After Reading Mark Levine’s Al Jazeera Article (Arab Revolutions Mask Economic Status Quo)

By batsman

It struck me that many of the policies that Mark Levine described as friendly to the Arab populations were exactly what UMNO has been practicing in Malaya for the first 30 odd years since Merdeka (1) and that ruling Arab elites made a subtle but important shift in the 70’s towards more friendly “Washington Consensus” policies (2) that were the unmitigated disasters that resulted in the current ongoing Arab Spring (3).

It would seem then that we are going through a phase that the Arab countries went though in the 70’s and 80’s (4). It would seem that we are actually historically behind the Arab countries and that our grouses with UMNO stem from the fact that government policies are now migrating towards being more “Washington Consensus” friendly in line with what the Arab ruling elites did 40 years ago.

Would this mean that we are due for a Malaysian Spring or a Hibiscus Revolution in 40 – 50 years time? Does it mean that what the Malaysian reform movement is striving for today will backfire horribly in 40 – 50 years time?

It does seem that it will probably go that way, but I think not. To justify my opinion, it is necessary to look not only at historical phases of development of the countries involved but also current realities.

The Arab struggle for modern economic development started much earlier than ours so it is no surprise that we are actually historically behind them (5).

According to Mark Levine, the socialist experiments that the Arab countries tried in the 50’s and 60’s actually resulted in rapid economic development that gave the population a modicum of wealth, so what happened that forced the ruling Arab elites to turn towards IMF and World Bank “recommended” or “enforced” policies? Are these the same pressures that resulted in communist China and socialist Vietnam turning towards more market friendly economic policies?

Sadly, I am not such a great historian, so I can only hazard a guess. I surmise that in spite of the socialist experiments, the ruling elites were actually national capitalists, as Mark Levine seems to have (6). These people harboured great ambitions for their countries and for themselves and they went for a short cut to glory, wealth and power that integration with the globalised capitalist economies promised. At any rate, socialist economic experiments which benefit the poor do very little for capitalist accumulation and concentrations of wealth within their own countries. Socialist experiments had to be quietly abandoned in favour of the seduction of glory, power and wealth.

My second surmise is that short cuts to glory, power and wealth became shorter still over time and corruption became rampant as patience wore thin and it is easier to be a big fish in a small pond than a big fish in a big ocean.

In Malaysia, the same trends can be seen in our history. First we wanted to be a big and famous player in the whole wide world with Malaysia Boleh and Vision 2020 as well as politicians with big opiniated mouths and politician’s wives with big bags all to match their even bigger statures. Grand mega projects were the norm. Now apparently we are buying French submarines and Russian MIG jets to protect “our national security” in case we do become a great power in 2020 in line with the military might of all the great powers of the world.

Corruption and vain glory apparently is common to both Arab countries and Malaysia. It is the same evil that screws up the works whatever phase of historical development each is in.

In the Arab countries, corruption and vain glory screwed up the socialist experiments in the 50’s and 60’s and corruption screwed up the “Washington Consensus” economic policies of the 80’s to the present.

In Malaysia, corruption and racism screwed up the NEP and in spite of the privatizations, corporatisations, ETP’s, GTP’s, promised transparencies, 1Malaysia’s, KPI’s and so on, good people keep falling from tall buildings and policemen still protect themselves by shooting people from 45 degree angles at close range according to some brave claims. All this is quite apart from politicians and their sons happily spending rumoured RM6 million on renovations for their mansions or rumoured RM400 million for divorce settlements.

To be fair to UMNO, it is actually not easy to come up with and implement a proper economic plan for a country – especially one that is smaller than the big powers. As Mark Levine (sort of) points out, they will do whatever it takes to ensure you are in your small little place and they have their tentacles in all the best economic pies.

Traditions are difficult to change. In spite of the liberalism that the big powers cloak themselves with, their true faces often reveal themselves if you care to look honestly. For example, US universities invested heavily and profitably in S. African apartheid businesses in the past until they were forced by public opinion to give it up. Today they are using hedge funds to buy vast amounts of land in Africa, I suppose to make their assets and balance sheets look seductive. Old habits die hard.

Old style colonialism makes way for new style IMF and World Bank recommended investments. Actually colonialism is heavy handed and clumsy and you have to deal with lots of troublesome natives often with brutal force. By buying vast amounts of land in impoverished countries, you sort of create Black Homelands in reverse. Labour will be at your pick and choosing and you can even claim to be offering jobs and security with better pay than the rest of the native employers. You don’t have to deal with troublesome natives who will fall off tall buildings or get shot at 45 degree angles by their own kind and in case all else fails you can always depend on the UN and NATO to impose no-fly zones. Best of all you can process rare earths on your own land in faraway places if you wish. After all it is your land which you bought and paid for.

So it is actually quite a difficult thing to survive in this dangerous world let alone come up with good economic policies and implement them well. UMNO must be given due credit. Unfortunately credit comes with the discredit of corruption.

So while the Arab Jasmine Revolution (at some level) may be trying to achieve the opposite of what the Malaysian reform movement is trying to achieve – one is trying to free itself from IMF control and manipulation while the other is trying to be more competitive and integrate itself even more into the globalised economic system, it does not necessarily follow that Malaysia being behind the Arabs in historical development will have to follow in their wake at a later stage.

Good economic policies and honest management and implementation can make the difference. I am for a strong domestic economy enhanced by world class competitiveness in niche sectors (above all, no more people falling off tall buildings or policemen defending themselves by shooting people at 45 degree angles). We don’t have to take extreme positions to be isolationist like N. Korea or a complete slave to the IMF. What do you think?

Notes – quoted from Mark Levine’s article.

(1) Instead, analyses by the IMF and World Bank “extensively praised this stabilisation success in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco”, ignoring the social costs of policies such as reducing the size of the public sector through privatisation, removing controls over investment, eliminating subsidies and most tariffs on imports and liberalising trade regimes.

(2) “Washington Consensus” policies, which advocate trade liberalisation, privatisation, opening economies to foreign goods and investment, stabilising budgets and exchange rates, and cutting government expenditures and presence in the economy.

(3) Both the IMF and the Bank now state loudly that the Arab Spring has taught them the appropriate “lessons” and that they now realise that “we have to listen to people” and help ensure that wealth is now “for everyone” and not just the privileged few.

(4) Despite the conflict with the United States and other Western powers, this period was in fact marked by unprecedented levels of both economic growth and relative economic equality within ostensibly socialist-inspired societies such as Egypt, Syria or Iraq. But by the 1970s, and especially in the 1980s, leaders of these countries began to integrate themselves into the Western political-economic fold, and such growth and egalitarian distribution of wealth changed for the worse.

(5) …. a history of frustrated economic development that stretches from the mid-19th century, when Muhammad Ali’s attempt at independent modernisation was met by a joint European-Ottoman front that ultimately forced Egypt – and the Ottoman state – into a European-dominated economic fold that, within three decades, led both states to bankruptcy (and soon thereafter, for Egypt, to more than half a century of British occupation).

(6) IMF official Youssef Boutros-Ghali, who were accruing significant power through the financialisation of the economy and other policies that weaken the power of the army and the more traditional national capitalist elite.