Comparing Manifestos in Malaysia

After having looked at the Parikatana Nationals manifesto, I've been asked by followers of the account to look at you know, to be fair, to look at the other manifestos like for b n and for p h. So I found this helpful comparison of the different manifestos, the three different manifestos being posted here on Malaysiakini. I think it's easier if I just sort of go through the comparison that they've offered. In other words, they list all of the things that are being offered in certain areas, certain fields, certain topics by PN, BN, and PH. And then I will give you my take on what the significance of those or the benefits or otherwise of the those proposals.

Inshallah. Okay. Let's do this. So I'm just gonna look at certain economic points. Okay.

The first thing that they have listed here is cash handouts. PH under cash handouts has subsidy cards or e wallets to farmers. As I understand it, that would appear to expedite payments, not necessarily increase payments. It doesn't necessarily suggest a change in the compensation to farmers, but a change in the mechanisms for compensating them. For PN, they have increased cost of living allowance for civil servants.

Civil servants make up a very large portion of the workforce, so that will make a difference to them. 1,000 early age students who are accepted into tertiary institutions. 1,000 incentives for gig economy workers who enroll in an accredited course. So the idea is that they're not just working in the gig economy, but they are trying to improve their skills and their education and they'll be helped by a PN with a thousand ringgits. They're offering a 1,200 payment to rice farmers.

I'm not sure on what basis that is, if that's annual, if that's a one time thing. And then they have payments to farmers who are who whose crops are affected by monsoons potentially. Now on this issue, b n is suggesting the most radical sort of restructuring, in terms of the economy insofar as they are suggesting an initiative that will automatically top up the incomes of everyone, of every household to ensure that every household has a minimum monthly income of 2,208 ringgits. So that's a sort of a form of a universal basic income being offered to make sure that there's no one in Malaysia, that there's no household in Malaysia earning less than 2,200 ringgits a month. The only way that I can understand that this would work is any household whose income is lower than 2,200, they will receive an automatic top up to ensure that they reach the 2,200 threshold.

That could end up being 50 ringgits. It could end up being a 100 ringgits. It could end up being a thousand ringgits depending on what your monthly income is. And by this method, BN is proposing to end extreme absolute poverty in Malaysia by basically making sure that no one falls below 2,200 ringgits a month. And then they're offering a one off, cash assistance, cash payment of, 500 ringgits, for mothers who give birth.

Okay. Education, I'm gonna actually sort of skip through that. Health is another one I'm going to sort of skip through. Social Security, PH, they want a Social Security scheme for gig workers covering life insurance and funeral compensation of up to 10,000 ringgits. That's an interesting proposal to be honest because obviously gig workers are working in a sort of informal sector in a way and that they don't have the guaranteed benefits of someone who's working for a company.

So they're kind of on their own in terms of insurance, sick pay, all of those things. They don't have those benefits. So it's an interesting idea to provide, support for gig workers, which indicates that they are expecting that sector of their economy to grow. BN is proposing the absolute zero hardcore poverty by 2025, presumably again, that's going to be through the provision of this universal basic income concept. They want to raise the employment insurance system salary ceiling limit to 8,000 ringgits from 5,000 ringgits, to help workers cope with retrenchment and job loss.

So I'm not sure what the difference is between that proposal and the proposal for special allowances by PH with regards to people who lose their jobs, are contract workers who lose their jobs and are looking for employment. These two are both dealing with the issue of potential job losses, which means that they also are anticipating the likelihood of job losses in the economy, which has to do with the way they want the economy to, with the direction that they think the economy is going to go or the way they would like it to go. And that's something about this scheme for the 2200 basic income, that raises some questions for me. Now I'm not opposed to universal basic income as a concept, but I question sometimes the motivations of people who advocate it. Because, for example, in The United States, one of the big advocates for that was Andrew Yang, and the real reason why he was advocating for universal basic income was because he was anticipating and he was promoting, really, the replacement of workers by automation and robotics.

In other words, he's anticipating massive job losses and his solution to the massive job losses was to make sure that people had enough money to live. Now this is overlooking the fact that people don't just work for the sake of having money. People work for fulfillment. People do find fulfillment in their work, and people want to be active. People want to be useful.

And when you are eliminating the possibility of work for people, the solution isn't just to provide for their basic needs. The only reason that you're actually providing for their basic needs is because you still want them to be consumers. That you you have cut them off from access to salaries, access to income, which will make them superfluous as consumers. They're not making profits for companies, and they're not earning salaries, which they can then spend in the market. So you need to supplement that and give them some money to spend in the market without actually utilizing their labor.

It ends up being money that you're giving to companies. And the individual who's receiving the allowance from the government, the stipend or the top up or whatever you wanna call it, the person who's receiving that is just a conduit to move the money from the government into the private sector, into the commercial sector knowing that this person is going to automatically use that money to buy goods in the market. When an individual, when a citizen is receiving an income in the form of, a universal basic income from the government and they're not earning it through labor, then they're not participating in the economy. They're not, contributing to the economy. They're just a conduit for money to to move through them from the public sector to the to the private sector.

This diminishes their role as citizens. And then when when you see that we're also moving in the direction of CBDCs, central bank digital currencies, the government will actually be able to even determine what you can and cannot spend the money on. So if the government is giving you the money in the first place, and then they're telling you what you can spend the money on, you are just almost redundant in that process. It's just moving money from the public sector to the private sector. So I have some problems with this concept.

It's not really a device for lifting people out of poverty. It's it can be a trap to keep them there. Okay. Moving on. Childcare, I will skip through that.

Elderly care, I will more or less skip through that as well. Anti corruption, they have many things. PH has many things, many suggestions with regards to corruption. Anti corruption is an important element in ensuring your country's independence because if government officials are corrupt, if their personal greed goes unchecked, then they can sell out their populations. They can sell out their people, and they can become the servants of foreign powers, foreign private sector powers, corporations, and investors, to line their own pockets to the detriment of the population.

When a government is corrupt, it's absolutely vulnerable to domination from outside powers. Pakistan Harappan has many things, many more things than either PN or BN with regards to corruption. All Harappan, MPs, senior civil servants, GLC, chairpersons, their spouses, and close family members must declare their assets. I fully support the declaration of assets. There should be transparency.

They should not only have to declare their assets, but where they got the money from to obtain those assets. I don't see anything in PH's recommendations that are problematic. I can't really judge to what extent they will be useful or are necessary because these are very internal issues to Malaysia that I am not privy to. PN said to create an anti corruption court. I don't see why it would necessarily have to be outside the regular judiciary.

PN wants to upgrade the Institute for Integrity in Malaysia into a commission. I'm not sure what the difference is there. That seems to be sort of symbolic. Okay. Institutional reforms, this is something I'm going to more or less skip through because this again is something that's a very internal issue for Malaysia that's beyond what I'm privy to.

And again, voters in Malaysia are going to know more about what sort of institutional reforms are necessary than I would. And if you're voting on the basis of your lack of confidence in the existing institutions in their current form, then you may very well be voting on the basis of reforming those, and you will probably be better informed about what types of reforms are necessary than I would. Election reform, I'm also going to skip through. BN has nothing about that. PN has nothing about that.

PH has four different items about that that you can look at and decide for yourself. Parliamentary reform, I'm going to skip through that as well. Press freedom, PH is the only one who talks about that. I don't personally really regard that as a serious issue in Malaysia. There are many publications in Malaysia, some affiliated with this party or that party or with the government, and everyone seems to be free to publish as far as I can tell.

Citizenship, this is also not an issue that I that pertains to the area of my interest. This is one I would expect PH to talk about a lot because it's an issue that is sort of globally popular among liberals, and I don't know how relevant it actually is, in practical terms in terms of the economy or in terms of, the governance of the country. Gender inclusivity and all of this, I don't really see that this is important. The issue of child marriage, I don't really see that that is a particularly important issue either. Although it is a very important issue to liberals globally, I don't think it's really an urgent matter for the government of Malaysia or should be.

PN is promising aggressive intervention to realize 30% female participation in key positions in the public and in the private sectors by 2025. I don't personally agree with that. You should, hire whoever is the most qualified regardless of the agenda. So I would rather see, an aggressive intervention to prevent discrimination rather than to promote, female participation. The only thing here on the list that PN is offering that seems relevant to me is a, 1,000 ringgit tax relief for working women, to a certain extent incentivizes women to work.

I don't know if it necessarily incentivizes employers to hire women. PN is proposing to create a women's economic development bank, presumably to give out loans, small business loans, and whatnot to female entrepreneurs. Now that sounds good and it will look good on paper, but I don't know if it's necessary because you have to establish first that current lenders are discriminating against women entrepreneurs. And if that's not the case, then I don't then this would seem to be sort of superfluous. But again, not particularly relevant to the areas that I'm interested in.

The tax deductions for employers who introduce flexible working hours for working mothers, that's a very good idea. I think that's a very good idea, and that will certainly make it easier for women who work. I'm not sure how much that might end up affecting the productivity of a company. Productivity might be decreased more than is saved through the the deduction. So that's sort of in the air as to how effective that will be in terms of helping the economy.

What I see being, they have some good ideas. They really do. However, many of these ideas require money from the government while also requiring that the government is collecting less and less revenue from the population. So I'm not sure how that's going to work. I don't know where the money is going to come from for all of these programs that they wanna spend on when they're collecting less revenue.

Youth, I'm gonna sort of skip through that even though I think that the young people, this is maybe the most important election that you will ever participate in in Malaysia. You're determining the direction of Malaysia in the future, and we're at a crossroads turning point in global history at this moment. So this election is extremely important for, especially for young people because old people like me, we're not gonna live to see all of the consequences. If the wrong decisions are made now, we will be minimally affected by that because we don't have that much longer left in this dunya. But you're gonna have to live with this for a long time.

So the directional decisions that are made now via this election and what the the next government is going to do will determine whether or not Malaysia will thrive, whether it will just survive, or whether it will be dominated as a result of the changes in the global economic dynamics and the Western pivot to Asia, is targeting countries like Malaysia for corporate colonization. However, I'm gonna sort of skip over this part about young people because I think that the most important thing that any government can do for the young people is to, implement policies for consolidating, fortifying, and strengthening your country's autonomy, sovereignty, and independence rather than just sort of offering, goodies to young people. Presents with disabilities, I'm gonna skip through that. Minority rights, I'm gonna skip through that. Orang Asli rights, I'm going to skip through that.

East Malaysia, I'm going to skip through that. The environment, okay. Now here again is one that I expected p h to have more on than b n or p n because pH is kind of liberal and is aligned with global liberals, and the global liberal agenda. And obviously, they put a high priority on the environment. Personally, I don't think that environmental issues, climate change, carbon emissions, all of that should be a particular concern for Malaysia or for any of the countries in this region.

We are affected in this region not by our own carbon emissions, not by our own contribution to so called climate change. We are affected by the West's, carbon emissions. We are affected by their carbon footprint and the damage that they do to the environment that's affecting us. So as far as I'm concerned, environmental policy should be an element of foreign policy and the way we deal with western countries. So PH is talking about the normal talking points really about carbon emissions basically, preventing deforestation, setting carbon emissions and forest coverage targets and all of this.

Again, this is connected to the idea of carbon trading. This is connected to carbon markets and the idea of carbon credits, selling carbon credits to western manufacturers, factories, industries who want to keep polluting. And so they'll buy carbon credits from countries like Malaysia who have a low carbon footprint to give them the ability to keep polluting. As soon as it was financialized, you knew that this was a scam. So I don't think Malaysia should scuttle its own industrialization for the sake of being able to sell carbon credits to already established industrialized countries to continue to manufacture and produce while Malaysia is hobbling its own ability to do that.

Now PN, in the area of environment, they're just talking about dealing with natural disasters, which makes sense to me. BN is basically talking the same way, but they also say that they should increase Malaysia's forest cover to 60%. Again, that indicates that BN is interested in the idea of selling carbon credits because we don't need actually 60% forest cover. If you had said agricultural, that's different. But you're saying specifically forests.

Well, what are we gonna do with forests except sell pollution permissions to the west? Housing, I'm going to skip that. In the area of taxes, PH is off is saying that they will they will give a tax exemption incentive and financial assistance to employers that train and employ senior citizens. Why? Why why do you want to encourage old people to work?

They shouldn't have to work. Once they've already done their time in the labor force, they should be able to take it easy, and they should be taken care of by their children or by a pension. Tax incentive, for triple deductions on, expenditures related to business movement for encouraging export. Encouraging export is good, but it depends on what's being exported. Export is good, but export should be of goods that Malaysians don't need.

BN, a tax deduction of up to 5,000 ringgits for employers who train employees. This looks to me like b n is very interested in automation. They want to upskill workers so that they can see who is going to survive automation and robotics. That's not something that I support. I don't think that you should be moving in the direction of of automation and robotics.

Automation and robotics has an appeal in the West because their people are getting too old and they're dying. So they're running out of people to do the work. Malaysia is not. You have enough people. Robotics and automation should be always used and only used to assist current workers, not to replace them.

Tax incentives for companies which uphold gender and ethnic diversity in management. Again, my opinion is that you should be hiring and companies should be free to hire whoever is the most qualified. So if you want to encourage diversity in the private sector, then you need to have greater diversity in education. So you're making sure that everybody is skilled and educated enough to participate at a higher level in the workforce. And then on the other side of that, you need to have anti discrimination laws and regulations to ensure that the people will not be discriminated against on the basis of anything beyond their qualifications.

Now, again, there's a 2% income tax reduction for people who are making between 50 and 100,000, ringgits per year. So this again is an is an example of b n proposing to cut government revenues, while at the same time promising a lot of spending in public programs. And again, I don't know where that money is gonna come from if you are collecting less money. Transportation, I'll skip through that. Human resource, I'll skip through that.

Business. Okay. In business, we have PH saying they want free trade zones, palm oil industrial cluster, oil and gas industrial park, set up a one stop digitalization to help SMEs apply for digitalization incentives, tax incentives for triple digit that one we already have. BN has establishing a youth entrepreneurial fund worth 300,000,000. That's nice.

Helping entrepreneurs is good. Now PN has the most on business. They want to encourage digitalization and automation. Now I'm not anti digitalization except to the extent that it eliminates existing jobs. The idea behind some of this, digitalization and automation, the idea behind that is maximization of profits for a company.

It's not necessarily even about efficiency. It's about cost efficiency. And cost efficiency is about maximizing profits. But a company, as it exists in society, is more than what that company is dedicated to. A company, of course, is dedicated to profit or the profits of its shareholders and depending on how large the company is.

It's dedicated to profit or profits for shareholders. But it exists in society and it has a role in society and it has influence in society and it has impact in society and all of those things have to be measured. It's providing jobs. It's providing livelihoods. It's providing skills.

It's providing even community, and it affects the communities where they operate. So when you are allowed as a company to exclusively serve the interests of your shareholders and exclusively serve the profit motive, you neglect everything else that you are in the country, in the society, in the community. And automation and digitalization can be a part of that because you can be eliminating jobs. You can be creating unemployment. You can be creating joblessness and potentially poverty and suffering.

In my view, companies should be held responsible for that and they should be held up to a standard as citizens in the society, as a sort of collective group of citizens in the society that has to be also dedicated to the best interests of the society, not only to their profits. So automation, digitalization, robotics, all of this, As I said, if it's putting people out of work, don't do it. You don't have to because you've got people. In the West, they're running out of people. So they are turning to robotics and automation because they are running out of work.

This is all being driven by the profit motive with disregard for the impact on society and the population. PN is wants to establish a one stop center for Bumiputra entrepreneurs involved in high-tech and future economy. That's good. That's good. I think that the that Malays should be incentivized and motivated in the creative industries, in the tech industries, and they should get the support that they need.

Introduce a special 20,000,000 ringgit fund to help PWD entrepreneurs. That's good. Setting up an agripreneur, but booming putcher fund with 1,000,000,000 ringgits to finance Bumipucha entrepreneurs. That's also very good. Special investment incentives fund worth 5,000,000,000 ringgits to make Malaysia Southeast Asia's industrial hub.

This is part of what I talked about in my review of PN, the PN manifesto. This is very good. This to me shows a vision that, understands, at least to some extent, the changes that are being, undertaken in the global economy and the need for Malaysia to become its own economic power unto itself and to strengthen the regional economic ties and cooperation and trade and solidarity within the ASEAN region. Because any single individual country in this region, if it is forced to act on its own and be isolated from the others, it's easy prey for the massive private sector superpowers that are going to be coming here. But if everyone is working together and there's some sort of economic cohesion between the countries of Southeast Asia, they have a chance, a better chance for not only surviving the onslaught of pressure that's gonna be coming from Western companies and investors and lenders, but not just surviving, not just withstanding it, but actually prospering and succeeding and turning this region into something very dynamic and influential in the world.

They targeted moratorium on, loan restructuring for businesses. This again is something that, has talked about for quite some time as the chairperson of the, National Recovery Council, and I think that's very good because companies can't just go under by trying to pay these loans back. So on the issue of business and how to handle business, I think that PN is ahead of the pack. On food security, I don't see very much interesting from PH on the issue of food security. BN, to enhance scheme for farmers and fishermen, establish training and financial assistance, to help fishermen transition to deep sea fishing.

I'm not sure why they should transition to deep sea fishing. I mean, if it's going to help them, that's great. I don't know enough about fishing in Malaysia to know if that's necessary. Establish an agricultural protection scheme to protect agricultural operators from any out of control risks, including weather and disease. I'm not sure what that protection scheme will include, but protecting farmers is obviously a very should be a very high priority.

Mandate that 10% of GLC farms should be designated for food production. I'm not sure what else farms are producing, if not food. You should designate that farms should be used for producing food and that they should be producing food for Malaysia first. Agri food imports, I don't like anything that encourages the importation of food. I would much rather see Malaysia producing food for themselves.

Train 5,000 farmers under the age of 40 in modern farming within five years. That's a good program. I would hope that at least 5,000 would participate in that. And I would hope that you would get people moving to the rural areas to become farmers. Creative industries, I don't really have anything to say about that, and neither does PN or BN.

Digital economy, I'm not interested. Civil servant, I'm not interested. Crime, no. Disaster response, not really. Oil, royalty, sports, tourism, finance.

Increase Islamic banking, to 60 of the market within five years. Excellent. That's excellent. That's an excellent target. I think 60% is good.

PH has nothing. Okay. So that's everything. And you can go to the website and look at it yourself and see what each of the parties is offering. In my view, according to what I see as the main priority, which is to lay the foundation for ensuring Malaysia's full economic sovereignty and independence for the future and helping to develop Malaysia into its own economic power and to develop businesses in Malaysia so that it's not just a link in someone else's supply chain or someone else's value chain, but is its own independent economic power and source of wealth and and economic influence regionally and potentially globally.

In my opinion, the best programs that I see are from PN. Now again, there's many aspects of these manifestos that I completely skipped, And some of the aspects that I skipped may be the things that are important to you, may be the things that you prioritize. In my opinion, nothing that I skipped is reliable if Malaysia doesn't have strong independence and sovereignty. And if that isn't established and if that isn't fortified, then anything else that you wanna do politically, anything else that you wanna do economically, any other plans that you have are going to be vulnerable and are going to be subject to outside influences. This is part of the logic of why I think that building the base for independence and sovereignty is the most important issue for the future because anything else that you wanna do can't be counted on if you don't, fortify your independence and sovereignty.

What I see on the platform of PN, serves that priority more than the other two. That's again not to say that the other two don't have useful things to offer. I'm I'm skeptical about the, basic income provisions being suggested by BN, and I'm skeptical about the fact that they're looking at doing a lot of public spending while collecting less and less revenue. PH, I think, has some interesting ideas. In my opinion, they are too influenced by and trying too hard to align themselves with global liberal agendas and talking points and priorities.

However, I have to admit that they do have a lot of good ideas. Again, I will say what I said in the last video. I reiterate. What you do on election day is important, but what you do the day after election day and the day after and the day after and the day after is equally important. Because whoever you elect, they have to stay responsive to you, and that can only happen if you continue to make your voices heard.

So happy general election fifteen, Malaysia.