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15200 results in ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute

Page 140 of 760

  • 8 - Development Finance

  • Edited by Ramon L. Clarete, Emmanuel F. Esguerra, Hal Hill
  • Book:
    The Philippine Economy
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    10 September 2018, pp 324-374

  • Summary

    Substantial resources for financing critical development expenditures will be needed to sustain the current economic momentum and meet future socio-economic aspirations. Where should the country get its financial resources to implement priority measures? This chapter looks at three main sources of funds — households and firms, donors, and foreign investors — and examines long-term implications with reference to taxation, the overall financial system, public–private partnerships (PPP), official development assistance (ODA), and remittances. It is imperative for the government to substantially raise tax revenues and rely more on domestic borrowing. ODA and PPP should be used to strategically finance infrastructure needs and emerging regional public goods, respectively. Financial reforms should be geared towards providing access to poor households and micro, small and medium enterprises, as well as financial education for overseas Filipinos and their families, to widen their investment horizons. Related financial inclusion policies and interventions are an important component for achieving the country's long-term vision.

    Figure 8.1 provides a convenient framework highlighting the task of raising and channelling funds from the three main sources identified above to be used in policy-determined development expenditures. The new development finance institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) are specifically included in the figure to indicate their potential as another major source of infrastructure finance for the Philippines. In the case of the AIIB, the People's Republic of China (PRC) is positioning itself as the largest international source of loans for infrastructure. The bilateral Philippine–PRC relationship will have a major bearing on how the country can access this source of long-term loans.

    Households and firms pay taxes to the government, while the process of financial intermediation transforms the savings of households and firms into an adequate supply of finance for the use of the private and public sectors. Donors provide the government with loans, grants and technical assistance (TA), while foreign and domestic investors participate in PPP by taking an equity position, providing debt finance and engaging in the operation and maintenance (OM) of infrastructure facilities such as rail, ports, toll roads and airports.

    Private domestic and foreign investors also tap the financial and capital markets for resources to invest in PPPs for infrastructure. Public sector loans, grants, PPP schemes, and TA provided by donors to the government are utilized to finance critical development expenditures.

  • Preface

  • Edited by Ramon L. Clarete, Emmanuel F. Esguerra, Hal Hill
  • Book:
    The Philippine Economy
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    10 September 2018, pp xxv-xxvi

  • Summary

    It is a pleasure to thank the many people and institutions who contributed generously to this volume, and without whom it would not have seen the light of day.

    First and foremost, we would like to express our deep gratitude to our good friend and colleague, Arsenio M. Balisacan, and his staff, for initiating this project during his term as Secretary of Socioeconomic Planning and Director General of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) in the Government of the Philippines from 2012 to 2016. As he explains in the Foreword written for this volume, he and his senior colleagues in government oversaw a period of strong economic growth. But they were also conscious of the importance of maintaining the momentum. To this end, they set to work on crafting a forward-looking agenda, Ambisyon Natin 2040, which articulated a vision for an inclusive and prosperous Philippines. Some of the works commissioned for this endeavor provided the germ for the analytical papers that fed into this volume.

    The Asian Development Bank (ADB) played a crucial supporting role in facilitating work on this project, including a workshop at which draft papers were presented and discussed. We are most grateful to the staff of the Bank's Philippine Country Office, headed by Richard Bolt, for their enthusiastic support and wise counsel.

    While thankful to NEDA and the ADB, we do wish to emphasize that the views and assessments in this volume are those of the contributors and editors alone, and should not be attributed to these two supporting institutions.

    We are most grateful to our contributors for taking time out from their busy schedules to write stimulating papers, and to cheerfully endure the protracted editorial processes leading up to publication.

    We thank Mr Ng Kok Kiong, Mr Stephen Logan and the ISEAS publishing team for their interest in our work, and an anonymous referee for very helpful and constructive comments on an earlier draft.

    The current period is arguably one of the most significant in Philippine history. The country is frequently in the international news headlines, perhaps more than it would like to be. Behind these headlines is the question of whether the momentum of recent economic growth in the country can be sustained and its dividends enjoyed by more of the population.

  • 4 - Education and Training

  • Edited by Ramon L. Clarete, Emmanuel F. Esguerra, Hal Hill
  • Book:
    The Philippine Economy
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    10 September 2018, pp 151-189

  • Summary

    Introduction

    The long-term economic success of a nation depends to a great extent on sustained increases in its endowment of human capital — the accumulated knowledge, skills and capacities of its workforce. This chapter focuses on the crucial role that investments in human capital, specifically in the education and training of the population, will play in maintaining the Philippine's development momentum.

    The important role of education in development is well known. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen (2011) argued that “the elimination of ignorance, of illiteracy … and of needless inequalities in opportunities [is] to be seen as objectives that are valued for their own sake. They expand our freedom to lead the lives we have reason to value, and these elementary capabilities are of importance on their own” (p. 240). Indeed, limited access to education, particularly of poor households, consistently emerged as a major concern in the recent focused group discussions conducted for Filipino 2040 (see David 2015).

    Education is not only an end in itself; it is also a means to enhance well-being by increasing an individual's productivity and therefore earnings. Incontrovertible evidence suggests that people with greater education and training have better employment opportunities and higher earnings.

    Access to education can help lift poor households out of poverty by breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty (HDN 2000). Poverty is perpetuated mainly because poorly educated parents, mired in low-paying occupations, lack the means to continue to send their children to school, effectively condemning them to low-productivity employment and, consequently, meagre earnings. To households earning subsistence incomes, the opportunity cost of sending their children to school — hence foregoing income from their children's labour — is too high. Studies have shown that dropout rates are higher in poor households where parents have low education. The obvious way out of this poverty trap is for children to acquire an education that allows them entry into higher paying jobs. This can happen if private entities or the government subsidize the cost of education of the children of poor households.

    The benefits of education extend well beyond the well-being of those who receive it. Society also gains from the positive externalities of an educated citizenry. People with more education are more likely to be more civic-minded, better able to understand social and political issues, vote more wisely, obey the law, and adhere to the basic rules of good manners and conduct.

  • 3 - Infrastructure and Urbanization

  • Edited by Ramon L. Clarete, Emmanuel F. Esguerra, Hal Hill
  • Book:
    The Philippine Economy
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    10 September 2018, pp 112-150

  • Summary

    Infrastructure is a driver of growth. It provides energy, water and other production inputs. It connects products with markets, and labour with jobs. Infrastructure enables access to education, healthcare, housing and other services that let communities thrive and be more resilient.

    Investments in infrastructure promote economic activities that generate employment, increase household incomes and reduce poverty. According to an estimate of the World Economic Forum (WEF), every dollar spent on a capital project (in utilities, energy, transport, waste management, flood prevention, telecommunications) generates a 5'25 per cent economic return. Clearly, the lack of infrastructure is a constraint to growth and poverty reduction (Llanto 2015).

    Ideally, infrastructure keeps pace with demand even as demand itself is catalysed by infrastructure in a virtuous spiral of growth. Not surprisingly, the biggest demand for infrastructure is in urban areas, where population and activities are concentrated. With scale and agglomeration economies, these areas are often associated with innovation and productivity, economic growth, employment generation and higher (than rural) family incomes. This is consistent with the Philippine experience, as the largest urban centre, Metro Manila, is the primary venue for poverty reduction in the country. It is useful, therefore, to view infrastructure in the context of the country's network of settlements, keeping in mind that rural areas are inextricable elements of this network (e.g., as agricultural productivity rises, surplus labour migrates to urban-based industries and services which, in turn, are fuelled by rising worker incomes as industrial productivity also rises).

    Based on public consultations on the aspirations of Filipinos, a 2040 vision for the state of infrastructure and urban development may be stated as follows:

    Cities are working as engines of economic growth and venues of poverty reduction, with infrastructure that provides quality services and affordable housing, and forms efficient and connected networks of sustainable communities.

    This chapter looks at infrastructure (including housing) in the Philippines as it relates to the vision from two analytical perspectives. The first is a summary of how the infrastructure sector has performed. It covers both the national and local (metro/region) dimensions. Performance indicators, benchmarks and targets are identified. The second is a complementary and broader analysis of infrastructure from the perspective of urbanization, or, broadly speaking, the settlements network. It looks at how population is distributed throughout the country and how this affects the location of infrastructure, as well as overall urban and regional development.

  • 5 - Universal Health Coverage, Health Security and Resilient Health Systems

  • Edited by Ramon L. Clarete, Emmanuel F. Esguerra, Hal Hill
  • Book:
    The Philippine Economy
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    10 September 2018, pp 190-230

  • Summary

    No one wants to be sick. Yet, those who fall ill are punished with the high cost of accessing healthcare. While one cannot totally prevent it, conditions where an individual is born, grows, works, lives and ages contribute to the likelihood of falling ill. For example, population groups residing near development projects are unnecessarily exposed to hazards, thus increasing their vulnerability. Residents of disasterprone areas cannot rely on their health system in the aftermath of a shock, even after a few years, for them to live the way they used to.

    This chapter argues why the government should sustain its ongoing investments in health, and proposes where and how these investments should be channelled in order to ensure that (1) the system is designed as one which promotes health or makes it easy for people to choose the healthier option; (2) those who fall sick are not driven to impoverishment; and (3) the system remains dependable in the event of shocks/disasters.

    Box 5.1. A Typical Case of a Filipino Family in 2016 Jose and Alicia, are minimum wage earners. They live in Cavite but work in a factory in Mandaluyong City, Metro Manila. Commuting to work means losing four hours daily to travel. Because they are home late and have to leave early the next day, they are unable to prepare lunch. They are suki (frequent patrons) to Aling Nene's ration consisting of one-fourth serving of viand and three-fourth serving of rice — food with little nutritional value and that is often salty. At work they are exposed to high heat, with the factory having little ventilation.

    One day Jose had a bad case of diarrhoea requiring admission. They chose to go to the nearest government hospital. Since Jose, a PhilHealth insurance member, was confined in the “charity ward”, where one nurse takes care of eighteen patients simultaneously, Alicia had to stay as a watcher to make sure all of Jose's needs were being met. Moreover, the attending physician tasked Alicia to purchase medicines in a drug outlet a few kilometres away, as the hospital pharmacy had run out of stock.

    After three days in the hospital, both Jose and Alicia had lost three days of work and had spent most of their savings. Jose will also need to start allocating a portion of his salary for maintenance medications.

  • 6 - Environmental Resources, Shocks and National Well-Being

  • Edited by Ramon L. Clarete, Emmanuel F. Esguerra, Hal Hill
  • Book:
    The Philippine Economy
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    10 September 2018, pp 231-268

  • Summary

    This chapter deals with promoting the common good through better energy, resource and environmental policies as well as improved management of natural disaster risks, including climate change. Increasing gross domestic product (GDP) will be insufficient to meet the aspirations of the Philippine people for higher levels of living, inasmuch as GDP does not measure welfare. Largely because of the omission of these elements, we begin with a discussion of green accounting — the method of extending national income accounting to include the degradation of the environment and the depletion of natural resources.

    As we discuss in the second part, comprehensive national income accounting can be further extended to include natural disasters and other shocks to the ecological–economic system. Even policy distortions can be accounted for by including them as constraints to the system. Thus, environmental resource conservation, disaster preparedness and policy reform all become potential sources of welfare growth. The later section deals with the mission of sustainable development, particularly how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) relate to the mission of improving the welfare of Filipinos.

    Increasing Levels of Living in the Face of Environmental Degradation and Resource Depletion

    Stewardship of natural resources and the environment should not be treated as a separate objective from management of the economy (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987). The fundamental premise of sustainable income and green accounting, which have a long history in the Philippines and other countries, is that nature and the economy are part of the same system (the environomy) as shown in Figure 6.1. And one system requires one unifying measure of performance.

    To convert the most common indicator of the size of an economy, GDP, into a measure of national well-being, several adjustments must be made. It is well known that GDP overestimates public welfare by failing to deduct depreciation — that portion of investment that simply replaces capital which has worn out or become obsolete. Deducting capital depreciation from GDP yields net domestic product (NDP). And since income is a better measure of welfare than production, we need to subtract the income earned in the Philippines by foreigners, add income earned by Philippine citizens abroad, and add remittances to the Philippines by non-citizens.

  • Foreword by Arsenio M. Balisacan

  • Edited by Ramon L. Clarete, Emmanuel F. Esguerra, Hal Hill
  • Book:
    The Philippine Economy
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    10 September 2018, pp xix-xxiv

  • Summary

    It gives me great pleasure and honour to provide the introductory message for this rather impressive volume on the Philippine economy. Authored by renowned Filipino scholars and serious observers of the Philippine economy, the volume is arguably the most comprehensive reference work on the economy since at least the global financial crisis in 2008–9 and will likely shape the thinking and practice of Philippine development policy in the years ahead.

    This volume had its beginning, albeit accidental, during my stint as Socioeconomic Planning Secretary and, concurrently, Director- General of the National Economic and Development Authority under the administration of President Benigno S. Aquino III. At that time, in early 2014, I got hold of the ADB Report entitled Asia 2050: Realizing the Asian Century, and it caught my interest. The report talked about how Asia is in the middle of a historic transformation. To quote the report: “If it continues to follow its recent trajectory, by 2050 its per capita income could rise six-fold in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms to reach Europe's levels today. It would make some 3 billion additional Asians affluent by current standards. By nearly doubling its share of global gross domestic product (GDP) to 52 percent by 2050, Asia would regain the dominant economic position it held some 300 years ago, before the industrial revolution.”

    It was an exciting prospect for Asia, except for the Philippines. In the Report, the Philippines was a slow- or modest-growth aspiring country, lumped in the same group as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, North Korea, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and many of the Pacific Island countries. Even the Report's epic video-production did not make any reference to or show any significant Philippine landmark. That was, of course, understandable, given the country's poor-growth record in the three decades before 2010, which was the report's database for its extrapolation of the future. In contrast, since at least 2010, the country's economic performance has been quite stellar, impressively even earning the title 'the rising tiger of Asia', among other accolades bestowed upon the Philippine economy by various global development observers, e.g., the World Bank and HSBC.

  • 22 - Waves from US Probe into 1MDB May Turn into Tsunami

  • from Before 9 May 2018
  • Kee Beng Ooi
  • Book:
    Catharsis
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    03 September 2018, pp 79-81

  • Summary

    The civil lawsuits filed by the US Justice Department on 20 July 2016 to seize assets worth over US$1 billion stolen from Malaysia's state fund, 1MDB, are sending tight ripples across the globe.

    Not only are these the largest set of cases brought to court under the Department's Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, the 1MDB fund started in 2009 ostensibly for national development purposes by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak soon after he came to power, is being investigated in at least six other jurisdictions, including Singapore, Switzerland, Hong Kong and of course, Malaysia.

    The alleged offenders involve ‘an international conspiracy to launder money misappropriated from 1MDB’, mentioned by US Justice Department include the Prime Minister's stepson Riza Aziz, the founder of Red Granite Pictures, whose film production ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ was nominated for an Oscar, Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho and two government officials from Abu Dhabi, Khadem Abdulla Al-Qubaisi and Mohammed Ahmed Badawy Al-Husseiny.

    In Malaysia, while the repercussions of alleged wrongdoings involving 1MDB have seen top politicians who had openly voiced criticism against the Prime Minister's handling of the fund sacked and other heavy-handed actions taken against whistle-blowers, all the legal avenues within the country for bringing perpetrators to court have proved ineffective.

    Internationally, threats of legal action by Malaysian authorities against the Wall Street Journal, which had along with the Londonbased Sarawak Report website been publishing reports on the highly dubious behaviour of key persons in 1MDB's international network, had over many months been repeated but never carried out.

    In Singapore, investigations into 1MDB have been noted by state prosecutors as ‘the most complex and largest money laundering case ever to have taken place in Singapore’. The Monetary Authority of Singapore has withdrawn the license of the Swiss bank, BSI SA, to operate locally and senior BSI officials are being investigated. Two have been charged.

    The details now provided in the cases filed by the US Justice Department are astonishingly thorough. These particulars delivered so publicly cannot but stimulate and hasten the execution of further legal actions in other countries, each building its case with help from revelations made by the others.

  • 46 - Outraged Enough to Go Vote or Cynical Enough to Stay Home?

  • from With Mahathir at the Helm
  • Kee Beng Ooi
  • Book:
    Catharsis
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    03 September 2018, pp 172-180

  • Summary

    The world may be stunned by the enormity of national scandals that have hit Malaysia and further dazed by the flippant official explanations that accompany them. Yet, the ruling BN remains expressly confident of victory in the coming elections. A high enough voter turnout, however, can cause an upset.

    So many bizarre and inconceivable things have happened in recent years to damage Malaysia's international reputation and self-image that, for a mortified and embarrassed public, a change of government at the federal level no longer carries the deep sense of incredulity and anguish that it once had. In fact, many now consider the coming general election to be a do-or-die contest – deep institutional reforms must take place if the many negative and speedily converging trends are to be reversed.

    Should the Opposition coalition under former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad win in 2018, then some serious investigations into these scandals are unavoidable and most of the reforms it now promises are likely to be carried out in the months that immediately follow.

    But should the BN under Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak triumph despite the outrageous scandals that surround it – the continuing high level of national debt; the apparent incompetence and callousness of many of its leaders; and the rising cost of living, among a list of other problems – many expect a crackdown on civil liberties and on recalcitrant individuals to take place quickly.

    Being made the laughing stock of the world is one thing but rising prices and the dramatic fall in value of the ringgit hurts working families more immediately – and that does not put anyone in a forgiving mood.

    In fact, people are in a very bad mood in Malaysia today, to such an extent that feeling helpless, outraged and ignored may turn out to be a stronger impulse to act than the tried and tested issue of race and religion.

    Tellingly, for the Opposition to reuse an old slogan and simply call for change today as it did so effectively in 2008 and 2013 now seems rather unimaginative and dull – and even glib. The fact is, much has been changing in Malaysian society over the last five years and young Malaysians today are very different from those of a generation ago. Most obviously, they are not as cowed as their parents were.

  • 14 - Malaysia – Where Politics Must Be Ethnically Inclusive and Exclusive at the Same Time

  • from Before 9 May 2018
  • Kee Beng Ooi
  • Book:
    Catharsis
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    03 September 2018, pp 48-51

  • Summary

    What any Malaysian knows at heart is that the Malay community will always dominate the politics of the country. This means in concrete terms that Malaysia's key leaders will always nominally and in reality be Malay Muslims.

    However, the country's population is a very mixed one and from the very beginning, leaders of the Malay community who wish to be remembered as statesmen and respected as nation builders have had to expound the idea that Malay interests do not necessarily contradict national interest or even the interests of other communities.

    UMNO's first president famously tried to change the party's name from United Malay National Organisation to United Malayan National Organisation. He realised what most of his followers had not yet realised. Malaysian politics has to be multi-ethnically sensitive.

    His successor as UMNO president, Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra, would realise this. Under him, UMNO grew from strength to strength based on the slogan of ‘Merdeka’ rather than ‘Hidup Melayu’; the latter having been the raison d'etre of the Malay party since its founding. More importantly, teaming up with the Malayan Chinese Association in 1952 made his party's agenda more clearly an inclusive one. And with that move, broad support could be gained and Merdeka was gained at an earlier time than expected.

    As truly as Malay dominance is an inescapable reality for Malaysia, a central policy direction that is ethnically inclusive is unavoidable for sufficient harmony to be achieved so that its economy can gain the trust of both domestic and international investors, and grow to its full potential.

    Ethnic tensions saw riots breaking out in 1969. The Tunku had to retire and his successors put into place powerful constitutional curbs on the freedom of speech in the public sphere and in parliament. Other measures were taken for UMNO to secure a stronger hold on power in its proclaimed role as the champion of Malay collective interests. But before the next general elections could be called, the new prime minister Tun Abdul Razak Hussein had made certain that the ruling coalition would now include as many parties representing as possible. To top it off, he arranged for a much publicised visit by him to China to begin Malaysia's normalisation of ties with the communist giant.

  • 53 - Catharsis – The Rebirth of Malaysia Finally Begins

  • from Beyond 9 May 2018
  • Kee Beng Ooi
  • Book:
    Catharsis
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    03 September 2018, pp 208-214

  • Summary

    Maybe it was because the transition took so long and opposition parties had had a chance to rule certain states for two terms and made a change in government an acceptable event. Maybe it was because the fear that Malaysians have a hidden tendency for violent rioting is simply a bad myth kept alive by the federal government that concentrated power unto itself following the 1969 racial killings. Maybe it was because Najib Razak's administration had brought profound shame unto his countrymen. Maybe Malaysians had matured on the sly more than even they themselves had realised. Or maybe it was because the battering ram that finally brought down the defences of the Barisan Nasional (BN), had Mahathir Mohamad, the man who led BN for 22 years, as its head.

    Whatever it was, the fall of the longest-ruling regime in a democratic country in the world came amazingly peacefully. In its fourteenth general elections held on 9 May 2018, the Malaysian opposition coalition, Pakatan Harapan, managed to win 122 (55 per cent) of the country's 222 parliamentary seats. A system of government that had always been accused of being but a sham democracy at worst and a semi-democracy at best suddenly crumbled and the longawaited change in government occurred as smoothly as in any mature democracy.

    But we know nevertheless that a revolution has just taken place. All comfort zones are being swept away, barely noticed because it is happening in slow motion. If in no other field, the year 2020 when Malaysia is supposed to become an advanced country, appears to have come early where democracy is concerned!

    Pundits have often said of the general elections of 8 March 2008 that it was a lucky thing for the country that the BN did not lose power unexpectedly and overnight. Instead, it lost control over five states and the two-thirds parliamentary majority, and therefore no rioting took place because not all was lost to BN and regaining lost support was considered totally possible. After all, Malaysia's electoral results had almost always shown a pattern where one bad election for the BN was followed by a good one.

  • 43 - Individual Freedom Is a Matter of National Survival

  • from With Mahathir at the Helm
  • Kee Beng Ooi
  • Book:
    Catharsis
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    03 September 2018, pp 163-165

  • Summary

    A New Era is upon us. This is no longer a controversial statement as far as I can gather. Indeed, it is a boring truism by now. A new page in our already speedy times has been turned and it is defined geoeconomically by the rise of China and of India and it is noted in how different societies are elbowing their way to get ahead in the queue.

    More concretely put, it is the sum of the exponentially-driven consequences of electronic innovations that began not very long ago. And, as with all new eras, we were already mired in it before we noticed it. As has often been remarked upon, the smartphone as we know it today, which now controls our day, is only 11 years old. WhatsApp, with which you organise your contact network, is nine years old, as is Airbnb. And yes, the ride-hailing app Uber is eight years old and Malaysia's incredibly successful Grab app is only two years younger.

    Your children's current favourite app, Instagram, may have taken a while to take off properly but it is, nevertheless, only seven or eight years old.

    In this company, Facebook is really old, launched as it was in February 2004. Twitter isn't much younger. Its first proper prototype began working in the spring of 2006. You can see why teenagers consider Facebook and Twitter apps for the old. And Skype … I haven't heard that platform mentioned in quite a while but that could be because it is even older than Facebook – by a whole year.

    What all this tells us is that the disorientation you currently feel in your daily life is totally rational. You should feel that way and you have every right to feel that way. In fact, you can take comfort in the fact that your younger peers, who boast of their prowess in handling communication devices and apps today, will soon feel the way you do right now. They will also be bypassed.

    The pace of IT development today is exponentially increasing, while our human ability to sync to it individually is highly limited, often restricted by the socio-political culture, educational exposure and of course, the communicative habits of the society we live in.

  • 5 - Funeral for a True Son of Penang

  • from Before Pakatan Harapan
  • Kee Beng Ooi
  • Book:
    Catharsis
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    03 September 2018, pp 16-17

  • Summary

    The morning was soft and cloudy, but only for a while. By 10:00 am, the sun was blazing and having its usual relentless way with Penangites. Perhaps as many as 20,000 of us were already gathered outside the Dewan Sri Pinang, where the body of one of Penang's most beloved sons had been lying in state since 8:00 am that Sunday, 20 April 2014.

    Karpal Singh, respected lawyer, fiery Member of Parliament for Bukit Gelugor and foe of countless bigots is no more. He was killed in a traffic accident on the North-South Highway in the first hour of 17 April.

    Huge throngs of people who three days later lined the streets around the State Assembly Hall, the courts and St Xavier's Institute to wave goodbye and to shout ‘Karpal Singh’ one last time, following thousands of others who had over the two nights before the funeral visited his family home in Western Road to pay their respects. Many made the trip from as far away as Johor to join fellow countrymen and countrywomen to publicly mourn Karpal Singh and who felt that this was the least they could do for a man whose fighting spirit had always been inspirational.

    We should certainly pause and ponder why so many Malaysians and Penangites felt such a strong need to come together. I am sure there is a whole range of reasons, but chief among these has to be the iconic status achieved by the man. He had simply come to symbolise the stand against bigotry and abuse of the law which the country has been suffering from for so long.

    His belief that respect for the law is the necessary foundation for a just society and for protection of human rights was something that has had immediate appeal to people of all classes. His bravery in speaking back to arrogant power and the directness of his words carried immediate appeal in a society given to hushed compromise and feudal diffidence.

    These values held so strongly in him certainly resonated well in Penang, whose people struggled to consider it liberal and modern. In all ways, Karpal Singh was indeed a true son of Penang – he represented Penang values with great ease. In fact, he amplified them more loudly than anyone else.

  • 39 - This is the Moment of Truth for Malaysia's Race-based Politics

  • from With Mahathir at the Helm
  • Kee Beng Ooi
  • Book:
    Catharsis
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    03 September 2018, pp 149-152

  • Summary

    After all the analysing done by pundits on Malaysia's political dynamics in the post-Mahathir period, the country has now come to the strange point of being in a potential pre-Mahathir period.

    There is now the more-than-theoretical possibility that 92-yearold former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad will return to lead the country, should the opposition coalition win the coming general election. Though unlikely, the chances of that happening are not exactly slim.

    In many ways, Malaysia has been locked in a period of transition for two decades. One could say this was triggered by the Reformasi movement in 1998 when the country's two top leaders fell out with each other and behind that, by the socio-economic travails ignited by the Asian Financial Crisis; or one could claim that it began with Mahathir's retirement in October 2003; or that it started with the surprising results of the 2008 elections when the ragtag opposition managed on election night to win five of the 13 states.

    Behind these unending trends lies the fact that a new generation of young leaders – some inspired by the 1998 protests but most thrust into the limelight in 2008, have been waiting impatiently to take over but are still playing merely a supporting role, not only because the old leaders are still active but also because of the solidity of the discursive and economic domination of the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition over the rural population in particular.

    Then there was the advent of Internet news media, a prominent milestone of which was the founding of the Malaysiakini news website in 1999. This was followed a decade later by The Malaysia Insider (brought to its knees by political pressure in 2016 and since resurrected as The Malaysian Insight) and by other websites. Social media also appeared after the turn of the century to act as an effective new tool for political activism.

    Where the opposition parties are concerned, we have seen its major coalitions evolve from the Barisan Alternatif in 1999 to Pakatan Rakyat in April 2008 to Pakatan Harapan in 2015, which since then has evolved to include two newly formed Malay-based parties: Parti Amanah Negara (splintered from the Islamist Parti Agama SeMalaysia, or PAS) and Mahathir's Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (consisting of UMNO dissidents).

  • 45 - A Final Quarrel between a Repentant Grandfather and Oldfashioned Self-absorbed Parents

  • from With Mahathir at the Helm
  • Kee Beng Ooi
  • Book:
    Catharsis
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    03 September 2018, pp 169-171

  • Summary

    As the fourteenth general election draws near, the sense that Malaysia – and the whole Asia-Pacific region, for that matter, must now leap into a new era is growing stronger by the day.

    What seems common to advanced countries and developing countries alike is the need for governments to realise that profound disruptions caused by the digital revolution are already happening. Their old ways of doing things and the old structures created for doing those things are now the greatest hindrance to the country's ability to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

    And so, where Malaysia is concerned, much courage is needed to discard the old ways of thinking that have become inhibitive and to dismantle the structures created by those old ways of thinking which now stand in the way of new strategies that suit latecomers like Malaysia.

    Yes, Malaysia is a latecomer – not so much in that it started late, but in it has been a great waster of time and opportunity. And how has it been wasting time and opportunity? Answering that question is what requires courage, because it is necessarily a radical act and it is necessarily a dangerous stance because it threatens the survival of the old structures.

    The South-East Asian nations founded after the Second World War began building their state apparatus, their national identity and their national economy in response to domestic tensions and external pressures. Whatever their individual solutions were, these are now from another age. Had they been successful, they would have achieved a stable and free society and made themselves largely redundant.

    As with good parenting, which fosters children so that they can manage the future on their own, a nation-builder succeeds by nurturing the nation and the citizenry towards maturity. Once that is achieved, governments should merely play a supportive role to help citizens excel, just as parents of young adults should dismantle the barriers that they placed in the way of the children when they were children.

    This seldom happens though. We notice it in how schoolchildren in the US recently had to take matters into their own hands against the passion of their elders for guns.

  • 7 - The Unity Fetish

  • from Before Pakatan Harapan
  • Kee Beng Ooi
  • Book:
    Catharsis
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    03 September 2018, pp 21-27

  • Summary

    fe•tish

    noun \’fe-tish also ‘fē-\

  • : a strong and unusual need or desire for something

  • : a need or desire for an object, body part or activity for sexual excitement

  • : an object that is believed to have magical powers

    • The Collective Individual

    Malaysia is a land of diversity. However, the need to adopt the nationstate structure to replace colonialism disposed the country's postcolonial leaders to see its diversity as a weakness – in fact, as potential dynamite.

    No doubt, much of that diversity was politically salient and basically of a divisive nature. Agendas and values among potential nation builders did differ greatly and the two forces that had, on good grounds, always been thought to be most dangerous were communalism and communism.

    The latter is now passé, while the former has been heavily enhanced, and has left the country with a political structure pathologically fixated with ethnicity – a condition that in recent years has become aggravated by religion.

    Over the last half-century, with so much of the country's governing logic being based on ethnic affiliations, it has not been easy for Malaysians to appreciate diversities in general as something that can be positive. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that most differences today, including in viewpoints, are seen through a racial lens. Should a Malay not agree with the principle of Malay supremacy, he or she is loudly suspected of being a race traitor. And if his understanding of Islamic behaviour differs from the state-sanctioned one, then he is in the eyes of the authorities on the way to being an apostate, or to jail.

    This goes for the other races as well, except that if truth be told, it is the Malay community that has been exposed most strongly to collective identity manipulation. In the Constitution, it is already stated what characterises a Malay. This extraordinary attempt to define ethnicity legally definition may have seemed a good political strategy, but it does involve over time a minimising of individual space for the sake of the political advantage of the community as understood, and as led and represented, by a select group of leaders.

  • 23 - Seeking a New Formula to Unite Malaysia's Diversity

  • from Before 9 May 2018
  • Kee Beng Ooi
  • Book:
    Catharsis
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    03 September 2018, pp 82-84

  • Summary

    The issue of Bangsa Johor, Johor nationality, made national news again on Wednesday, when former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad was asked about it at a forum on relations between the federal government and state governments.

    Asked about Johor's separation from Malaysia, a national concern fanned by provocative comments made by Johor's Crown Prince, Tunku Ismail Sultan Ibrahim, Tun Dr Mahathir replied that such a separation would encourage ‘unhealthy’ feelings of superiority and harm the unity of the federation.

    The issue of ‘Bangsa Johor’ is hugely interesting on several levels. It acts as a reminder that despite the centralised nature of Malaysian governance, the country was sewn together in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s as a federation. This was clearly reflected in the country's 1957 Constitution.

    This solution, worked out for a smooth decolonisation process, sought to acknowledge diversity while uniting a miscellany of state formations, identities and loyalties. Over the last half-century, however, much has happened to undermine this compromise.

    The role of race champion that the Malay-based UMNO developed for itself quickly skewed the national inter-ethnic compromise and its consequent federal system to such an extent that being Malay became more important to most of its followers than becoming Malaysian.

    It also led to the power-sharing system that united the nation's diverse groups from the very beginning being overwhelmed by the huge dominance of this ethnocentric party.

    Not only had this train of events for decades been encouraging ‘unhealthy feelings of superiority’ among some Malaysians against others, but it also damaged the ability of the federation to argue for diversity as a strength. Instead, diversity became the country's major problem. And this diversity is as much intra-Malay as it is inter-ethnic or inter-regional.

    The Johor case is symptomatic of this process having gone too far and occurs alongside other recent expressions of Malay opposition to UMNO power and to its self-proclaimed mandate to champion Malayness and Malaysianness.

    These new expressions include Dr Mahathir's newly formed party, Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu), not to mention Parti Amanah Negara recently established by dissidents from the Islamist party PAS or Anwar Ibrahim's Parti Keadilan Rakyat formed in the late 1990s.

  • 48 - A Revolution in Malaysia? Not So Fast…

  • from Beyond 9 May 2018
  • Kee Beng Ooi
  • Book:
    Catharsis
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    03 September 2018, pp 187-190

  • Summary

    Now when it finally happens, it seems to have been inevitable all along and only a matter of time. But let's be honest. It certainly did not feel that way, not even when polling day began. For most Malaysians, toppling the Barisan Nasional (BN) was simply not possible.

    BN had after all ruled Malaya/Malaysia since independence. It started out as the Alliance in its first nationwide elections in 1955, expanded to become BN for the 1974 elections and has remained the central power ever since.

    And for a large part of that period, Mahathir Mohamad was its president.

    It also had the undying loyalty of many in the Malay community, and could count on the over-represented East Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak to stay in power at the federal level.

    What nobody on Earth could have imagined was that the finally successful attack on the BN would be led by Mahathir himself. In giving credit to him for this historically stunning achievement, one should not for a second diminish the resilience and courage of so many now grouped under the banner of the Pakatan Harapan that now takes on the exciting but daunting task of reforming Malaysia.

    These people include most notably Lim Kit Siang, the supremo of the Democratic Action Party (DAP), the only major party that refused to join the BN in the early 1970s. This refusal saw it becoming more and more of a Chinese Malaysian-based organisation over time despite its official ideology of being multicultural. This was a condition that was effectively used against it by BN leaders and a fate that hung like an anchor around its neck for more than four decades. But it survived and could, when the time was ripe, help form the new coalition that now sends BN packing. Lim's political fervour obviously inspired his son, Lim Guan Eng, who was jailed twice by the BN regime but who against all odds, became the frontman for DAP and the chief minister of the rebel state of Penang since 2008.

    Then there is Anwar Ibrahim of course, the deputy prime minister sacked and persecuted in 1997–98 by then-prime minister Mahathir. His continued struggle to topple the BN saw him jailed again, and now he watches his coalition triumph from within prison walls.

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