Each time I come home, after clearing customs at KLIA (one of my favourite airports for its spatial design and aerotrain), riding the express to KL Sentral - one of the most efficient I’ve taken - and seeing how Malaysians go about their life, my cynicism gives way to a cautious optimism that perhaps things could change for the better. But that’s just a returnee’s sentimental perception fresh off the plane.  

erl train transport 240209 Stepping out of KL Sentral, my first point of contact are the cab drivers. Sitting in front, my chat with the driver usually starts with how their day has been and end with them griping about traffic jams and rising costs of food and crime.   

Occasionally, the conversation strays into politics. On this topic, though, most are cautious. They say they can’t complain as long as the country’s stable and they’re free to work and send their children to university, put food on the table and take an overseas holiday once in a while. Malaysia’s a pretty good place to live despite the politics, says the cab driver. I think so, too.  

But after a few days of reading the different realities represented in the mainstream and alternative media, you’d think that the country’s run by corrupt pork-barreling nincompoops who should have been impeached and jailed a long time ago if our anti-corruption agency and police had done their job. My cynicism quickly returns.

Cab drivers provide an interesting gauge of public sentiment. Each time I visit the poor cities of Asia, they’re my first source of information on local issues. All are interested in knowing where you’re from. Except in parts of Europe and the US, cab drivers from Indonesia to India know quite a bit about Malaysia.

klcc petronas tower Many perceive Malaysia as a country of ‘rich’ people, of mega shopping malls and multiplexes. They could only dream of visiting KL to see the Petronas Twin Towers and Putrajaya, maybe even drive on the stretch of tree-lined highway from KLIA to KL.

An elusive respite from their daily drudgery where chaos rules the gridlocked pot-holed roads, where dust and industrial pollutants shroud the greyish city from day to night, where cripples in rags wander among the scavengers in the fly-infested dank market looking for edible scraps, where malnourished children die from preventable diseases.

Yes, all things considered, we are doing well in many areas. We are living better and longer compared to our poorer Asean neighbours. The indicators say so. Our well-being and life chances, measured by a composite human development index of life expectancy, levels of education  and gross national income is third highest among Asean countries after Brunei and Singapore.  

Expatriates working in Malaysia, according to the Mercer’s Quality of Living Report , also think our standard of living is way ahead of other Asean countries, but nowhere near Singapore.

By World Bank standards , we’re an upper middle income economy since having moved away from relying on rubber, tin and palm oil for our revenue to exporting manufactured products. (Digital television, audio systems and computers sold in Australian stores carry the ‘Made in Malaysia’ label. And Protons cruise the streets of Sydney and Melbourne.)

Fewer Malaysians poorer today

Fewer Malaysians are poorer today than in 1970 when two-thirds of bumiputera households were living below the poverty line compared to the Chinese (26.2%) and Indian (39.2%).

In 2002, the poverty rate for bumiputera had fallen to 7.3%, Chinese (1.5%), Indians (1.9%), although a decade later “the Chinese mean household income is still about two times higher than the bumiputera” according to the Millennium Development Goals 2012 report .

Malaysian academic Muhammad Abdul Khalid, in a paper published in Jurnal Ekonomi Malaysia, attributes the gap to the ‘intergenerational transfer of household wealth accumulation’ and plausibly to the ‘discrimination by the Chinese against the non-Chinese in the labour market’. 

Deferring to Economic Planning Unit figures, he foresees the wealth gap widening for two reasons. First, the current tax structure favours the rich and penalises the poor. Second, the privatisation of higher education and reduction of government subsidy of public university fees will further disadvantage students from the rural areas, the majority being bumiputera.   

university students multiracial We’re positioned as the region’s ‘education hub’ offering courses in the hard sciences, medicine and IT. For a population of about 28 million, we have more than 70 private universities and colleges attracting international students, and more than 20 public universities clustered in Kuala Lumpur. There are more than enough colleges to cater to qualified Malaysians, but the fees are out of reach to many.

The affirmative action argument says the privatisation of higher education is stacked against the poor. And since the majority of the poor are bumiputera, the wealth gap will widen. That may be a fair point although the implied necessity to continue with the race-based preferential treatment will only perpetuate the distrust and suspicion among the people and depleting the country’s social capital.  

A paper published in the Global Economic Review notes that Malaysia’s social capital index (3.94), is as low as Russia (3.91), Colombia (3.56), India (3.39) and Iran (3.38).   

azlan Malaysia, however, is a good place to do business.  We’re moderately free in our economic ranking according to the US-based Heritage Foundation report . But we lag in “promoting the effective rule of law and enhancing and modernising the legal framework. The judicial system remains vulnerable to political interference, and property rights are not strongly protected. Lingering corruption further undermines freedom and hampers long-term institutional competitiveness.”

Last year, our transparency corruption index ranking slipped four places to 60th spot out of 183 countries. We’ll be stuck in this rut as long as our politicians continue to shaft their snouts in the trough and the politically connected continue to accumulate their ill-gotten wealth while civil activists, human rights monitors, concerned citizens and journalists are persecuted and attacked for doing what’s right and good for the country.

So, is Malaysia still a good place to live? Yes, the cab driver believes so, as long as he’s free to earn an honest living and live well for himself and his family. Yes, the cab drivers have read all about what’s wrong with the country. But, being the little person in the bigger scheme of things - they sigh they can’t do much except to whisper words of caution and let things be.  

 

ERIC LOO left Malaysia for Australia in 1986 to work as a journalist. He currently lectures at University of Wollongong, Australia, and also mentors international journalism students via UPIU.com, run by United Press International. He edits a refereed journal Asia Pacific Media Educator published by SAGE Publications (New Delhi) and conducts journalism training workshops in Asia. Email: eloo@uow.edu.au