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By Shahril Hamdan
I WANT to start with an observation. From someone who has had the privilege of being closer to politics than most, but who also tries everyday to remind himself of why he entered politics in the first place.
And the key observation is this: Malaysia faces a worrying future.
There was a time when the political class spoke, debated and spent a great proportion of their time agonising over policies.
This coincided with a time when our country had a firm sense of its place in the broader world.
Quarrels were about why my ideas to make Malaysia achieve its potential were better than your ideas to make Malaysia achieve its potential. Sure, the political class always thirsted for power, butthey had to always talk and think of power notfor its own sake — but to enact the vision of leadership that one felt was superior to the alternatives.
For those who are less romantic about the past, please at least allow me this rosy image as it serves as an anchor to what we could be once again. Because the image I see of Malaysia today is far less promising.
Over the past five years, we have been locked in series of distractions that have changed the conversation entirely.
In the place of constructive policy talk, we have cynical political scheming almost around the clock. As a result, the key currency now is not the strength of your ideas, but whether you are on my team or the opposing team.
What matters most is that my team wins and yours loses — and if I can make the crowd who decides the result despise you, fair play to me. Hence, it is no surprise if statements, conversations and most importantly, decisions, in many areas of social and political life are made to serve short-termist, populist expediences.
This has real consequences in as much as we can no longer take for granted that we are on an upward trajectory. If a country’s priorities can be projected through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, it seems we’re either stuck on the same brick of the pyramid, or worse, sliding down it as others climb up while we took our eye off the ball.
Covid-19 has only accelerated and made more obvious these failings. Our unemployment is fast approaching its highest-ever figure. Wages have been stagnant for too long as cost of living rises.
Young people can no longer assume a university degree guarantees them exciting work opportunities as one-fifth remain jobless.
Inequality measured by the Gini coefficient has worsened for the first time in 15 years, and the spectre of digitalisation only threatens to worsen the divide.
Household savings are extremely thin and an ageing population faced with rising healthcare costs is a ticking timebomb unless we change the way we look at public health.
Our country no longer has a compelling competitive edge to attract long-term investments.
Nor do we have a clear sense of what areas we want to be regional or global champions in.
Relatively, brain drain is not getting any better. And to top it all off, we don’t seem to be a participant of note in solving the biggest global crisis in generations — the climate emergency.
I spend time thinking about these problems as do many others. It is not their existence which concerns me most, but the sense that there isn’t much interest among the political class, of which I am a part of, to recognise the same, much less figure out the solutions required.
I can’t tell how long I will stay in active politics. I’m 34 but I’ve lost an election once, and in this line of work, you should only stay for as long as you feel you can contribute, within a configuration which allows you to stay true to your beliefs.
Additionally, I have the requisite amount of humility to recognise that nobody has a birthright to succeed in politics, meaning career longevity is never to be taken for granted.
One thing is for sure, I intend to continue agonising about policies because that’s what matters most. And in the coming weeks, I invite you to agonise with me as I try to unpick some of the problems I mentioned above with prospective, at times tentative, policy proposals in hope that it can at least persuade some of us to elevate the conversation once again.
URL Article:
https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2020/08/618373/malaysia-needs-policy-debates-and-proposals-fast