The UMNO Turf War and the 11th Malaysia Plan.

I want to write something about the 11MP. But before that, a few comments about the consuming issue of the moment- the infighting of UMNO. Its a turf war.

Come Friday, don’t expect any revolutionary revelations from Najib. The session is all scripted already, the questions known and answers rehearsed. The answers may have been readied for Najib to read out loud.

It’s just a forum to give Najib a chance to give answers prepared by his PR people on issues raised by DR Mahathir. Ask for admission, and his people will say, the venue is full already- with Najib’s pliant ready to hallelujah people.

Dr Mahathir has already said he is prepared to debate openly with Najib. So, we ask Najib please accept the challenge from a 90 year old man. He will not because as Najib says he doesn’t like to quarrel- and I believe and know he is not a quarrelsome type. He only likes to hit you from behind like what he is doing to Dr Mahathir at the moment. DR Mahathir prefers a frontal assault.

Dr Mahathir’s solution has 2 parts. I agree with first part which is the removal of Najib as PM. He is a menace to the country. We can write many things about Najib until we are blue in the face, the arteries in our necks are visible and until the cows come home to the condominium at 1 Menerung.

I disagree with the second part- because DR Mahathir confines his choice of successor to the leadership hierarchy in UMNO. Extraordinary times require outside of the box thinking. This entails freeing oneself from conventional thinking that UMNO’s top leader must come from within the hierarchy.  

Muhyidin is part of the ship that is running aground. So why should he be allowed to become ship’s captain when he is moulded from the same cloth? Pick someone who is not part of the ship that has run aground. My choice is Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.

Those who linked Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah to the BMF scandal in the 1980’s , think again. BBM was not under the Finance Minister at that time. It was under the charge of the PM’s office and direct supervision of BBMB fell under DR Mahathir. And please read the history of the BMF- all the papers that linked Tengku Razaleigh to the BMF scandal were sued for defamation by Tengku Razaleigh and Tengku Razaleigh won each and every one of the suits. Pick him as the PM.

But only if he is willing to be unpopular. He has to forge a new politics that gets rid of race based, religious based political parties. He must recognise that Gerakan and MCA are no longer spokesmen for the Chinese community. He must reset the politics of the country.

He must reset all the institutions that support our democracy- the election process, the judiciary, our parliament.  He must get rid of corruption.

He must be willing to restructure UMNO to make it relevant to the future. Most of all, he must change the mind-set of the Malays. Which means what? Which means the drivng forces that sustain the relevance of the Malay struggle are not his race, his religion or his Kings. The results in the by elections of Permatang Pauh dan Rompin showed these issues were no longer as important as before and that no party can buy its way to victory. 

Now let’s talk about the 11^th Malaysia Plan.

The Plan contains an acknowledgement and acceptance of a very important underlying theme- that our country is unequal. Between the top 20% and the rest expressed in terms of disparities in income and wealth, between town and country, between cities.

There is an inverse relation between inequality and opportunity; the higher the inequality, the lower the opportunities. There is a simple explanation for this. The people who create the inequalities will ensure they remain so. The people who produce the inequality and are beneficiaries of the inequality will write in terms in any plan to make sure status quo remain the same.

The Plan. The Plan! It’s a guideline that maps out where we want to go from where we are now. The devil is in the details which are not in the Plan. So, we should not over-hyped the Plan as though it’s a be all end all solution.

The economic Plan is only good if it places wealth creating resources directly in the hands of the economic agent. The economic agent may be the individual farmer, a single mother, an association of fellow individuals engaged directly in an economic or business undertaking but never an intermediary agent doing things on behalf of others. If our target are the poor people then place wealth creating resources in their hands directly. Not in the hands of intermediaries.

If our target is to make cities and towns competitive, place the management of the city and towns directly in the hands of city councils and elected councillors. Hold local council elections.

We want to make farmers rich, but we place wealth creating resources in the hands of intermediaries- the pertubuhan peladang kawasan for example. The intermediaries will make sure they get to get the first and larger bite of the cherry and then let the half bitten cherry be shared among the many.

The highlight of these organisations at any given time, is the election of office bearers- who gets to be pengerusi pertubuhan peladang, who gets to be chosen as NAFAS etc. these organisations then get grants, facilities, assets etc. which they allocate among themselves first and then decide who gets them. As long as one gets to pick winners and play favourites according to subjective perceptions, the Plan will fail.

There is nothing new about the 11MP although PM Najib would want us to believe it is. Many of the measures to achieve the objectives of the Plan are repackaged ones from Plans of the past.

What is new for example in the plan to raise the income and wealth of the poor, the transformation of the rural sector and the fortification of the so called Malay economy?

Take the plan for the Malay economy. The solution in the 11MP seems to be the creation of a small selected of chosen ones to become rich as fast as possible. In simpler terms, the Malay economy is all about the creation a small elite of rent seekers.

The creation of rent seekers widens the inequality of the top 20% and the rest.

The Plan as a whole embodies the mentality of trickle-down economics. Create a coterie of super rich people, community, and clique and hope that these people, later, after enriching themselves first, will have the philanthropic urges to share with the bottom feeders.  They don’t. They help themselves first.

Consider this argument. Since Independence, all our Kings were, are and will always be Malays. The MBs save for Penang are all Malays. The state secretaries, the district officers, the directors of departments, the CPOs and the OCPDs, the penghulus, the JKKKs, the KSUs, the Chief Secretary, the IGPs are all Malays. In other words, every leader at every level who can make decisions are all Malays.

So how come the economic position of Malays at the lower rung of the social ladder has not improved much?

The simple and brutally frank answer is, these people help themselves first and then only consider helping out others. If by placing wealth creating resources directly in the hands of these top 20% inductees has helped them become rich and powerful, why is the same principle NOT applied to the rest? See what placing wealth creating resources directly in their hands can do for the rest.

PM Najib presented the 11MP to parliament. He did it in his usual style- talking down to others, ringed the speech with sarcasm at those who will disbelieve the Plan, veiling his attacks on Dr Mahathir and the opposition with mocking condescension.

For those who think that Najib was so fluid in his presentation the other day, please know there were two Teleprompters in front of him. He was just reading what his speechwriters and media minders wrote.

The 11^th Malaysia Plan is the Business Plan produced by Putrajaya to develop Malaysia for the next 5 years. It contains the desire to implement a set of ideas on how to prop up the economy. I say desire because articulation is only half the story; more important is the implementation.

And what do readers think is the underlying idea behind coming up with the Plan? The planning to help the poor is done by the people aspiring to arrive in the top 20%. The plan must necessarily therefore speaks and articulates the interests of the top 20%. This is a Plan of the top 20%, by the top 20% and for the top 20%.

Would we expect therefore that the interests of the not in the top 20% be really looked after other than giving the cursory treatment disguised in good graphics and verbal obfuscation?  The 11MP is the glossiest of the Malaysia Plans to be ever produced. I am afraid the dazzle and razzle hide more than they reveal honestly.

The Plan will cost taxpayers another RM260 billion. That money will be raised by loans and or bond issues. But the results will be the same- the government will pay the private sector. This will lead to concentration of income in the hands of the political and business elites. It will defeat the purpose of inclusiveness which the Plan says it wants to achieve.

I must give credit to the people who worked up the ideas in the Plan in recognising the most important issue in our economy- which is the issue of inequality. Unfortunately, the BN government in trying to mislead the people that they care for the bottom 40% by showing the care for them on paper, fails to explain the other more important aspect- how do the top 20% get to become rich?

Why was the Plan silent on this?

Otherwise, all the government has done is just to make a show of their concern for those at the bottom and making them feel good but in the end, without unlocking the mysteries on how the top 20% got rich, will only lead to ensuring the bottom 40% remain as they are- the bottom feeders.

Then the paid holy men will descend on the poor bottom feeders exhorting them to be thankful for the abundance that God has given them, through the agency of the government of course, and that if they show pliant and submissive gratitude, there will more coming to them. And part of showing gratitude is of course to continue supporting the government acting as THE agent to deliver God’s bounty on them.

Don’t we see where this argument leads to? To the preservation of the power of the business and political elite and to the preservation of inequality.

If we don’t explain issues like rent seeking, corruption, abuse of power, regulatory capture and seeking the removal of these, I am afraid, the 11MP will make sure the rich becomes richer, the poor becoming poorer.