Will Pakatan trip over Selangor lawmakers’ pay hike, to BN’s glee?
The Malaysian Insider
When lawmakers vote to reward themselves with more pay, what message does that give to the electorate, especially when the state government has been frugal with money in the past five years?
Malaysia’s wealthiest state, Selangor, has been subsisting on bare essentials as its Menteri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim has been tight with money since taking power in Election 2008. His economic style returned him to power with a bigger majority in the May 5 general election this year.
To the electorate and his own PKR party’s surprise, the state chief executive known for his parsimonious ways decided to increase wages for himself, his executive councillors, state speaker, deputy speaker and assemblymen this week.
The Selangor State Legislative Assembly had approved a salary hike for all 56 state assemblymen effective next year, with its deputy speaker getting the highest percentage of 373.3%.
The menteri besar’s salary would be increased from RM14,175.15 to RM29,250; state executive committee, from RM6,109.29 to RM20,250; speaker, from RM6,109.29 to RM22,500; deputy speaker, from RM3,327.50 to RM15,750; and state assemblymen from RM6,000 to RM11,250. There are 44 Pakatan Rakyat (PR) lawmakers to 12 from Barisan Nasional (BN).
Khalid’s move to reward assemblymen is not the first in the country this year. Sarawak decided to triple the pay of its assemblymen earlier this year, making the wages higher than that of federal lawmakers.
Over in Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew years ago went ahead and gave his ministers million-dollar salaries. His justification was that only top drawer salaries could draw top talent into politics and keep corruption at bay.
Decades later, the ruling PAP government is still on the back foot on this salary issue, so much so that current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Lee’s son, had to slash salaries after the last polls.
The simple fact is that no one will begrudge politicians a reasonable increase but not a huge jump especially when they still expect their elected representatives to be serving for reasons other than monetary gain.
Especially if they belong to the opposition, which has long campaigned for fiscal and financial responsibility.
Khalid should remember that many people in his state are struggling under a mountain of household debt and are lucky if they get a 10% salary hike a year, which is way below that of the Selangor assemblymen.
After all, the state’s last wage adjustment for the lawmakers was just in 2011. While voters in Selangor put them back in power, PR should realise that the salary adjustment could just trip the coalition better than BN could have done.
