As Malaysia celebrates its 50th anniversary of the formation of
Malaysia with Sabah and Sarawak, we must recognise the failures beneath
the veneer of success. Whilst some may be blinded by the economic
progress made, we must not lose sight that we have performed relatively
worse than countries like South Korea and Taiwan that were poorer than
us 50 years ago.
Malaysians ignore at their peril the wide disparity in infrastructure
development both between and within the urban-rural divide, the income
inequality and social injustices as well as the lack of empowerment and
human dignity. Instead of wiping out absolute poverty such as providing
basic needs of water, roads, internet connectivity and electricity in
Sabah and Sarawak as well as reducing relative poverty amongst the many
in the urban areas in terms of equal opportunities, the BN Federal
government appears to be more interested in enriching the few.
Tackle the 4 real problems
Reducing income inequality, not creating more millionaires will help
resolve Malaysia’s 4 real problems and realise the Merdeka promise of a
prosperous and just Malaysia that is safe clean, green and healthy.
Policy failures beget failed communities and dependant societies. The
response by entrenched interests and those in power, is not to focus on
the 4 real problems, but by diverting attention through raising
extremist issues relating to race and religion.
Such racial and extremist tactics are used successfully by BN to
avoid dealing with the 4 real problems of Malaysia namely, crime,
corruption, rise in indebtedness of governments and individual
households as well as the declining educational standards, productivity
and skills of Malaysian labour force.
The failure to address these four problems have led to Fitch Ratings
reducing the credit outlook for Malaysia from “stable” to “negative”,
the drop in the competitiveness ranking for Malaysia since 2006, the
alarming decline in educational standards shown by the drop in world
rankings for Malaysian universities and nearly 100,000 unemployed local
university graduates as well as the government sector being the
principal employer and driver of Malaysia’s economic growth.
Reducing crime is not that difficult if the BN Federal government is
willing to let the police fight crime instead of monitoring opposition
leaders. Presently only 10% of the police force are involved in crime
investigation work. If that proportion is increased to 50% of the total
police force, I am certain police omnipresence will be able to defeat
criminals in Malaysia.
False claims
BN claims the Federal government’s debt is 54% of the GDP. However
this does not include guaranteed government debt which would increase
total Federal government debt to 70%. If the 70% debt to GDP ratio is
high, household debt is higher at 83.5% of GDP. Such addiction to debt
is symptomatic of the fiscal recklessness of borrowing to spend its way
out of our country’s problems. The BN Federal government should show
leadership by example to individual households by reducing its
dependency of debt.
The BN Federal government has also failed to invest in the future by
investing in quality education that can produce quality workforce with
good command of English. With BN’s fixation on mediocrity instead of a
culture of excellence, on political quotas rather than performance and
on empty rhetoric rather than concrete action, Malaysia risks being left
behind and unable to escape the middle-income trap.
The time has come to adopt policies that unite and respect the people
instead of dividing them and denigrating them as second-class or third
class citizens as a pretext to create more millionaires. Failure to do
so will only hamper efforts to resolve Malaysia’s 4 real problems and
jeorpardise the Merdeka promise of a prosperous and just Malaysia that
is safe clean, green and healthy.
LIM GUAN ENG IS THE PENANG CHIEF MINISTER
SHARING AND INVESTING. It is my believe that everyone have the potential to have financial freedom in their life.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
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