Just as well Soi Lek did medicine, not economics

COMMENT Hyperbolic and exaggerated statements are par for the course at this stage in the campaign for the general election.

The seasoned are apt to factor in the necessary discounts for the fact that this is the madding season and so inflated statements are to be expected and vetting them for their truth-content is difficult.

But shake them down to their truth-core is a must. Otherwise what they purport to say about reality cannot be grasped.

MCA president Dr Chua Soi Lek's assertion that an Anwar Ibrahim administration would resemble that of Malaysia's fifth prime minister, the hapless Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, on the grounds that both leaders' intoxication with religious talk invites disaster on the economic front is an opinion that must be parsed for its truth-content.

"I have had the opportunity to serve under Pak Lah (Abdullah Ahmad) and (caretaker Prime Minister) Najib Abdul Razak," said Chua, who was health minister during Abdullah's tenure in office.

"I can see the difference. Their leadership was completely different, so were the results, this is very clear.

"When Pak Lah led the country, every day he would talk about Islam Hadhari (progressive Islam) but never about the economy, because Pak Lah's (Islamic studies) background is the same as Anwar, they don't know about the economy, they only talk about doa (prayers)," he said during a luncheon in Segamat, Johor yesterday.

Let's separate the chaff from the grain in Chua's opinion.

Off the mark

Strictly speaking, the MCA chief did not serve under Najib: Soi Lek resigned from government in early 2008 as a result of a sex scandal and sat out the election in March that year. He was not included in the federal cabinet after the polls.

When Najib took over the prime ministerial reins from Abdullah in April 2009, Chua was not a minister and so could not have known - as different from merely inferring - what it was like to serve under Najib.

Unless, of course, one contends that the experience of serving under a leader while he is deputy skipper of the crew - Najib was deputy PM under Abdullah - is not much different to serving under him when he has been elevated to head honcho, Chua's assertion that he had served under Najib is off the mark.

One has merely to recall the gulf in character between the administration of Prime Minister Hussein Onn (1976-81) and that of his successor, Dr Mahathir Mohamed (1981-2003), to know what is meant here: serving under a deputy skipper can be a vastly different experience from what would be the case when the person is in charge of the stern.

Further, in extruding more chaff from Chua's assessment, one finds that Abdullah's graduate studies in Islam are not the same preparation as Anwar's because the latter graduated in Malay studies.

Malays are Muslims but Islamic studies are not exactly Malay studies.

A graduate in Malay studies, Anwar went on to make a career out of Islamic politics; Abdullah studied Islam in university but did not make a career out of it, though by the time he became PM in 2003, it was imperative of a national skipper to enunciate a platform upon which to hold forth on his particular vision of Islam.

Responsibility for that reality is attributable to Anwar, for after he became part of Mahathir's administration in 1982, the accent on Islam in national politics was greatly accentuated.

National debt ballooned

Now Chua's claim that the administration of a religion-suffused leader like Anwar would resemble that of another inebriate of religion - Abdullah's - will have to contend with what the experience of the country was when Anwar, the Malay graduate-turned Islamist, became finance minister between 1991 and '98.

To argue that Anwar's years as finance minister would not be indicative of how he will turn out as CEO of the country would be like saying that Mahathir's days as a Malay ultra, in the immediate post-May 13 period, were not indicative of his current incarnation as a strong supporter of Malay right-wing group Perkasa.

During Anwar's time as finance minister, the Malaysian economy posted health rates of growth, amid budget surpluses and a stable price for oil - hallmarks of a successful tenure in the role.

Chua's contends that Najib is good on the economic aspects of the management of the national estate, and on that front alone, deserving of endorsement at GE13.

In short, an economics-oriented Najib is a much better bet for the future of Malaysians than a religion-focused Anwar who would be apt, in Chua's view, to follow in the footsteps of the ineffectual Abdullah.

The problem with this view is that when voters come to collect on their wager, they might find the national account is severely overdrawn.

When Abdullah left office, the national debt stood at RM260 billion. We are now, after four years of Najib's rule, RM560 billion in the red and counting. There was no debt when Anwar was in charge of the national treasury.

It's just as well that at university, Soi Lek studied medicine, not economics.

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TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.