MP SPEAKS | Do you still believe that PN govt cares for you?

MP SPEAKS | On March 27, nine days after the start of the movement control order (MCO), Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said this during his speech on the Prihatin relief package: “This government may not be the government that you voted for. But I want all of you to know that this government cares for you”.

During the early days of the MCO, many people were willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the prime minister. Now, almost six months after the formation of the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government, with the benefit of hindsight, we have good reason to doubt that the PN government is really a “government that cares for you”.

Let’s start with the recently announced Second Quarter 2020 GDP figures. Malaysia’s economy contracted by 17.1 percent, the worst performance among Asian countries during this period.

Singapore, which announced its own lockdown or ‘circuit breaker’ on April 7, experienced a 13.2 percent contraction while Indonesia experienced a 5.3 percent contraction. This quarterly fall in GDP is even higher than the 11.2 percent contraction experienced in the fourth quarter of 1998, during the height of the Asian financial crisis.

In absolute terms, the GDP in Q2 2020 fell by RM59.6 billion (year on year comparison with Q2 2019). The construction sector fell by almost half (-44.7 percent). The manufacturing sector contracted by RM14.5 billion or 18.4 percent, the mining sector contracted by RM5.2 billion or 19.9 percent and the services sector, which comprised more than half of the GDP, contracted by RM32.3 billion or 16.2 percent (See Table 1).

This unprecedented GDP contraction caused Bank Negara Malaysia to change its GDP forecast for 2020 from -2 percent to 0.5 percent to an updated forecast of -3.5 percent to -5.5 percent. It remains to be seen if this forest will be revised downwards further when the Third Quarter GDP figures are announced on Nov 13.

This steep contraction could have been lessened if the PN government had not rushed into the MCO without a coordination plan in place.

The International Trade and Industry Ministry (Miti) website infamously crashed during the first couple of days of the MCO as thousands of companies flooded its website to apply for approvals to continue operations during the lockdown. The delays in getting the necessary approvals would have been very costly for companies operating in the essential sectors.

Furthermore, there was no consideration in giving approvals to many suppliers of those in the essential sectors. For example, a milk production company complained that their supplier of milk cartons and bottles were having problems getting the approval from Miti.

There was also poor coordination between the Transport Ministry, the port operators and transporters leading to cargo piling up in our major ports because transporters did not have permission to transport these goods and factories did not have permission to open to receive these goods. Transport minister Wee Ka Siong had to issue a few directives to allow for the clearing of the ports for a few days per week during the early part of the MCO.

After shutting down the economy without a coordination plan in place, the PN government suddenly wanted to open the economy again on May 1. This led to the fiasco whereby standard operating procedures (SOP) were not prepared and stakeholders such as the state governments were not properly briefed. Most Malaysians would remember this time as the time when hairdressers were given permission to start operating again without having any clearly published SOP.

Many SMEs were suffering during the lockdown and the assistance provided by the PN government in the form of the Wage Subsidy Programme (WSP) was clearly not enough. Many SMEs were looking for a more targeted and generous program such as those announced in Singapore’s Covid Relief Bill in April and further enhanced in June.

But rather than tabling such as bill during the parliamentary sitting on May 18, the PN government decided to only have a half a day sitting on that day. The reasons given were fear of the Covid-19 and also not wanting to “play politics” during the time of the MCO.

But these fears did not prevent the prime minister from appointing a larger number of PN backbenchers and other PN politicians as chairpersons of various government-linked companies (GLCs) and statutory bodies. These fears did not prevent the PN from bringing down the Bersatu-led Pakatan Harapan government in Kedah and from trying to do the same in Negeri Sembilan and Selangor, without success.

When the Covid-19 Relief Bill was finally tabled during the current parliamentary sitting, it is already too late to save the SMEs which have had to close as a result of the MCO.

What is becoming increasingly clear is that the PN government, led by Muhyiddin, is not a government that cares for you but rather, a group of politicians with their own separate interests and priorities, all wanting to gain access to power for themselves rather than to serve the people of Malaysia.

ONG KIAN MING is the Bangi MP and assistant political education director of the DAP.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.

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