What good is independence if we misuse it?

SK Wong

Many of the most repressive laws in Malaysia originated from colonial British era. Examples are the much reviled Internal Securities Act (1948), Sedition Act (1948), Printing Presses and Publishing Act (1948), Official Secrets Act (1972, not pre-independence) and many others. Many have been amended, augmented, renamed or strengthened but after nearly 60 years of independence, none are near abolishment.

When we gained independence, all Malaysians cheered that we were finally free of the yoke of British rule. In reality however, only the people who held the reign of power changed, the yoke remained the same. The people in power or close to the centre of power benefited disproportionately. To most ordinary people, independence is just a change of guard.

What is the meaning of independence? What are we really independent of? Is it enough to be free of British rule or should we be free of oppressive rule in general? The coalition government that has ruled Malaysia since independence is arguably more repressive (judging by the proliferation of draconian laws and slew of selective persecutions), more corrupt and less competent than the British. Is independence simply the right to cast vote every five years?

Independence should be a mean to an end, not an end in itself. We have the right to decide which way to go forward, it is our responsibility to choose the right path. If we don’t do a good job at governing ourselves or simply don’t care, it would have been better to leave the driving to the British. It is long overdue for us to achieve an independence that is true in substance as well as in name.

On the other hand, one may point to the progress we have made since independence to justify the benefits of being an independent country. It is easy to point to the physical infrastructures sprouting up all over the country. What is much harder to see is what could have been there but are absent due to corruption and incompetence. Equally worrying is the subtle and slow deterioration of the civil society, race relation, erosion of trust and harmony and radicalization of Islam in Malaysia.

It is difficult to argue what could have been had we chose differently. The next best thing one can do is to compare ourselves with other countries in similar state of development when we gained independence and 50 years later. The countries or regions most like us are Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and many other South East Asian countries. Admittedly, we have done better than some and performed worse than others. What can we learn for both sets of countries?

To make it much simpler, let us only focus on Singapore. Its history is bound to Malaysia for many centuries. Its culture, societal norm and languages are similar to Malaysia. Both countries’ major ethnic groups are similar. However, the similarity stops there. Since Singapore separated from Malaysia in 1965, their paths have increasingly diverged.

Singapore land mass is small, it is lacking in all natural resources: land, mineral, water, labour. It cannot develop mining or agriculture industries. The only thing Singapore had it going for it was its location as a port city. Yet today, it is one of the major oil refinery centres in the world and has a vibrant oil exploration industry. It is also one of the major financial centres in the world, not to mention still holds the record as the busiest/second busiest port and best airport in the world.

It used to get its raw water from Malaysia, but after experiencing years of insecurity from frosty relation with Malaysia during the Mahathir era, it has become self-sufficient through conservation, storage and recycling technologies. It even sells treated water back to Malaysia.

It gets talents from neighbouring countries. Singapore invests heavily in human resource development and promotes research and development in high-tech industries. It develops vertically (both up and down) and sideways (land reclamation) to mitigate land scarcity. Singapore is today a developed country with a per capita income of USD$65k. Malaysia on the other hand is languishing at USD$18k (IMF data) and still classified as a developing country.

The measure of progress or development, or the key performance indicator (KPI), be it of a country or company, is not how much one accomplishes, but how much is accomplished given the resources. Two companies earning the same revenue, one can be a making a profit, the other a loss, depending on how much capital each company started with.

Any leader can spend two to three times the capital and accomplish half or less of the result. A true test of leadership is, to borrow a term from the financial industry, the return of investment (ROI). What is the ROI of Singapore and Malaysia respectively?

World Bank estimates that corruption in Malaysia costs RM10billion per year. That amounts to RM300 billion over the last 30 years, enough to build FOUR Petronas Twin Towers (cost of build US1.8billion) in EVERY STATE!

Washington-based Global Financial Integrity estimates that over a period of ten years alone (2002 – 2011), roughly US$370 billion of illicit money was siphoned out of Malaysia. That is a staggering over 1 trillion ringgit, no matter which exchange rate we use.

This sum is enough to build over 250 KLIA2 (cost of build RM4 billion, which is itself overpriced). EVERY STATE could have TEN KLIA2 and there would still be enough left over to build SEVEN Petronas Twin Towers in EVERY STATE. This is just the money lost in ten years! This number even dwarfs that of World Bank estimates. Admittedly, there could be significant overlaps with money lost to corruption and siphoned offshore.

Where did all these missing KLIA2s and Petronas Twin Towers go? If not for the hemorrhaging of money, there would have been enough money to fund the fuel subsidy and GST would not be necessary.

Had the British exploited Malaysia to the tune of 1 trillion ringgit in ten years, there would have been mass riots, protests and no doubt, demand for independence. Why then is there deafening silence when the perpetrator is one of us? What did we gain independence for?

Malaysia is a resource-rich country in every matrix we care to measure. We do not face natural disasters (earthquakes, volcanos, typhoons) like some of our neighbours. The worse disasters Malaysia faces are man-made landslides and annual flooding. How did a country which had everything going for it, and a head start, fallen so far behind vis-à-vis Singapore 50 years on?

All Malaysian have the common experience of driving on roads that are perpetually being dug up to lay sewer pipes, storm drains, subway tracks, telekom cables etc. When all pipes, drains, cables and tracks have been laid, it is time to repair them due to poor job done in the first place, hence another round of road repair.

The repeated road digging is indicative of poor planning and coordination. The constant repair reflects poor execution and general low quality of work. What should only be done once if done right, has to be done repeatedly, resulting in lower efficiency and higher cost.

Not just road repair, the same malaise plagues all other government sectors. Our students have to be re-educated after they graduate, our overpriced submarines can sink but cannot float, fighter jets are missing jet engines, the country faces annual flooding and water shortages at the same time, not to mention a national car that is known for “broken windows”.

No one questions the goal to uplift the poor, but there is a big difference between giving a man a fish and teaching him to fish. Two objections can be raised about the way the NEP (and a whole host of subsequent policies that are “New” only in name but just old wine in new bottles) is justified and implemented. First, not all poor are Malays and not all Malays are poor. The converse is true for other races. Unfortunately, the benefits only targets race instead of needs.

Secondly, showering the Malays with contracts is not the right way to uplift them. A classic example is BN government’s effort to promote bumiputra entrepreneurship by awarding them construction contracts even if they lack the expertise. The result is that, they further subcontract the work to the real experts, thus adding another layer of transaction, increasing cost and the quality of work suffers. That is why we ended up with overpriced but of poorer quality infrastructures like leaking Parliament House, collapsing highways, buildings and ports.

The government’s policies only succeed in creating middlemen, not entrepreneurs. The skills these policies promote are not of building infrastructures, but in making connections, boot-licking, giving kick-backs and subcontracting.

The extra layer of transaction, like the infamous AP (Approval Permit, an oxymoron) for buying foreign cars simply adds cost without adding value. This rent-seeking strategy of uplifting the Malays is wrong-headed and only benefits the well-connected while the majority still languishing behind.

For the price of a national car, one can buy a much better quality foreign car. Because of the protection given to national car, Malaysian car owners have to suffer lower quality at a higher price. In all cases, the tax payers ended up paying a higher cost for goods and services.

Judging by the quality of the product, the jobs the car manufacturers create are of lowly skilled. Furthermore, many factory workers are hired from abroad, so the jobs created does not even benefit Malaysians. The technology it uses are also outdated and borrowed or licensed from other car manufacturers. So, the national car neither benefits Malaysians at the lower end nor at the higher research and development end of the job spectrum.

For a policy to uplift the poor, it ended up gauging the middle class for the benefits of the rich. While the poor is none the better. Unfortunately, this gives Umno the perfect excuse to continue with the corrupt policies in perpetuity.

In fact, it is not in Umno’s interest to actually uplift the downtrodden, but just enough to satisfy the electorate to give them the mandate in the next election. They may promise developments before election, but for each ringgit they spend baiting the electorate, they take back 10, 100 or 1000 times over the period between elections.

The people have to give them the vote here and now, but the development they promise in return is far into the future and often do not materialise. No one is willing to pay for something that may not materialise, but in Malaysia that is exactly what election is about. When promises are broken, Malaysians meekly vote for the same candidates in the next election. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, but expecting a different result.

Umno has repeatedly fed the majority Malays that the country owes them a keep, that they are entitled to a cut of the pie by virtue of their ancestry, never mind that many self-proclaimed Malays originated from Middle East, India, Thailand or even China. They do not realize the pie did not simply fall from the sky. Someone has to expand the effort to bake it. They want to reap the benefit but not put in the hard work.

The other non-Malay true sons and daughters of the soil, the orang asli and other indigenous tribes in Sabah and Sarawak who have more claim to land ancestry than any other race in Malaysia including many Malays, remain in the back-waters, uprooted and harassed if they don’t practice the “right” religion. Their churches are destroyed; they are displaced from their ancestral land to make way for dams and oil palm plantations.

Whilst at the same time, the most vocal defenders of Malays rights gladly sell precious real estates to foreigners; including those from Singapore, China and Middle-east, pushing up property prices and making them even more out of reach for ordinary Malaysians.

The rapidly expanding Iskandar region in Southern Johor is a case in point. The government is supposed to impose a minimum RM1million purchase price for foreign investors. However, this rule is exempted for the choicest locale, like Puteri Harbour and Danga Bay where the Johor Sultan has a stake; making it easier to move sales by allowing foreigners to own freehold properties in the region at lower threshold.

The latest piece of real estate development news in the region is the land reclamation and property development project on the Tebrau Strait next to the Second Link undertaken by a Chinese firm(from China); again with the Sultan’s blessings. The project only came to light when Singapore expressed concern for the environmental impact it causes. Where is the loud cry of defending Malay rights when real estates are sold to foreigner for perpetuity?

In short, when Umno declares it is defending Bumiputra’s rights, it is not. It is not even defending Malay rights. It is only defending its own rights. The methods it uses to implement the policy further narrows the circle of beneficiaries. The entire justification and execution of NEP are fallacious and bankrupt. Now, Umno does not even pretend to justify the continuation of Bumiputra-first policy on uplifting the poor, but on some vague “special rights and privileges” and fictitious social contracts.

An oft-heard argument for the unwritten social contract is that by granting citizenship to non-Malays during independence, the Malays are making a great sacrifice and thus ought to exact compensation.

This argument presupposes that the non-Malays are free-loaders who are simply here to grab wealth from the hands of the Malays. Nothing is further from the truth, in fact, the non-Malays are wealth creators.

The country would have been that much poorer had they migrated and set up shops elsewhere, both figuratively and literally speaking. We need look no further than across the causeway. The Malays got the gift of laborer that creates wealth and then for a second time when they demanded a slice of the pie.

While South Africa ended apartheid policy twenty years ago, we still live under the shackle of race-based policies. While the BN government actively promotes racial segregation policies and shielding the most vociferous racist from criticism, vernacular schools that are actually more multiracial than the national schools are blamed for sowing disunity.

When the government actively promotes the exclusivity of Malayness and Islam, for instance by prohibiting others from using certain words, erecting barriers between races, enacting laws that only applies to the Malays, constantly harping on non-existence threat from the non-Malays, the non-Malay/Muslims are blamed for the disunity of the country.

The Umno leaders and other Malay NGOs that spun off from Umno, in particular, despite leading the largest ethnic group and their unassailable position, are always expanding precious energies in propagating the siege mentality, setting up imaginary straw men to defeat. It would be a waste of resources under the best of circumstances, but their accusations have the acidic effect of poisoning race relation further, thus justifying their paranoia.

The so-called defenders of Islam consistently violate the high standards they set for other communities. When they complain about loud sermons from churches, they forget Azan is broadcasted indiscriminately five times a day, every day, for as long as one can remember. Often, neighboring mosques within ear shot are out of sync, the competing Azan result in a cacophony.

If a church does what a mosque is doing, it would have been quickly denounced as illegal proselytization. If the church authority confiscates Qurans and stamp it with disclaimers, it would have been flayed for desecration and a great insult to Islam.

Defending Islam has been the all-purpose shield for the self-proclaimed defenders to do just about anything. The worrying trend of increasing number of Malaysians joining the ranks of ISIS is a result of stoking the fire over many years.

While the threat posed by non-Muslim only exists in the minds of the defenders of Islam, the threat posed by these fighters returning from an orgy of maiming and beheading, is real. The very act of defending Allah and Islam itself is an insult to Allah and Islam, it achieves the opposite of what it claims.

They also forget before the introduction of Islam, Hinduism held sway in the Malay Archipelago. The many majestic Hindu temples still standing in Indonesia is a testament to the many centuries of Hindu influence.

The Malay culture is a mixture of Indian, Middle-Eastern, European and Eastern cultures. The Malay language consists of words taken from Sanskrit, Arabic, Portuguese, English, not to mention various Chinese dialects.

Some Malay leaders and academicians are actively erasing any vestiges of Malay culture that they deem to be incompatible with what they perceive as true Islamic teaching. Denying the existence of Malay culture before the introduction of Islam is to deny the full richness of Malay culture. The greatest threat to the continuity of the Malay culture and ethnic group does not come from outside the community, but from within its own rank.

Some of the perceived grouses by Malay leaders about the non-Malays do not stand up to scrutiny either: they are too competitive, they don’t mix around/assimilate with/adapt to the locals, they perceive themselves to be too good to mix with the locals, they are threatening the sanctity of Islam, they also benefit from the crony system, they don’t play by the rule and prone to cutting corners etc.

The non-Malays have to work very hard not only because they do not receive special treatment from the government, in this globalized age, they have to compete with other competitors from around the world. It almost boggles the mind for a loser to blame the winner for working too hard. When Lee Chong Wei losses to Lin Dan, he does not blame Lin Dan for working too hard. We do not expect our competitors to slacken just so we can catch up. The world waits for nobody. Either you swim or you sink.

Many Malay leaders blame the disunity of Malays and non-Malays on vernacular school and the unwillingness of non-Malays to assimilate, but judging by the fervor of Malay leaders in relentlessly pursuing Islamization (and often the radical Wahabi/Salafi kind), one would think that even Malays do not want to be Malays, but prefer to be Arabs. Besides, when the representatives of Malays are the likes of sexist leaders from Perkasa, Isma and Umno MPs, who in their right mind would want to be associated with them?

If a trader or contractor cuts corners or cheats, the right thing to do is to charge them in a court of law and fine them or put them in jail. It is the government’s job to keep the country on a straight path. Using the criminals as an excuse for perpetuating a crime is a massive dereliction of duty both on the part of the government and on those who actually put forward such brain-dead rationale.

The problem with Malaysian leaders (and judging by the latest Umno confab, ALL of Umno leaders) is that they only aspire to become a “jaguh kampong” (village champion). Instead of aspiring to become a leader for all races, they tend to confine themselves to a subgroup. If they succeed, they become a “jaguh kampong”; if they fail, not even that.

Umno is a gone case, even on occasions, when one or two of their leaders say something that make some sense, they are not saying things the people don’t already know for the last 20 to 30 years. At best, they are being insincere; at worst, they are seriously behind the curve. In other countries, they would not even be fit to be at the bottom of the barrel, let alone ruling a country. These are the caliber of leaders we can look forward to in Umno. It would have been less insulting if they just fade away quietly.

Umno and BN will not turn over a new leaf out of the kindness of their hearts. Right now, the country is held hostage by Umno because many rural Malays do not understand the true state of the country. We need to reach out and educate them of all the resources the BN government has siphoned off over the years.

The entire country cannot move forward unless all move together. In a sense, the aspirations of NEP were right. Unfortunately, those in power simply use it as an excuse to enrich themselves.

Unless the rural Malays see the massive blood-letting carried out over the years in their name and the urgency of reform, the country will sink further in international ranking. If we allow BN to continue plunder the country, we have only ourselves to blame.