MP SPEAKS 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.

 

Reducing income inequality, not creating more millionaires will help resolve Malaysia's four real problems and realise the Merdeka promise of a prosperous and just Malaysia that is safe clean, green and healthy.

Four real problems

Policy failures beget failed communities and dependant societies. The response by entrenched interests and those in power, is not to focus on the four 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 four 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  percent of the police force are involved in crime investigation work. If that proportion is increased to 50 percent of the total police force, I am certain police omnipresence will be able to defeat criminals in Malaysia.

Addiction to debt

BN claims the federal government's debt is 54 percent of the GDP. However this does not include guaranteed government debt which would increase total federal government debt to 70 percent.

If the 70 percent debt to GDP ratio is high, household debt is higher at 83.5 percent 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 four 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, secretary-general of DAP and Bagan MP. The views expressed in this article are his own.