3 Kinds of Bloggers & The Heart of God

Just as there are three kinds of leaders, there are three kinds of bloggers/writers:

1. The Rear Mirror Types: Using the analogy of driving, these bloggers focus on the past, history, what was done, the wounds, the glories, the disasters of the past 50 years of Msia.

2. The Present Focused Types: These bloggers will comment and anlayse the present situation and the latest policy statements. Many are witty and tend to be pro-reformasi as shown in my bloglist on the right.

3. The Future Focused/Visionary Types: These bloggers, while having a healthy dose of realism, are more than intellectual. They know that what really moves heaven and earth is a tangible vision of the future, what our deepest hopes are for the nation and for our citizens. For instance, the rainbow nation comprising various races blended into one is a vision that Msians can aspire for.

I think most local civil rights, pseudo-political blogs and Internet media are in the 1 and 2 groups. Malaysiakini has a potent blend of opinionated content but has only 10-20% focused on solutions and future visions for the nation. I hope existing and new bloggers like Dato' Zaid Ibrahim's will put their intellectual energies into building up fresh visions for Malaysia’s future.

The future is now in our hearts as soon as we cherish the vision despite the corruption, the partisanship, the comedy of our present state of politics.

This is not New Age hocus pocus but a spiritual truth: what we constantly cherish in our hearts which are aligned with the heart and promises of God will come true. It may take months or years but I am confident God will fulfill the hopes of man that are visualised and imagined faithfully according to His Word.

Drawing Hands by M.C. Escher

A People-Friendly Second Best Solution

An open letter by blogger Nehemiah to the leaders of Pakatan Rakyat and Barisan Nasional:

The present political stalemate in Perak can only be resolved with creative, new solutions which are rakyat friendly. Otherwise, the reluctance by one of you (Najib) to agree to fresh elections will see the issue go back and forth between the courts and counter appeals, etc.

Barring a fresh election, both your parties should work together (or cooperate if you like) to prove to Perakians that the people's welfare is a HIGHER priority than partisanship.

The rakyat should and is the final employer assessing which candidate to employ.

But if two rival candidates refuse to work together, the employer(rakyat) should give them a choice: either you cooperate for my benefit or you both don't get the job. In such a stalemate, Perakians can afford to bear the loss of being ungoverned and wait for the next GE to decide. Perhaps by then, both parties will come to their senses or there will be a third party that can offer better governance.

Of course, the ideal solution is for snap elections to be held but that option is currently a roadblock for BN as it would be quite certain to lose.

And please, in the talks between both of your alliances, do not reject outright any proposals for power-sharing if it is the second best solution to serve the people's interests.

The whole of Malaysia and the world is watching how you both navigate the state out of this mess with a new creative solution that is approved by Perakians. Conduct Internet polls or surveys among the people to get feedback on the second best solution. Get the media/bloggers involved as an objective third party.

As Deng Hsiao Peng once said, it does not matter that the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice. Looking at recent developments (notwithstanding the national shame of the violent removal of the Speaker Sivakumar on 7 May), both of your parties seem to be more concerned about who gets to be called the official MB and occuplying the state secretariat than in catching real mice.

The Invisible Costs of May 7 For The Nation

In the field of economics, there is a saying that what we don't see with the naked eye is more important than what we can see.

For example, some vandal who breaks a glass window will cause the house owner to give money (say RM100) to the glass maker to make a new window, which triggers a chain of positive economic effects throughout the economy. But the opportunity cost is invisible: what the house owner would have done with the RM100, which he saved for his consumption or investment, if his window had not been broken.

Same truth applies to politics and the recent Perak crisis, what we saw was the Perak Assembly Speaker Mr Sivakumar being forcibly removed by several men at the State Assembly on 7th May. And economics student/writer John Lee has rightly pointed out, what is unseen is the tremendous damage to democracy and respect for the rule of law, the separation of powers enshrined in the constitution.

I think the invisible damage is worse: the use of physical violence on a law-abiding citizen should be condemned by government leaders. If not, then it may be interpreted by the young and politically illiterate as an implicit official sanction of violence for the sake of asserting one person's power over another.

Will criminal violence escalate after this shameful incident? I beseech the authorities to be wise and responsible and express remorse over the violent removal of the speaker instead of trying to justify it.

Msia's Top 4 Macroeconomic Problems Remain Unsolved

According to the World Bank, in 2007, Malaysia had a GNI per capita of US$6,420, far behind high income societies such as Singapore (US$32,340), South Korea (US$19,730), Japan (US$37,790), Hong Kong (US$31,560), Australia (US$35,760), Finland (US$44,300), and Switzerland (US$60,820) and Norway (US$77,370).

There are four economic reasons why Malaysia has fallen below the Gross National Income (GNI) per capita of Asia's Tiger economies since the early 1980s.

(1) Dutch disease: Our blessing of oil and commodity resources which meant that we had little incentives to upgrade our manufacturing sector to rise to higher value-added chains. The blessing can be a curse in the long term.

(2) Subsidy policies: The subsidy implicit in the national car Proton at the expense of non-national cars which are overpriced due to high tax duties. The subsidy of food and fuel prices which makes cost of living articifially cheap so that wages can be low and cheap foreign labour can be employed. The hidden policy of keeping the Ringgit competitive vis the USD is also a subsidy for exporters. These subsidies prevent the proper allocation of resources and prevent manufacturing and other industries from rising up the value chain.

(3) The wealth distributive policies: The NEP if implemeted properly should be to alleviate poverty of all races but instead is used as a political weapon. At the end of the day, affirmative action policies help no one except the rich and the political elite.

(4.) Corruption from the top to the bottom. This is prevalent in the construction sector and other sectors where bidding for government contracts are not on open tender basis.

If the present government and policy makers seriously address these 4 economic bindspots, then Malaysia's long-term slide in the ranking of GNI per capita may be reversed. The current economic recession should be a good reason to review the above and open the eyes of citiznes about their sheltered economic existence in a world that is changing rapidly by China and India's economic resurgence.

Now, there is a new economic problem coming up and that is the strong possibility of the Opposition party Pakatan Rakyat (PR) in winning the people's mandate at the next general ellection in 2012/2013.

If PR can remain focused on these four issues and come up with workable policies while the economy's growth continue to stagnate at the 1-3% range in the next few years, then the politicial pressure will intensify for the incumbent government to fast-track real reforms in the economic and political sphere.