of the federation by way of an equitable sharing of this valuable resource) and sets the Federal Government in contravention of an Act of Parliament.
One immediate implication of the argument laid out in yesterday’s official clarification from the Ministry of Information is that Terengganu is also ineligible for the oil payments. This means that after cutting off oil payments when Terengganu fell into Opposition hands in 1999 and replacing it with “compassionate payment” there is absolutely no basis for the government’s promise to now resume cash payments to Terengganu. All of Terengganu’s oil is found far offshore. In this matter whatever holds for Kelantan holds for Terengganu and vice versa.
In the end this is not a question of politics or personality. It is not about what I or anyone else says, nor of where Umno or PAS stand. It is about the government complying with written agreements governed by an Act of Parliament and respecting parliamentary democracy. The rights of the people are not to be fulfilled or withheld depending on who they voted for. In treating Terengganu and Kelantan in this manner we are depriving them of money that is rightfully theirs, undermining sovereign state rights, and eroding parliamentary democracy. We should do the right thing by the people at whose pleasure we serve.
Young people must rise to recover Tunku’s vision of Malaysia
Tunku Abdul Rahman was the founder of Malaysia. That has been obscured by an intervening period in which his memory has been brushed out of our national consciousness.
He brought together a Malaysia that had come together “through our own free will and desire in the true spirit of brotherhood and love of freedom”, in a union arrived at “by mutual consent by debate and discussion…through friendly argument and compromise,” and “in the spirit of co-operation and concord.”
This was the basis for Malaysia he worked for and established, and that his life embodied. That basis has been replaced by something alien to it, his memory has been suppressed, and our history revised.
Part of the reason our collective memory of Tunku has faded, and that Tunku would not recognise today’s Malaysia, is that Tunku and his generation built institutions that empowered the people rather than cults of personality to concentrate power and wealth in themselves. They reached instinctively for democratic decision-making. The concepts and precepts of constitutional democracy were part of their natural vocabulary and instinctive reactions. They knew who the country belonged to, and that they lived to serve.
The day of Tunku’s funeral was not even declared a national holiday. It is no accident that the erasure of his memory has gone hand in hand with the erosion of our institutions. Tunku built up a system of good civil service in which ordinary citizens did not need to see so-and-so to get things done. This has been replaced by a domineering style of leadership in which what you get done depends on who you know. Of course the rich and powerful have better connections.
In place of the protection for ordinary citizens guaranteed by popular representation, rule of law and the checks and balances of independent institutions, we have the cult of the great leader.
In place of a system which designed to assure the rights of the ordinary citizen we have a system re-designed around the interests of corporate and political bosses.
Ordinary Malaysians are disenfranchised of their rights to health, education and security. They are then patronised by leaders whose idea of public service is to go around like Father Christmas doling out gifts of resources which are really the property of the people. This turns citizens into supplicants. Our properties are converted into gifts from the great leader. Our rights are converted into permissions. Our country has become his country.
There has been, over the years since his passing, a quite deliberate erasure of our memory of Tunku. This should come as no surprise. He saw the wrong turn we were taking and he opposed it. He and several other leaders were excluded from UMNO Baru. He led a movement called Semangat 46. His conception of our politics and system of government had no place for corrupt practices, arbitrary executive power and the manipulation of racial and religious identity for political gain.
Tunku Abdul Rahman did not help us achieve independence and then the merger, alone. He led and worked with an entire class of individuals schooled in the culture and practice of parliamentary democracy. In politics and the civil service they thrived in a time before the machine politics of patronage and lowbrow identity politics had sucked the life and talent out of the ruling party and left it filled with people who quite simply don’t have the ability to hold this country together anymore.
The average age of our first cabinet was under thirty. Tun Razak was 28. Tun Dr Ismail was barely 30 years old. Men of their calibre would not have made it up the ladder of the party that has succeeded theirs. They would have been too untainted, too young to do so.
The IDEAS project looks back, then, not just to an individual but to an era in Malaysia’s brief history. It will promote the values and principles on which we were formed.
Over the course of that history we have not trodden a continuous path to the present day. There have been two regimes, or political dispensations, in the life of this country, young as she is.
The first began in the fifties and ended in 1970. The dispensation that followed came to a mortal crisis in 1997 and limped on to 2008. Against the background of those changes, what has followed the elections of March 2008 is hard to describe as anything but the detritus of a once-functioning political system.
If any one of us was tempted to imagine that Malaysia had outgrown the sordid events of 1997, the government’s newspapers bring to our breakfast tables each day Sodomy 2, to remind us that after another decade of sloganeering, as Tunku Zain Al-‘Abidin pointed out, we have come full circle to find ourselves back at the doorstep of our debased institutions and a Constitution that is increasingly inoperative.
The progress of the trial of the leader of the Opposition, the government’s apparent ignorance of the sovereign rights of the states and the way in which we have allowed religious issues to be manipulated, point to that conclusion. The constitutional crisis in Perak, in which a government has been installed by illegal means, the failure to implement two royal commissions of inquiry findings, point to that conclusion.
The barbarous political culture promoted by the establishment media brings us full circle, and drives home the point: our system of government is still in 1997. We are still in the after-wash of a wave of bad taste, authoritarianism and arbitrary power that destroyed our practice of parliamentary democracy, compromised our judiciary and police, and disenfranchised our people.
To adapt Tunku’s words, we now have a democracy “existing in name, but grievously compromised in substance, reality and fact.”
Our penchant for slogans is a reflection of our dislocation from the living reality of constitutional and parliamentary democracy. We don’t need slogans. We need our Constitution back.
This, then, is the context in which IDEAS has adopted its noble purpose. The efforts of idealistic young people, attuned to the principles of parliamentary democracy and to our real history, and equipped with a plan to effect that purpose, are exactly what we need at this time. We need this and other such efforts from the young. They should not let their repugnance at the ugliness of our political system turn them away from it. It is precisely because we have a broken political system that it is so ugly. It is precisely because our main political parties are bound to infantile ethnic politics that we are now stagnant and declining as a country. Instead, I hope they see the mindlessness and ugliness of our present politics as a call to service.
I urge young people to rise to the task of changing our political system. We have left it to “the deranged” for too long as Tunku Zain Al-‘Abidin calls them. To expect change from the incumbents is to expect, in the Malay saying, the mice to repair the gourd…“Bagai tikus baiki labu-labu.”
It is time for us to understand, discuss, organise and act together.
Tunku was a true Malaysian. As we have forgotten him, we have also forgotten how to be Malaysians. We must learn again how to be free and equal citizens of a constitutional democracy. In our national life we must learn again how to be a Federation of sovereign states governed by the rule of law.
We have been robbed of our memory, and have had it replaced with slogans, but we have also been robbed of our country. Let us come together to recover both.
—
* Speech on the launch of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS)
Memorial Tunku Abdul Rahman, Kuala Lumpur
February 8, 2010,
Public confidence and the trial of Anwar Ibrahim
Certain features of the trial of Dato’ Sri Anwar Ibrahim pose a serious challenge to public confidence in the government. Public confidence is essential to the basic functioning of government.
1) The trial is being conducted in an overwhelmingly politicized environment. Part of its context is the earlier trial of Anwar on the same charge, a trial which was perceived worldwide as politically motivated. We do not longer live in an insulated world.
2) Pre-trial publicity by the local mainstream media has been so blatantly unbalanced as to convey the impression that the media are pursuing a political agenda. Since the local mainstream media is either government owned or tightly controlled, this translates into the impression that the government itself has an interest in its outcome.
3) Many Malaysians believe that sections of the executive and political establishment have an interest in this trial. There does not seem to have been any attempt to remove this suspicion.
In such circumstances the principle that justice must not only be done but seen to be done is breached. As in the case of the constitutional crisis in Perak and in the openly illegal denial of oil royalty payments to Terengganu and now to Kelantan, we as Malaysians suffer when our Government loses credibility domestically and internationally.
Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah
Member of Parliament, Gua Musang
Press statement: February 4, 2010
Oil Forum in Kota Bharu
One of the largest gatherings ever seen in Kota Bharu's stadium. The people demand what is rightfully theirs.
(Note: you can view this speech on my youtube channel)
At 9pm tonight, I will be addressing the people of Kelantan at the Stadium Sultan Muhamad Ke IV, on the oil royalties that are their sovereign right.
I have written on this issue before.
http://razaleigh.com/2009/11/28/oil-payments/
http://razaleigh.com/2009/07/31/letter-to-mb-of-kelantan-on-oil-royalties/
The larger issue is State rights. Malaysia is a Federation of sovereign states. The Federal government has no rights over any petroleum resources except where these have been assigned to the Federal Government by the respective state governments. The novel mechanism we created for this assignment was Petronas.
The states vested all their rights in their petroleum resources in perpetuity to this entity incorporated under the Companies Act. In return Petronas bound itself to pay the respective state 5% of the profit oil from any oil found on or offshore of the state. I signed those undertakings with the Menteri Besar of each of the states.
Petronas is all about the Federation of Malaysia. It was formed to strengthen and protect the Federation. In founding it we intended to strike a balance which ensured that while respecting the sovereign rights of the individual states over their oil resources, all the citizens of the country, no matter what state they lived in, had some part in the bounty of oil.
Sarawak and Sabah shared their oil bounty in the spirit of strengthening the Federation. The arrangement struck with those states was extended to all the other states on the principle of kesaksamaan, or fairness.
By ignoring both the letter and the spirit of those agreements, the Federal government sets aside the very purpose of Petronas. More importantly there is a failure to understand the origin of Federal powers over state resources. We have forgotten that the states existed prior to the Federation. The Federation only exists because the states were willing to vest their rights in it, such as their rights in oil.
Not the other way around. The Federation itself rests on the principle of fairness to all the states, and to all our citizens, wherever they live. When the government of the day ignores this principle, it is ignoring a basic principle holding our country together.
There has been too much centralization of power in the federal government. Powers functions and rights that belong to the states must be restored to them.
Here are the Vesting Deeds I referred to:-
