Opinion

The real numbers game – Phar Kim Beng

That all and sundry still want a crack at being PM is a clear indication they know Malaysia is not a ‘failed state’

Updated 3 years ago · Published on 18 Oct 2020 10:00AM

The real numbers game – Phar Kim Beng
The fact is that as Malaysia obsesses over ‘who has the numbers’ to become the next prime minister, the central bank does have the fiscal and financial depth to weather the storm. – AFP pic, October 18, 2020

LET’S face it. Malaysians have all the worst political habits in the world, only to correct them one by one since 2008, if not earlier, when they began to understand the importance of people power.

Thus, civil society began to move in tandem with the opposition movement named Pakatan Harapan.

But instead of consolidating this twin pincer for the purpose of achieving a much-needed and long-awaited reform of government, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, after becoming prime minister for the second time, cracked open the divide-and-rule playbook and drove a wedge between civil society and the people.

He didn’t give a hoot over what Bersih said, let alone Tindak, or any movement connected to Felda. Like an anachronistic political creature, he went back to his old policies of stacking his people according to what his “race” could do in the state.

And so began another round of government-linked investment company (GLIC) and government-linked company (GLC) placements.

Monkey see, monkey do, as the adage goes. When Dr Mahathir’s luck ran out, his come-from-behind successor, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, repeated the same. My boys in, your boys out.

This revolving-door policy of the state formed of GLICs and GLCs is made plain in Minister of Finance Incorporated, a book by Prof Edmund Terence Gomez, which also puts the number of these entities at between 900 and 1,000.

This is a bad sign. It implies that the 1.7 million civil servants have become a behemoth; the largest civil service in the world on a per capita basis. When the business of government becomes business itself, how and where will precious resources be allocated, especially when the said resources are derived from public coffers in the form of taxes and natural resource wealth?

Are GLICs and GLCS, such as KWAP, LTAT and Khazanah, and perhaps even Maybank, supposed to enhance the domestic economy? Or, can they enter risky countries and risky ventures in search of a higher yield?

The country’s fifth prime minister, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, swayed by the rhetoric of globalisation that the world market is out there, gave his imprimatur to these entities to invest abroad, not unlike encouraging Petronas or Felda to do their business in foreign lands.

But wait, what about Malaysia’s internal economic engines, which, by 2005, were already clearly experiencing the classic signs of the middle-income trap?

The latter was an issue neglected by the political leadership, which allowed the management of GLICs and GLCs to operate freely in Bosnia, Turkey and Iran, and in the case of Petronas, Sudan, as well as many other places. Not surprisingly, Malaysia has 111 foreign missions in 85 countries.

It was Dr Mahathir himself, two weeks prior to his resignation, who claimed that Malaysia still had RM2 trillion abroad as opposed to RM1 trillion in national debt.

On this basis, none of the sovereign ratings companies dared to downgrade our ratings despite the political turmoil. This applies to Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch.

At the range of B+/A-, Malaysia seems to be doing well. But this is a falsehood, too. The country is judged on the basis of its ability to service its national debt; a wasteful fiscal exercise, but one that the relevant financial authorities have no problem complying with despite the 1Malaysia Development Bhd debacle.

The fact is that as Malaysia obsesses over “who has the numbers” to become the next prime minister, the central bank does have the fiscal and financial depth to weather the storm.

Therefore, Malaysia possesses the means, and concurrently, the political will, to pay, albeit the willingness to pay is derived from the fear of being punished for a low grading for not paying.

That all and sundry, whether they are 95 or 83 years old, still want a crack at being prime minister is a clear indication they know Malaysia is not a “failed state”, but a functionally dysfunctional one due to decades of nepotism at work.

Both Dr Mahathir and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah know that if their “boys” are in, and not others, they can still manipulate and intimidate everyone in the country, and civil society will be consigned to do their bidding, as long as the palace appoints them rather than Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim. – The Vibes, October 18, 2020

Phar Kim Beng is founder of Strategic Pan Indo Pacific Arena (strategicpipa.com), which studies and promotes regional cooperation, especially in the Indo-Pacific area

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