Malaysia Plan number 11.

The number 11 is a favourite of a certain warrior of Bugis descent. It is also the symbol for a pair of Malay/Muslim tombstones. I hope the 11MP does not die under the weight of its own spin.

Our citizens, especially Malays are not keen to analyse the spin that’s in the 11MP. They prefer talking about palace intrigues like in the olden days. 

I am too, especially on the hot issue of Najib not turning up in a dialogue session created by his own supporters. In a previous article , I have already warned of Najib's penchant of transporting pliant and ready to hallelujah people to the venue.  Sadly, I have been proven right. 
Unfortunately my thoughts on that issue must wait. The believability of the 11MP is more important. 

People prefer talking about the Mahathir-Najib war of attrition; which goes to show we must have our politics right. And politics is all about placing the correct people in power.

At the moment, many believe we have the wrong person in power and he is not trustworthy. The root of this distrust is Najib’s throwing out the principle of accountability. In the case of 1MDB, he decided on many things and hid them from the cabinet until things got out of control. He did not feel he ought to be accountable to his cabinet colleagues.

Because of that, collective responsibility is an overrated virtue without an important qualification. Collective responsibility can  only be exercised when there is collective accountability practised first. The person who destroyed this idea should be the one to leave the cabinet. That person is Najib.

 I have said before that when one quotes his bloodline when putting up argument, he has no more substance to offer.

So Najib has Bugis blood- is that supposed to mean something special? With Bugis blood, Najib can dismiss accountability? The leader and government who/that forgets accountability is at war with us. And we are many, he is one. We throw out such a leader.

Will the Malays die if Najib or whoever else from UMNO having the same mind-set is not leader of this country? Islam did not die when Prophet Muhammad passed away.

I have said this before too. There is one Malay UMNO out of every 6 Malays. If one UMNO Malay is to disappear, there are 5 other Malays who continue to live without UMNO. Think about this.

The blood that insists on honesty, on good governance, on seeking justice, meting out punishment to wrong doers, which stands for honest and fair government is more important. That kind of blood is inside many of us and many of us is more than one Najib.

Take a closer look at the 11MP. I am saying this is a plan of the top 20%, for the top 20% by the top 20%. If it’s done by the top 20%, would the interests of the bottom 40% be rigorously thought for them?

This idea of raising the income and wealth of the bottom 80%, not just the bottom 40% has been in the Malaysia Plans before. So what is there to shout about it in the 11MP?

I am suspicious about the number of this group being 2.7 million people. How did we define the bottom 40%? What is the poverty income line?

The PIL generally accepted is 50% of the household median income. Was it RM5000? Or as stated by the 11MP, using the figure in 2014, it was RM4585. That would mean the PIL used is around 2300.

If RM2300, how do you explain those people who got BR1M-ED number 7 million people? That would have meant 7 million people earned below RM3000. Does this mean, that actually the government recognised that the PIL should be RM3000?
If the government insists that RM 2300 is the PIL, and the population of this group is 2.7 million, how do we categorise the 4.3 million people who were given BR1M? Can we say the 4.3 million people (7m-2.7m) were bribed by Najib and so the BR1M is actually an acronym for Beri Rasuah 1 Malaysia?

So how can we reconcile that the bottom 40% all of whom qualify for BR1M is only 2.7 million people when the government brags that 7 million people are to receive BR1M?   

Putrajaya must come clean on this. Don’t put PIL so low, that it catches the barest minimum as poor people. PIL is poverty income line- a level of income below which, a person is categorised as abject poor.

If one sets the bar at RM1 per month, maybe only one out of 10 people earns that much. Hence we declare to the world, we have eradicated poverty.

But set the bar at RM5, we find probably 6 people fall under that line. So the decision to put up which bar is a political choice not an economic one.

Which brings me to this important point. Market forces do shape the outcome in our social arrangements- who gets richer, who gets poorer, how income and wealth are distributed, who controls what and how much. People get appointed to their income and wealth positions by market forces, but the market forces are themselves shaped by politics.

The 11MPP is not clear on this. What is the PIL used? RM800 for peninsula and RM1100 for east Malaysia? Putting the line so low, would give the effect of placing so many out of abject poverty. Using a low PIL allows the government to claim that it has successfully reduced poverty.

Hurrah!

The median income used by wahid Omar some time ago was RM5000. I invited him to come to Raub, be at the pasar minggu and tell the people, your median household income is RM5000. I want him to be present so that the fish mongers, the vegetable sellers, the meat sellers and others can have the opportunity to throw stuff at his face.That's participatory democracy for you!

You can’t even define who’s in the B40. We cannot just place people outside or inside arbitrarily without recourse to some definite criteria.

I am of course suspicious of the whole numbers game. I can’t find the 2014 statistics at the DOS or EPU portals yet the 11MP uses 2014 figures liberally. And as these numbers are given by the same people of the same mental quality as those who can’t differentiate between units and hard cash, this makes the statistics even more suspicious. It’s a cause for worry.

We can nit-pick on many things. The targeted USD15, 000 per capita income. In real or nominal terms? The poor don’t care as long there is more money in their hands.

We all know about giving education and raising skills and all that so that these will lead to productivity. This strategy is built upon the old economic thinking that the x factor which explains differentiation in wealth and income is marginal productivity. This idea wants us to believe that whoever has special skills and has something which is of value will earn higher incomes.

The market system ought to reward economic agents in accordance to that principle; but it does not. The reason it does not is because government interferes and tinkle in the market system in the wrong ways. They appoint wealth to those least qualified to earn it only because they have the political power to do so.

The Plan talks about the delivery system. This is a fancy term which simply means execution and implementation. The plan fails if the implementation is done by corrupt people. The Plan fails if the government forgets it is accountable to the people.