An Eventful 2011 for Prime Minister
December 31, 2011
REWIND 2011
An Eventful 2011 for Prime Minister
By Ali Imran Mohd Noordin (12-30-11)
Though 2011 has been a challenging year for Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, both at the domestic and the global front, it was still an eventful year.
At the domestic front, Najib continued with the transformation programmes while addressing the ever-changing aspirations of the people. He continued with radical changes including abolishing the controversial Internal Security Act (ISA).
At the global front, the economic decay of the West in particular has created new challenges in
promoting the national economy. The prospect of an impending global recession prompted Najib to thread a cautious path in managing the country’s financial resources.
Nonetheless, Najib, known for his tenacity and unwavering commitment, took on the task of leading the country based on his mantra – “People First, Performance Now”.
The year witnessed numerous bold transformation initiatives by the “Father of Transformation” based on the 1Malaysia aspiration that has been the hallmark of Najib’s initiatives.
It is apparent that many of his efforts are showing results. The people too in general appreciated his strategies and public approval on Najib’s leadership has improved tremendously.
A popularity study by Universiti Islam Antarabangsa (IIUM) and Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) indicated greater approval for Najib from all races in the country.IIUM’s four-year study pointed out that Najib’s popularity among the Malays shows a marked improvement from 35 percent in 2008 to 59 percent in 2011, an increase from 33 to 45 percent among the Chinese and from 41 to 62 percent among the Indians.
A similar study conducted by UPM this year on the minorities – Indian Muslims, Portuguese, Baba Nyonya, Orang Asli, Siam and Chitty – found a total of 54.2 percent of the minorities giving their thumbs-up for Najib.
1Malaysia brand
Just mention the rhyming acronyms – KR1M, PR1MA, MR1M, BR1M and the latest KIR1M – they immediately refer to Najib’s effort to touch base with the people, especially the needy.
The KR1M or the Kedai Rakyat 1Malaysia are retail outlets offering daily necessities at affordable prices, up to 60 percent below other retail outlets.
The whole idea is to reduce the burden of urban poor, with KR1M offering daily necessities like rice, egg, milk, flour and chili sauce. Also available are frozen items, diapers and detergents.KR1M is further complemented by Kedai Ikan Rakyat 1Malaysia (KIR1M) launched this month, offering fresh seafood at prices 30 to 40 percent lower than prevailing market price.
Menu Rakyat 1 Malaysia (MR1M) ensures the man on the street enjoys a meal worth up to RM2 for breakfast and RM4 for lunch.As at December 16, the number of vendors who joined the MR1M scheme had roughly doubled, with 1,155 MR1M outlets opened all over the nation, compared with 611 when launched last July.
In the latest move, the MR1M outlets would be available at all higher education institutions starting with Universiti Malaya.
The 1Malaysia Public Housing Project (PR1MA) was launched on July 4 as a strategic initiative to fulfil the housing needs of the people, especially the urban middle-class.In Putrajaya, under the programme 560 affordable homes priced between RM120,000 and RM150,000 in Precinct 11 were allocated for local youths with household income below RM6,000. This project is expected to be extended to other places like Johor Baru and Penang.
The 2012 Budget allocated RM100 to every school student and book vouchers worth RM200 for undergraduates. The government’s goodwill was further extended with the RM500 hand-out under 1Malaysia Public Assistance (BR1M) for households earning less than RM3,000.
Making the transformation a reality
Realising that the people have been yearning for positive changes, a number of transformation programmes has been launched. Among them is the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) that puts Malaysia on the path to emerge as a high income nation by 2020.
One of the 85 programmes implemented in 2011 is the Small Retail Outlet Transformation Programme (TUKAR) to help modernise small-time retailers and help them to compete with other players.
The programme is expected to contribute RM5.56 billion and create 51,540 employment opportunities.
On the whole, all the ETP initiatives launched in 2011 are expected to contribute RM150 billion and create more than 300,000 employment opportunities by 2020.
The government transformation, too, is showing results. Malaysia was listed on the 19th spot among the safest country index, a significant improvement from the 38th spot in 2008.
The same index also picked Malaysia as the safest country in Southeast Asia and fourth safest spot in the Asia-Pacific region, behind New Zealand, Japan and Australia.
One of the seven National Key Result Areas (NKRA) is reducing crime.Najib etched his name in the nation’s history when he repealed the controversial Internal Security Act 1960 (ISA) and Banishment Act 1959.
He also said that the Restricted Residence Act 1933, Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 would be reviewed. The move was welcomed by most, within and outside the country.Also on review is Section 27, Police Act 1967 that provides discretionary powers to the Police to control and issue permits for rallies.
The latest, and another landmark decision by Najib, is the amendments to Section 15 of the Universities and University Colleges Act 1971, allowing undergraduates to join political parties upon reaching 21 years of age.
Regaining the dignity of sports
Just a decade ago, it was rare to see Malaysians donning the national jersey and, what more, to see them on the store shelves.Today it is a different story altogether. The “Harimau Malaya” and “Team Malaysia” jerseys are hot items. People were annoyed when they found out that the outlets have ran out of stock for the jerseys.
The private sector, too, has shown interest in Malaysian sports. Astro-pay-TV now has a dedicated channel, channel 801, to cover the sports development in the country.
Malaysian telecommunication giant TM also got itself involved in sports through “Team Malaysia” and gave a helping hand in the national contingent’s preparation for the recent 26th SEA Games, the upcoming Olympics 2012, and the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games both in 2014.
Nonetheless, the government’s commitment is still needed and under Najib the sporting fraternity is certain to see greater achievements.
People the beneficiaries
Social activist, Khairil Hafidz Khairuddin, 29, noted that while he lauded the government’s programmes, there was still room for improvements to ensure the objectives were met.
“A body to monitor each initiative is necessary for all the programmes. The monitoring body could also review the programmes to check whether they were still relevant or otherwise. It could also propose new programmes to be implemented by the government for the benefit of the people,” he said.
A private sector employee, Raju Guruvelu, 35, noted that the BR1M monetary programme is a good effort in easing the burden of the low-income earners.
As for Mohd Azrul Kamaruddin, 31, he was impressed by the government’s efforts to promote products from rural entrepreneurs through the annual Rural Entrepreneur Carnival (KUD).
“I love to see the host of products that we rarely see in the open market. All of them are locally made,” he said.
At the 2011 KUD, Najib announced an initial allocation of RM50 million under the Small Scale Dynamic Entrepreneur (UK Dinamik) programme to assist small-scale entrepreneurs, especially in the rural areas.
- Bernama/www.freemalaysiatoday.com
Najib started his administration in 2009 well, but he seems distracted now, having to temper his reformist zeal with doses of political reality because he has to contend with reactionary forces within his party led by UMNO warlords. MAS-AirAsia Share Swap, Peaceful Assembly Bill, UUCA changes, NFC fiasco, Felda Global Ventures, Perkasa, UMNO internal bickering and rivalries, etc are albatrosses around his neck. I have a feeling the Prime Minister is being controlled by Darth Vader forces and needs the wisdom and powers of Yoda to overcome the challenges of these negative elements.
This is what The Economist (World in 2012) says on our country for 2012:
“The ruling Barisan Nasional coalition has a habit of calling early elections, but may be dissuaded by a recent disappointing result in Sarawak, one of its heartlands. Leadership elections for the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) , which dominates the coalition, will take place and may see the ouster of Najib Razak as party leader and national president. The Opposition Pakatan Rakyat alliance is without its figurehead, Anwar Ibrahim who faces allegations of sodomy; it may not hold together.The economy will do well as trade within Asia deepens.”(p.108)
I think Sarawak is not a factor any more as long as the Taib Mahmud controversy is contained. Najib needs a fresh mandate to govern and wants to go to party elections with his position as Prime Minister unquestioned. With his power secured,depending on his margin of electoral victory, he will go into party polls with confidence.
His strategists will have to exploit the apparent rifts in both DAP (Karpal vs Ramasamy) and PAS (Hasan Ali and his Selangor faction). But they must tone down their religious and racial rhetoric.The backlash from Anwar Ibrahim’s imminent incarceration (The Court will find him guilty of Sodomy again) could, however, derail his plan. But with the economy remaining reasonably stable (GDP growth in real terms as around 4.5-5.5 per cent) and not likely to worsen at least in the first half of 2012, my money (RM10) is that GE-13 will be held after Chinese New Year (Year of the Water Dragon). Najib will probably avoid the Ides of March (a mistake made in 2008 by Kepala Batas’ Abdullah Badawi Al-Ghazali). Your comments are welcome.–Din Merican
dinobeano - December 31, 2011 at 5:14 am
this is what Malaysia is sorely missing, we need to learn from others who are wiser,
The Economics of Well-Being
by Justin Fox
Money isn’t everything. But for measuring national success, it has long been pretty much the only thing (other than, of course, sports). The specific metric that has prevailed since World War II is the dollar value of a country’s economic output, expressed first as gross national product, later as gross domestic product. This is an improvement over ranking by military victories—the most time-honored gauge. And the era of GNP and GDP has been characterized by a huge global rise in living standards and in wealth.
At the moment, though, GDP is embattled. Economists and national leaders are increasingly talking about measuring a country’s status with other metrics and even with a squishy-seeming concept like “happiness.” A 2009 study on alternatives to GDP, commissioned the year before by French president Nicolas Sarkozy and led by the economists Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz, and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, has become a global wonk sensation. In October 2011 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)—a club of the world’s wealthy nations—followed with a “How’s Life?” report on “well-being” in its member countries. Each year since 2007 the private Legatum Institute has published a global Prosperity Index, a sophisticated mix of economic and other indicators. Individual nations are getting into the game, with Prime Minister David Cameron of the UK making the biggest waves by unveiling plans to measure national well-being. There are decades-old challenges to GDP as well, such as the United Nations’ Human Development Index and the Kingdom of Bhutan’s insistence that it is out to maximize not GNP or GDP but GNH—“gross national happiness.”
As everyone in business knows, you manage what you measure. So although the replacing-GDP discussion may seem a little airy, its growing credibility in important circles could give it a real impact on economic policy. And it parallels efforts in some boardrooms to use new metrics to measure overall success. So it’s worth exploring where the movement is coming from and where it might be headed. (For more on how the expansion of performance metrics leads to new management priorities, see “Runaway Capitalism,” by Christopher Meyer and Julia Kirby, HBR January–February 2012.)
From Happiness Calculus to GDP
The story usually begins with Jeremy Bentham, an Englishman who in 1781 outlined a philosophy of utility that assessed the merits of an action according to how much happiness it produced. This was during the Enlightenment, when thinkers sought to replace religion-based rules with rational, scientific guides to decision making and life. Bentham suggested creating a sort of happiness calculus for any action by balancing 12 pains (the pains of the senses, the pains of awkwardness, and so on) and 14 pleasures (the pleasures of amity, the pleasures of wealth).
Although the basic idea of utility took off, Bentham’s approach to it did not. Calculating pleasure and pain in a way that could be compared from person to person was too difficult and messy. Economists, the most enthusiastic adopters of the concept, came to focus instead on the tangible expression of people’s needs and desires: what they were willing to spend money on.
This work reached an apotheosis in the 1930s, with Paul Samuelson’s attempt to explain welfare economics in purely mathematical terms. At about the same time, the economists Simon Kuznets, in the U.S., and Richard Stone, in the UK, were developing the systems of national accounting from which GNP and GDP are derived. They were not really concerned with utility; the main goal was to make it easier for policy makers to manage a national economy through financial crises and wars. But the combination of a straightforward metric, the belief among economists that spending patterns revealed all, and the rise in economists’ clout and prestige was a powerful one. In the 1940s GNP was adopted by the newly formed International Monetary Fund and World Bank as the key indicator of economic growth, and over the years it took on deeper connotations of success and well-being.
For its original purpose—measuring short-term economic fluctuations—GDP is not likely to be supplanted anytime soon. It may even be gaining ground: A major discussion is under way concerning whether the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks should in times of crisis focus not on inflation but on GDP growth.
When one moves beyond short-term ups and downs, though, things get more complicated. “Our gross national product…counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage,” Robert F. Kennedy said on the presidential campaign trail in 1968. “It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.…Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play.”
source: http://www.hbr.org
Kathy - December 31, 2011 at 6:37 am
Another feel good article almost bending towards bodekism. Be realistic lah Malaysians, face up toit that Najib has failed as PM to lead Malaysia into the next level. All talk but no action. Abolishing the ISA but instead replacing it with more restrictive legislation. Small KR1M project to appease the citizen while they sapu millions.
Why no squeak from Najib on NFC? Why? waiting for official report?
Why no squeak from Najib on the illegal and unethical use of zakat money? Maybe waiting for a Fatwa or divine revelation.
Why no squeak about the Scorpene scandal? Deny it and then go after the parties that are linking your name to the deal. Br ready to ppear before the French magistrate to tell your version.
There are so many issues in 2011 that you as PM can easily resolve but speaking out. Why remain silent?
semper fi - December 31, 2011 at 7:52 am
All these pro UMNO malay posters have left out one key component and that is the anger and alienation of the non Malays and that of some descent Malays of the rascist comments from the Malay DPM and the Malay PM who see it fit mainatain Malay superiority and privelages . These free loaders use race to divide . Of course the orignal owners of the country – the Orang Asli- are still living as fringe dwellers in poverty and deprivation, The like of the UMNO elitis, the free loaders – often forget they too are migrants or of migrant stocks, and not the orginal natives of this country.
The denial of equality as birthright to the non Malays will not gain any respect for the these kind of free loaders from the non-Malays from anywhere in the world.
All gains of wealth and useless feudal titles will not gain respect when human descency is not practiced. Hitler and his kind never survived and his followers and admireres are being hounded to this day. Claim to racial superiority and ursurping of national wealth , the common inheritance of ALL, will be doomed.
Miniswaran - December 31, 2011 at 9:06 am
just remember starting tomorrow … employer contribution for epf will be increased by 1% to 13%. So there will be an increased in EPF by 1% … is alot of money for the Govt to borrow… to finance the deficit budget…
ALBATROSS - December 31, 2011 at 6:40 pm