Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

Perak power struggle - pause or game over?

Posted: 22 Jan 2013 11:43 AM PST

THE people of Perak are waiting expectantly to cast their vote in the 13th general election for a very special reason.

Chen Shaua Fui, fz.com

The first shock for the people was when the Barisan Nasional (BN) state government fell in the 2008 general election for the first time since independence in 1957. Then, they had a second shock when the new Pakatan Rakyat state government fell in a dramatic tussle just one year later.

It was to escalate into a serious constitutional crisis involving the palace, Election Commission, courts, security forces and a very physical session in the state legislative assembly.

At the end of the turmoil, the BN took control of the state once again and the coalition has ruled for about four years since then.

But that was not the final word on the crisis. The ousted menteri besar Datuk Seri Nizar Jamaluddin mounted a series of court challenges to reclaim the seat of government. However, after a full year, the Federal Court ruled that the BN's choice of menteri besar Datuk Seri Zambry Abdul Kadir was the rightful holder of the post.

The contest for control of the state erupted when three state assembly members, from the 32 that were from the Pakatan coalition, became BN-friendly independents thus changing the balance of power in the 59-member legislature.

Pakatan leaders stoutly maintained that the BN state government had no mandate to rule because they had not been voted in by the people. This was hotly debated at all levels of society, from the coffeeshops to cyberspace.

A common view was that the next general election would be a sort of referendum on whether the BN's action to take control of the state has the support of the people.

Of course, this view is not uniformly heard among the voters. Among the Chinese, a frequently aired opinion at the time of the crisis was that the Pakatan government was denied justice.

This could be because the Chinese were among the direct beneficiaries of a number of policy changes adopted by the Pakatan government. In particular, the decision to award land titles to holders of temporary occupancy licences (TOL) generated much goodwill for the new government. This was especially because the Chinese living in New Villages had been pressing for permanent titles since before independence, with little success.

A veteran political observer, Chong Soo Choon, 67, a long-time columnist for a Chinese daily, who provided in-depth analysis during the Perak power struggle, endorses this observation.

"Until today, the Chinese community around Ipoh think that the Pakatan government was unjustly overthrown, and people still talk about it during tea sessions," he said.

Chong, who lives in Ipoh, said that most of the Chinese he meets are of the opinion that if the Perak government had continued to be run by Pakatan, it would have performed on par with the Penang government and their living conditions could have improved as a result.

However, his ground observation shows that the Malays are split on this issue, with the older generation staunchly supporting the BN, and the younger generation rooting for change.

Undoubtedly, the BN government has tried to win back the people's support with a series of public-oriented programmes. Last year, the Perak government had restructured its water assets to pay back its RM1 billion debts to the federal government. The state government managed to reduce its debt to RM326million.

Also, more than 8,000 acres of land were allocated to Chinese independent schools, religious schools and Tamil schools, so that revenue generated from the land would be used to fund the schools. The Chinese educationists welcomed the allocation as this was seen as systemic funding to the school.

A BN leader, who wished to remain unidentified, expressed confidence that the coalition will win in the next general election as it has been working very hard to serve the people.

"We have not been any less effective than the Pakatan government," he told fz.com in a phone interview.

It is pertinent to ask whether voter sentiment about the change of government remains as strong today as it was during the period of political upheaval in 2009. This is especially because there have been a constant round of sensational political developments on the national stage in the intervening years, including allegations of grand corruption.

Feelings were certainly running high during the period of the political crisis. No one would have imagined that when Zambry was going to the Perak palace in Kuala Kangsar to be sworn in on Feb 6, 2009, he would be greeted by a boisterous protest of about a thousand people, mostly Malays, who were trying to block his motorcade.

However, as the BN state government settled into the job, the people became used to the new status quo and the Pakatan leaders decided to abide by the Federal court verdict in 2010.

The corruption debate continues

Posted: 22 Jan 2013 11:33 AM PST

The concept of corruption is not so clear that if you see it, you would know it.

China and India, no paragons of good governance according to all such indicators, have grown a lot faster than most "less corrupt" countries.

Cheong Kee Cheo, fz.com

CORRUPTION is bad. This statement can find few dissenters from a moral or ethical standpoint. Corruption is bad for the economy. Equally unobjectionable? Many people, economists included, would concur.

And this is the premise of two recent articles on corruption in The Edge's Forum pages. The first, "Are we really that corrupt?" (Issue 939, Dec 3), by the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs, came to the conclusion that since the country's growth is unaffected by the perception of rising corruption as measured by Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index, corruption may not be as bad as people think.

The other article, "Do investment and growth show we are not corrupt?" (Issue 941, Dec 17), by Quah Boon Huat, argued that Malaysia's growth was in fact damaged by corruption.

Neither conclusion is warranted. First, economic growth is affected by a host of factors, only one of which is corruption. It is almost impossible to make explicit all these factors — a prerequisite for isolating the impact of any one of them.

Second, even if these can be made explicit, disentangling their impact can be a nightmare because they are almost certainly interrelated.

And third, even if the impact of all these factors can be isolated, demonstrating the link between corruption and growth is no simple matter because the relationship between them is complex.

Economic theory will have us look at how scarce resources are misallocated because of corruption, the inefficiencies thus generated, and these inefficiencies' impact on the economy.

To conclude that corruption has an impact on growth by comparing trends then is a bit like saying that the rise in crime must be caused by foreign workers/migrants since both have been rising over the same period. Or that strong sunshine causes shark attacks.

The difficulty of establishing a direct link between corruption and growth has not stopped scholars from producing a plethora of evidence-based research. But the results have been far from conclusive. Google "corruption and growth" and you will find many studies that demonstrate empirically the negative impact of corruption on growth. Indeed, this is the position taken by the World Bank and other multilateral organisations.

These studies, however, have to come to terms with some inconvenient facts. China and India, no paragons of good governance according to all such indicators, have grown a lot faster than most "less corrupt" countries.

At the same time, the dominant view is being questioned by some scholars. One paper, by Heckelman and Powell (Corruption and the Institutional Environment for Growth, Suffolk University, 2008), found empirically that "corruption is growth enhancing when economic freedom is... limited."

Kredit: www.malaysia-today.net

Rabu, 23 Januari 2013

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

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