Untuk kerajaan yang memerintah sekarang, supaya lebih progresif (dan agresif disebabkan tahun 2020 dah dekat untuk capai taraf Negara Maju) - kuasa membeli rakyat ditingkatkan dan pada masa yang sama subsidi dikurangkan. Ataupun dengan lain kata untuk apabila kuasa membeli rakyat ditingkatkan dan pada masa yang sama subsidi dikurangkan maka makin dekat kita untuk menjadi Negara Maju. Sama je bunyinya.
Ini berdasar kepada pengalaman hidup di Australia dan USA. Bagaimana? Terpulanglah kepada kerajaan nak guna think-tank nak laksana caranya.
Orang awam hanya faham untuk penuhkan troli Tesco/Giant, berapa RM mereka habiskan? Apabila subsidi dikurangkan perlahan-lahan hingga tiada lagi, maka barulah nampak pencapaian ekonomi sebenar ikut pasaran global.
Teruskan targeted subsidy kepada mereka yang benar-benar memerlukannya sampai mereka selesa dan bersedia untuk melompat ke arena open market.
Ishhh, apa yang saya merepek ni?
Anyway, artikel kat bawah menarik juga untuk dibaca. What is becoming to our politics. Good or bad? Takde cara lain untuk tau selain dari teruskan membaca. Elakkan propaganda dan benda tak tentu hala. Jadilah rakyat yang bijak.
No need for two-thirds to govern
Constitutional law
expert Prof Dr Shad Saleem Faruqi thinks a two-thirds majority in
parliament is a thing of the past and that it is fine to win with a
simple majority. He shares his view on what happens if the
tightly-fought contest ends in a hung parliament.
Q: Some say this
election is too close to call, so what happens if it’s a simple majority
of, say, only five seats? How stable would such a government be?
A: In democracies, majorities are small. The idea of having 80%, 90%, 70% majority is most unusual and abnormal.
The bigger the
majority, the less likely there was integrity in the electoral process.
It is abnormal in politics if 90% of the people agree with one side.
This is impossible even in your own home with your wife and children.
You are always divided
on simple issues like where you want to go for dinner or what colour
your carpet should be. If two people agree on everything, that means
only one is doing the thinking.
If 90% or 94% of the
people vote a leader in, you can be assured there was no free thought
permitted. I would be embarrassed not worried if a particular party or
coalition wins a massive, unnatural support because that is not normal
at all. Normal in politics is you are split down the line. If it’s a
vibrant democracy and there is a high level of political awareness and
legal literacy, differences are to be expected. It is a sign of a feudal
society if there is too high a level of conformity.
The issue you are
raising is something other countries are not so worried about. Their
political morality is a bit better so they don’t worry about party
hoppers so much.
Look at Australia no
one got a majority but Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard managed
to negotiate with independents and formed a government with a majority
of two to three seats. And she’s surviving.
And in the UK, the Conservative and Liberal Democrats coalition (of David Cameron and Nick Clegg) is surviving.
There was no massive
sale and purchase of MPs. You put your finger on how depraved our
morality has become in the area of political ethics that we are worried
some people will bolt. Ultimately, it is the issue of political ethics,
of people’s commitment to a party or to principles rather than to “make
hay while the sun shines”. Besides political ethics, there’s also the
issue of leadership. Leaders can work with a small majority and are able
to survive, as is the case in other countries.
> Malaysia has
always had a two-thirds majority in parliament up until the 2008 general
election and Malaysians have been very comfortable with this. Doesn’t a
two-thirds majority make the running of the government smoother because
everything will get through easier?
Democracy
is a good form of government but it is not the most efficient because
it requires discussion before a decision and allows competition of ideas
in the market place. The more evenly balanced the two parties are, the
more of a gridlock and deadlock there will be.
A
two-thirds majority facilitates quick decisions, the quick passing of
laws, the pushing aside of differences in views, but as our democratic
culture grows, we have to learn to accommodate these things. Democracy
is not an easy form of government. If we want democracy, we have to
learn to accommodate delays in the passing of legislation, delays in the
passing of the budget, and I think we will still survive without a
two-thirds.
(Former Prime Minister
Tun) Abdullah (Ahmad) Badawi’s and (Datuk Seri) Najib (Tun Razak’s)
governments survived without a two-thirds majority.
And Najib repealed the
ISA, repealed section 27 of the Police Act, repealed the Restricted
Residence Act, lifted the Emergency, amended AUKU (the Universities and
University Colleges Act) without a two-thirds majority. So what’s the
problem?
Actually, even without a two-thirds majority you can indirectly amend the constitution by passing a law as an ordinary law.
Abdullah passed the Judicial Appointments Commissions Act as an
ordinary law when he didn’t have a two-thirds majority. That was
actually a constitutional amendment but any law is valid until it is
challenged and declared invalid by the court.
So I don’t see a
problem without the two-thirds majority. Most laws and the budget
require only a simple majority to pass in parliament. As for
constitutional amendments, some resolutions involving Malay reserve land
and re-delineations of constituencies, you would need two-thirds.
> Are Malaysians
mature enough to handle a simple majority government from now on? People
are saying that if Najib wins, say, 126 seats, he shouldn’t be Prime
Minister because that would be worse than the 2008 general election led
by Pak Lah.
That’s
ridiculous! It is very unfair indeed in a democracy that a person who
leads his party to power with a clear cut absolute majority must resign
just because he doesn’t have two-thirds.
As to whether Malaysians are mature enough, I am not worried about whether the guy who sells nasi lemak or makes roti canai has
a sophisticated understanding of issues. The point is this: within our
society, there is a sufficient number of mature people who know what’s
going on, understand laws and what the nation needs. We must always
aspire for a standard higher than the market place. We can’t peg our
ideals or practices to the mean average. It has always to be pegged
above the timberline of the ordinary. We have enough mature people.
For example, we have
always been told you can’t amend the Police Act and allow freedom of
assembly because there will be chaos. But we have proven to the world
and ourselves in Bersih 1, 2 and 3 except for one where there was some
disorder primarily due to police action that we can have massive rallies
without any untoward incident. Every
Friday for prayers, we double and triple park our cars and don’t get
into fights. There is enough maturity to wait for the guy to come out.
On
Sunday mornings (because of church), the four-lane Jalan Gasing becomes
a one-lane road but we tolerate all this chaos and give and take for
each other. During Chinese New Year, there are firecrackers at midnight
and early morning and we tolerate all this but we are not given the
credit that is due. Malaysian society is far ahead in terms of
inter-communal living than many other societies that are more
economically and educational developed than us.
Somehow, the culture of sharing power, of permitting massive diversity, comes easily to the Malays.
We have the largest pig farms in this country, which is a Muslim
country, despite the fact that all Muslims have a sense of revulsion
towards the pig. We allow gambling. We close an eye over very liberal
forms of dressing which you find everywhere here even though it’s a
Muslim majority country.
I think there is a great deal of tolerance here.
Look at the communal
riots in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, southern Philippines, Lebanon, and
Turkish and Greek Cyprus where they can’t live with each other.
Here in Malaysia, there are not many people who are prepared to go beyond the point where a conflagration is inevitable.
Look at the cow-head
protest in Shah Alam or the firebomb (Molotov cocktail) thrown into a
church. It didn’t lead to a racial riot. In India, that would have led
to a communal riot right away.
What else do we have to prove? We have had 57 years of peace 55 after independence, two years before that.
> But some would
argue that as a country, Malaysia has not really been pushed or tested.
We have not had a change in government so people would argue that if it
comes to that, people would not be able to take it.
Maybe
so. But we had 57 years of political co-operation. We have the world’s
longest surviving coalition (Barisan Nasional). Some credit must be
given for that widely disparate groups coming together and acknowledging
that there is a lot that they don’t agree on but they are prepared to
be friends in sports and agree on some fundamental issues.
The
Malays conceded a great deal. They conceded citizenship to the
non-Malays. That is very generous. I went to the Maldives to draft their
constitution. There, unless you are a Muslim you can’t get citizenship.
Malays
also conceded cultural and linguistic diversity. We allow people to
have their own names according to their culture. In Indonesia you can’t.
In Thailand, Japan, and South Korea, there’s a great deal of emphasis
on monoculture.
The
fact that you have in this country Chinese and Tamil schools too is
remarkable. The Chinese and Tamil schools are actually not protected
under the constitution. The constitution only permits the right to learn
the language but doesn’t give you the right to learn in the language.
There’s a difference. Non-Malays conceded an electoral system with the
rural weightage, they conceded the fact that there would be Islam, Malay
language, Malay special position and that the royalty is all Malay.
There is a great deal of give and take. In Malaysia, we have proven that even if we don’t learn together, we can live together.
The thing is to find
our commonality. We do that with our children. We find common grounds.
Because of love, we ignore the rest. We have done that at a national
level now. The most important that the
Malays conceded is economic power sharing. There was no compulsory
expropriation of property as in Kenya or in Uganda where Jomo Kenyatta
and Idi Amin (respectively) seized the property of Asians, or in
Zimbabwe where the property of the whites are being seized. Instead,
Article 153 (Federal Constitution) was used for social engineering. It
was an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary process which combats
identification of race with function.
In many areas, it
didn’t work and in many areas it didn’t produce the result it intended.
But the point is this: nobody’s home or business was seized.
Social engineering was
resorted to, to try and bring about the change. That’s why I think the
economy is so vibrant. Malaysia used the economy to tell the people that
riots, killing and hatred will not produce good results.
An American once asked me how come people here don’t kill each other. The
reason for that is everyone has some stake in the country. Indians
don’t want to go back to India, the Chinese don’t want to go to China,
the Malays from Indonesian islands don’t want to go back to Indonesia. I
think all have a place under the Malaysian sun. God has been so kind to
arrange sunshine, fertile soil; we have minerals, we have rubber, palm
oil, we have gas and there are no serious earthquakes or tsunamis or
cyclone. It’s a very lovely country.
> Do you have confidence in the legislation for the police to keep the country together if there is a change of government?
The legislation arms
the police with sufficient power, there’s no doubt about that. I don’t
share the view that the repeal of the ISA, the amendment of the Police
Act, or the repeal of the Emergency Law has crippled the police.
The police have plenty
of preventive powers in the sense that they don’t need proof. They can
arrest someone based on suspicion. And after arresting, they have to
follow some post-arrest procedures such as producing him in front of a
magistrate, allowing him a lawyer or under the Securities Offences
(Special Measures) Act, 28 days of preventive detention is allowed.
There are many laws.
The Penal Code is a
fantastic law; it has almost everything under the sun. Besides that,
there is the Criminal Procedure Code, laws on gun control and laws
against drugs.
Don’t forget too that
the constitution has a provision for more laws. Article 149 of the
Federal Constitution gives the power to pass laws to combat subversion,
and to pass these laws you don’t need a declaration of emergency.
Today there is no emergency but a parliament sitting could pass a subversion law.
> What constitutes a hung parliament?
In simple terms, it
means a parliament that no party or grouping has an absolute majority.
We have 222 seats in the Dewan Rakyat so the absolute majority is 112
seats. If no grouping gets 112 seats, that’s a hung parliament.
Theoretically, it’s
possible for both sides (Barisan and Pakatan Rakyat) to have 111 seats
each but it will never be like that. Normally, it’s, say, one side has
100 seats, the other side has 95 seats and the rest of the seats are won
by Independents or other smaller parties (which are not aligned to
either coalition). So no one can form the government because none has
112 seats. That’s a hung parliament.
> What happens if the election ends in a hung parliament and no one is in charge?
Someone must be in charge. If there is a hung parliament, there are four or five possibilities.
1. Under the British
convention, the caretaker prime minister continues and gets the first
bite of the cherry to try and form the government. In the United
Kingdom, there was a hung parliament after the 2010 general election.
The incumbent Prime Minister Gordon Brown was the losing prime minister
but he remained in the saddle for a few days trying to form a
government. When he failed, he stepped down, allowing the opposition
leader (David Cameron) to take over to form the coalition government
(between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats).
Look at what happened
in Australia when the lady Prime Minister Julia Gillard did not win and
there was a hung parliament. She negotiated and worked out a deal with
independents and remained in the saddle.
2. The second
possibility is the Nepal rule. In Nepal, the law says when no one wins a
clear majority, then the party of the coalition with the largest number
must get the first bite of the cherry. So if no one wins a clear
majority, it won’t be with the incumbent but whichever group that has
the largest number of supporters in the elected house that gets the
chance to try to form the government.
Let’s say one side gets
100, the other 90, and 32 are independents or from some mosquito party.
That is a hung parliament. So the side with the 100 seats will try to
bring some MPs from here and some from there to get that magic 112
number. The MPs don’t have to hop or change parties or coalitions. They
just have to say I will support you on a day- to-day basis. I will
support your budget, your essential legislation.’
3. A coalition
government with the help of the head of the state. Parliament must meet
within 120 days from the date of the dissolution of parliament so you
have to find a workable arrangement within 120 days.
Let’s say the incumbent
can’t do anything to form the government and fails despite being given
the time, and the leader of the largest faction doesn’t succeed either.
The King can’t rule the country so he can play a statesman’s role to
bring people together to get them to forge a coalition or unity
government. That is unusual and is not contemplated by our constitution
but he would have to play the role because of the incidental situation.
And in this case, the
Prime Minister of a coalition government doesn’t necessarily have to
come from the party with the biggest number of elected representatives.
Look at what happened to Perak in 2008. DAP won 18 seats, PKR seven
seats, PAS won six seats and Datuk Nizar Jamaluddin from PAS became the
Mentri Besar because he was the compromise candidate (until the Pakatan
state government fell due to a series of defections). So the King can
appoint a member of the Dewan Rakyat who, in his opinion, commands the
confidence. It doesn’t say he must come from a party with the most
number. Confidence just means that he has the support to pass laws. So a
leader of a small faction may well become PM on an ad hoc basis for a
short term because he is the compromise candidate, as in “I don’t want
you, you don’t want me so we pick him”.
4. A minority
Government. A coalition could not be worked out and the person does not
have the confidence of the Dewan Rakyat. But maybe through the striking
of deals, he can get some important legislation like the budget passed
or some critical appointments, for example, if the position of the Chief
Justice or Suhakam commissioners are vacant, he can try to get these
pushed through compromises and he can advise the King to dissolve the
house and call for a fresh election.
The King can’t dissolve
parliament and call for elections on his own. Somebody must advise him
to, so the King appoints a minority leader to advise him. He will be a
stop-gap caretaker minority Prime Minister whose job would be to do the
critical things including advising for a new election. Within 120 days
after parliament is dissolved, a new parliament must sit, even if it’s
for one day only. Then it can be dissolved.
5) If none of this works and the nation is in turmoil and drifting, an emergency can be declared under Article 150.
Then there will be an
executive government running the country. The King will acquire a
significant role and not be strictly bound by the advice of a caretaker
Prime Minister but, hopefully, he will be bound by convention to listen
to advice. This gives the King a lot of discretion and this has never
been exercised in this country. In this scenario, you are moving towards
more instability, uncertainty and a crisis zone. I hope and pray that
won’t happen.
> Is it healthy for democracy if all states are controlled by one party and the federal government is controlled by another?
It would make governing
more difficult and challenging. But join the rest of the world.
Governing was never meant to be a 100m race from day one you start and
that’s it. Governing is not a motorway, it is a maze. In other
countries, federal-state disputes are common. We have to learn to live
with that. So in that respect, the mindset must change. We are so used
to federal hegemony. We have to change our thinking.
> You sound optimistic about the country. Are you?
I think this country
has in some respects been exceptional. In many areas in ethnic
relations, we have regressed. Still, all in all, if we compare Malaysia
to India, to Pakistan or Sri Lanka, we have a remarkable level of peace.
The first human right is to live in peace.
In India, the Hindu population is 80%, the Muslim population is 10%, and Christians 6%.
But in Malaysia, the
Malay population is 55% and the non-Malays are 45% and for that 45% and
55% to live together in a political coalition is not easy. If it was
90%-10%, one can understand where one side totally dominates the other.
Tunku
Abdul Rahman, Tun Abdul Razak, Tun Tan Cheng Lock and Tun Sambanthan
should have been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, not because they
ended a war but because they created conditions of peace.
I am sure they
quarrelled. I am sure they had frayed tempers and cursed each other, but
in the end they came up with a blueprint on a basis of give-and-take.
Some of what we have today is from the incredible compromises that have been forged.
You and I can study
abroad. In some countries you can’t do that and you can’t transfer
funds. Here, you can fill up a form and transfer funds. Malaysia was a
globalised economy long before globalisation. That actually allowed the
non-Malay communities to fly to the heights of their competence. No one
can deny that the Indians and Chinese generated a lot of wealth and
their wealth has contributed to the nation partly because of the liberal
economy.
It was a liberal
economy with importing, exporting, free travel, and foreign business. In
1957, incredibly an Asian society had a global outlook. That was
remarkable, and that’s why I say the leaders of the alliance from all
three races deserved a Nobel Prize.
The way the Malays
handled the colonial people too was remarkable. Instead of fighting and
killing them, they put them on a high pedestal and then asked them to go
home. It helped the global economy that we didn’t chase the foreigners
out. The overall spirit of the 1957 constitution was one of moderation,
and of give and take. They told each other very frankly that these are
areas that I can’t give in and the others saying that area is
non-negotiable and both agreeing to a number of things.
I’ve
heard Chinese say that Chinese education is non-negotiable. I am
fascinated by that. It’s not in the constitution. It is an ethnic
compromise. It’s normal for people to take blessings for granted.
So here, although people are dissatisfied with some of the internal
policies, they had alternatives. Nobody was put with his back against
the wall. That was important.
People had something to
live for and something to plan for. I think that’s the secret of this
country and we can recapture that. All that is needed is bold
leadership. Leaders of substance do not follow opinion polls. In the
last two years we saw the birth of leadership. We saw the repeal of the
Emergency Ordinance, the repeal of section 27 of the Police Act, the
repeal of the ISA, of the Police Act, and the amendment of AUKU. This
was leadership. It took courage.
Najib understood that
times and people have changed. The Malays want change and he wants to be
(the) agent of transformation. The term “status quo” to many has become
one that gives them security, but to many others it is a dirty word and
Najib understood that.
REFERENCE
