Now for the difficult part – political will
Published on: Sunday, May 26, 2019
By: Datuk John Lo
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[https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/govt-announces-shared-prosperity-2030-replace-debtdriven-megaproject-economic-model]
What Tun M has announced is a teaser of the PH economic model. What will come later, which I hope will be soonest, will be a detailed economic model to be fully backed up with details, data, policies and implementation strategy. With these, the PH economic model will be complete for Malaysians to see its benefits and directions. I take tremendous comfort in Tun M’s announcement as the PH economic model is in the right direction for New Malaysia to go forward as a united Malaysian nation.
From Tun M’s brief rundown on PH economic model, Malaysians can expect it to be different in philosophical approach and implementation from the economic model of the previous government.
Success of the PH economic model will depend on many domestic and external factors, some of which are beyond PH government’s control.
Within our country, the PH government has already put in place quite a number of policies with their implementations in progress. These are essential for the implementation of its new economic model. Most outstanding of these are rule of law, much improved transparency and accountability in governance and police, independence of MACC, trimming expenditure and emphasis on racial and religious commonality. Already, these measures are creating some favourable impacts on our society with Christians joining Muslims breaking of fast. These will unite Malaysia and poise it to become an economic tiger to be reckoned with on the global stage.
The bogeyman to watch out will be [a] Whether PH government’s political will is sufficiently strong to erase or minimize racial and religious differences. Or allow politicians to exploit these differences for their personal, political and economic agenda. This, as I see it, will be the biggest test of the PH government as it will require plenty of political will powers. [b] PH government’s ability to sort out glaring racial imbalances in the public sector and some parts of the private sector. [c] Another challenge for PH government to tackle is to convince Malays to do away with economic crutches. Aids, concessions etc should be given on basis of needs as Anwar has been advocating. This is not simple after years of entitlement as a right. I have written time and again that a country cannot complete globally, cannot achieve rapid economic progress, if the majority keeps on insisting on rights and privileges. All successful nations in recent times have no such policies. I hope the PH government, in its new economic model, can sort out this anomaly. A good way of doing this is to highlight success stories of Malays who have made good independently. And there are plenty of them.
[d] PH government’s political courage to produce equitable budgets and fiscal policies to keep its economic model on track without giving in to excessive or unreasonable demands.
[e] PH government’s gumption to recognise and appreciate Malaysian talents, nurture and reward them. One of the greatest failures of BN government was the almost total lack of attention to talents. It’s regressive policies of refusal to value talents all but chase them away. The PH government’s economic model can succeed for benefits of all Malaysians if it can have the appropriate policies to retain Malaysian talents. The reality is talents transcend national boundaries and politics. The best and ablest will go to where they are welcome and appreciated. Only talents will drive our economy to achieve high income sustainably. Unskilled labour will down grade our economy to 3rd world.
[f] PH’s cohesive leadership and unity as a coalition to keep its new economic model on track. The PH economic model can bloom only if the unity of coalition is solid. Expect the opposition will challenge its implementation in the most ferocious and vicious manner.
The PH’s “shared prosperity 2030” economic model can be only as good as the quality of its policies, implementation strategy and political courage to make changes. Najib, being confronted by his warlords, developed cold feet in implementation of his Government Transformation Programme. PH must stay brave.
Globally, we are living in exciting, confusing and challenging time. Hopefully, the PH government will have the necessary wisdom to steer our country in the right path. This is no easy task, made a lot more complex by Donald Trump’s erratic and illogical economic policies and behaviour. By picking fights with almost every country, including American close allies, he has created havoc in the international economic system. He is stirring up “trade wars” everywhere. Only God can knock some sense into this man for he is behaving like world’s only judge, persecutor and executioner, ignoring World Trade Organisation, IMF and World Bank, arbitrarily slapping economic sanctions to any country unwilling to kowtow to him. Trump is a big bully boy.
Scare of losing America’s No. 1 super power status to China, Trump has picked a big “trade war” fight with the Chinese. He has gone against the age old adage of “innocence until proven guilty”, he has accused Huawei of all sort of security crimes without providing an iota of evidence. His latest ban on Huawei has rendered WTO and other related international institutions completely impotent. China’s “live and let live” policy has gained respect in the world, including America’s European and a few Latin American allies, the biggest of which is Brazil. They have refused to comply with Trump’s bullying ways on Iran and Huawei. Brazil has signed up trade deals with China in the billions much to American chagrin.
USA will find itself shunned by most of the advanced countries. USA is in self-destruct mood.
Back to Malaysia. The PH government must tread carefully for both USA and China are our largest partners. Just avoid Trump’s cross-hair! If Malaysia becomes his target, he can destroy/derail the PH economic model and thereby our progress! A drowning man is a desperate man. Also, Trump’s madness will put a brake on global economic growth. This will affect Malaysia’s economic prospects in the near and middle terms.
For Sabah, I am encouraged that the PH economic model has provision for regional equitable economic growth. Since Sabah has been ignored in the last 50 years, we should, if the implementation of this model is fair, be allocated equitable amount of development funds. But life is never fair. Let me stress again what we can get from the PH economic model of “Shared Prosperity 2030” will very much dependent on the unity of Sabahan political leaders. History has shown there is a direct co-relationship between political unity and amount of economic development funding from Federal. Sabah politicians can agree to disagree on anything BUT MUST UNITE TO FIGHT FOR AN EQUITALBE SLICE OF PH’S “SHARED PROSPERITY 2030” for Sabah. Bipartisan political Unity for Sabah’s economic interest is political statesmanship, disunity is selfish politics.
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