Lessons from Liberation Square, Suppression taking its toll!

Lessons from Liberation Square

Along The Watchtower By M. Veera Pandiyan

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The protests in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world are a wake-up call for governments to look at themselves, identify weaknesses and check excesses.

MALAYSIA may have seen its share of street protests since independence, but it’s safe to say that this is still a country where a people’s power-style power grab is highly unlikely to happen.

As such, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s warning last week that the Government would not allow attempts using mass protests to usurp power in Malaysia was a tad surprising.

Among other things he mentioned at the national-level Chinese New Year open house at Miri City Fan Square was that the people had the freedom to choose the government, and that peace, equality, and unity must be paramount.

But as expected, his remarks, probably in response to unfair comparisons being made between Egypt and Malaysia, were quickly interpreted as a threat by the Government to use the Internal Security Act and other draconian laws.

Yes, there are indeed lessons to be learned from the new age of dissent and unrest taking place in Egypt and other parts of the Arab world where people are finally demanding political rights and genuine democracy.

It should rightly be seen a wake-up call for governments everywhere to take another look at themselves, identify their weaknesses and check their excesses.

Are they going forward by providing better governance, greater transparency and accountability or still indulging in political shenanigans and condoning corruption or abuses of power?

Are their policies tuned to garner political support or geared to meet the needs of the country in an ever-changing, highly competitive world?

Can their young people get decent jobs when they leave school or university with the kind of education they have had?

In Egypt, where the population grew 2.5 times over the last two decades to reach 80 million currently, about 40% live around the internationally-accepted poverty line of US$2 (RM6) a day.

Under President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year autocratic rule, Egypt moved from being a state-controlled economy to one that attracted foreign investment.

But corruption remained rampant, making the well-connected extremely rich.

All through this time, Mubarak kept the country a virtual police state under emergency laws, giving the government sweeping powers of arrest and detention.

Arbitrary arrests, abuses by police, and even torture of political dissidents were common.

The US turned a blind eye to Mubarak’s human rights violations because he was its key ally and safeguard against known and perceived Islamist enemies in the region.

Still, the country’s economy grew by an annual average of 7% for three years until the global financial meltdown in 2008 saw it going down to 5%.

The majority of Egyptians bore the brunt of higher food and fuel prices. The poor got poorer and hungrier.
As the anger and resentment grew, Mubarak’s government failed to either connect with the rapidly growing socially-networked urban working class or provide jobs to the large numbers of university graduates being churned out.

But if inequality and the gap between the have and have-nots are the main reasons for the protests in Egypt and the other Arab countries, these are not problems that are exclusive to the region.

The Gini Coefficient (or Gini index) is the core means by which economists measure income inequality, using the comparative ratio between the share of income levels and the cumulative share of income earned by a percentage of the population.

Under the index, invented by Italian statistician Corrado Gini, lower scores denote better equality. So the higher a country scores on the Gini index, the more unequal its society’s distribution of income.

The latest figures show Sweden has the lowest Gini coefficient at 23, Namibia the highest at 70.7, while Egypt’s is 34.4, which is comparatively better than that of many Asean countries, including Malaysia and Singapore.

Our index is at 46.1, Thailand’s at 43, the Philippines’ at 45.8, Laos’ at 34, Vietnam’s at 34.6, Cambodia’s at 43, Indonesia’s at 39.4 and Singapore’s at 48.1. There is no figure for Myanmar.

For the record, the US’ index is at 45, and it is ranked 42nd in the 134-country list while Malaysia is ranked 36th and Egypt 90th.

Would we have fared better without illicit financial outflows from the country over recent years?

The Washington-based financial watchdog Global Financial Integrity found that Malaysia’s outflows tripled from US$22.2bil (RM67.5bil) in 2002 to an astounding US$68.2bil (RM207.3bil) in 2008.

It was fifth in a list of 10 Asian countries, registering the highest illicit financial outflows in the last decade.
China topped the list with an illicit outflow of US$2.18 trillion (RM6.6 trillion) followed by Russia with US$427bil (RM1.3 trillion), the Philippines with US$109.3bil (RM332.2bil), and Indonesia and India, both with US$104bil (RM315.8bil).

Going back to the protests in Egypt, perhaps there is one immediate thing that Malaysians can surely learn from Tahrir or Liberation Square: religious unity.

The country’s majority Muslims and minority Coptic Christians came together as Egyptians first, just as they did during the protests against British colonial rule in 1919.

Christians may only comprise about eight million or 10% of the population but they were united with their Muslim brothers, protecting each other during both protests and prayers.

According to an AP report, one priest gave a sermon on Sunday during which he said, “In the name of Jesus and Muhammad we unify our ranks… We will keep protesting until the fall of the tyranny.”

Christian and Muslim leaders issued a joint statement affirming that the revolution of Egyptian youth had instilled a new spirit of national unity, especially in the wake of tensions and fears of sectarian war following the bombing of churches during the New Year.

There were also placards reading “Muslims + Christians = Egypt”, complete with the crescent moon and cross symbols.

Will there be a time when we see such signs or speeches of religious tolerance and unity here?

Associate Editor M. Veera Pandiyan likes this quote from Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel: There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest

Suppression taking its toll

Brave New World By Azmi Sharom

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Ruling with an iron fist may work as long as a country is relatively prosperous, but if good governance, accountability and fairness are gone it will only be too easy for poor decision-making and corruption to come in.

I WAS, to use that wonderfully Malaysian term, outstation, last week. The hotel I stayed in did not have any Malaysian channels on its telly, so all I had to watch was CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera.

For the entire week I was there, it seemed that the only news in the world were the protests in Egypt. Oh, and Fernando Torres joining Chelsea.

Watching the Tunisian-inspired protests on Tahrir square convinced me even more about the importance of democracy.

Egypt has been ruled by Hosni Mubarak for 30-odd years. In that time, political dissent had been quashed, elections rigged and democracy sidelined in favour of so-called stability.

This may work as long as a country is relatively prosperous.However, in general, a lack of democratic principles will only lead to poor governance.

With the elements of good governance; transparency, accountability and fairness gone, it is only too easy for poor decision-making and corruption to take root. Not exactly the right ingredients for prosperity.

Egypt has been mismanaged to the extent that 40% of its people live below the World Bank poverty line.
Food is expensive; Egypt has to import a large amount of its grains from abroad and is far from self-sufficient.
Amid this suffering, the people see a group of politicians entrenched as leaders and who are tremendously wealthy to boot.

Without the usual organs of a democratic state there is little chance for the citizenry to ensure changes of government and to see justice being done when there is corruption or incompetence or both. This lack of empowerment will lead to frustration.

Such frustration can of course be suppressed by an iron fist; in the case of Egypt, the Mukhabarat or secret police. However, such suppression can only last so long.

We have seen it before in Indonesia, in the Philip­pines, and currently in Egypt and all over the Middle East.
When the pressure gets too much, people will revolt. In this part of the world democracy is often portrayed as the opposite of order.

If people are free to speak their minds, if governments are tied to laws that limit their power, we are told that this would lead to chaos and a government too weak to take actions that it thinks are necessary for the good of the nation.

The term that used to describe this philosophy was “Asian Values”. It is as though we Asians do not “value” our human rights and our civil liberties and the inherent dignity that comes with the power to freely choose who leads us.

It is all of course a great fallacy to think that we simple Asians want to be led by the nose by our glorious leaders.

Just as it is a fallacy to believe that without a true democratic system; a system that will keep government in check, dispense justice fairly and transparently, and empowering the people to have a voice in their own destiny; somehow peace and stability will be ensured.

Egypt, along with numerous other nations, has proven this to be not true.

Dr Azmi Sharom is a law teacher. The views expressed here are entirely his own.

Charismatic Leadership Can Be Measured, Learned, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Feb. 8, 2011) — How do you measure charisma? That's the question UT professor Kenneth Levine seeks to answer.

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Much has been written in business management textbooks and self-help guides about the role that personal charisma plays in leadership. But according to a newly published study co-authored by Levine, a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, communications studies professor, until recently no one was able to describe and measure charisma in a systematic way.

Levine said the large amount of academic literature on charismatic leadership never defined what it means to actually communicate charismatically.

"There's this illusion that we know what charismatic communication means, but in the research I reviewed, no one had ever really looked at that," he said.

Levine and his co-authors, Robert Muenchen of the UT Statistical Consulting Center and Abby Brooks of Georgia Southern University, surveyed university students and asked them to define charisma and pinpoint the behaviors of people they thought were charismatic.

"Everyone has a leadership capacity in something," Levine said. "But we found that if you want people to perceive you as charismatic, you need to display attributes such as empathy, good listening skills, eye contact, enthusiasm, self-confidence and skillful speaking," he said. Those are the attributes social scientists can measure to more fully understand charismatic communication.

Levine says the most surprising result was that the students felt that charisma was not just something you are born with, but something you can learn. "We asked the question 'What is charisma?' and their answers tended to start with 'the ability to…' Well, abilities are believed to be acquired attributes rather than inbred traits, so a lot of people believe that charisma can be learned."

Levine says the research makes the case for incorporating these concepts to better measure the level of charisma of individual leaders.

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Why Did Economists Not Foresee the Crisis?

by Raghuram Rajan

 

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CHICAGO – At the height of the financial crisis, the Queen of England asked my friends at the London School of Economics a simple question, but one for which there is no easy answer: Why did academic economists fail to foresee the crisis?

Several responses to that query exist. One is that economists lacked models that could account for the behavior that led to the crisis. Another is that economists were blinkered by an ideology according to which a free and unfettered market could do no wrong. Finally, an answer that is gaining ground is that the system bribed economists to stay silent.

In my view, the truth lies elsewhere.

It is not true that we academics did not have useful models to explain what happened. If you believe that the crisis was caused by a shortage of liquidity, we had plenty of models analyzing liquidity shortages and their effects on financial institutions. If you believe that the blame lies with greedy bankers and unthinking investors, lulled by the promise of a government bailout, or with a market driven crazy by irrational exuberance, we had studied all this too, in great detail.

Economists even analyzed the political economy of regulation and deregulation, so we could have understood why some US politicians pushed the private sector into financing affordable housing, while others deregulated private finance. Yet, somehow, we did not bring all this understanding to bear and collectively shout our warnings.

Perhaps the reason was ideology: we were too wedded to the idea that markets are efficient, market participants are rational, and high prices are justified by economic fundamentals. But some of this criticism of “market fundamentalism” reflects a misunderstanding. The dominant “efficient markets theory” says only that markets reflect what is publicly known, and that it is hard to make money off markets consistently – something verified by the hit that most investor portfolios took in the crisis. The theory does not say that markets cannot plummet if the news is bad, or if investors become risk-averse.

Critics argue that the fundamentals were deteriorating in plain sight, and that the market (and economists) ignored it. But hindsight distorts analysis. We cannot point to a lonely Cassandra like Robert Shiller of Yale University, who regularly argued that house prices were unsustainable, as proof that the truth was ignored. There are always naysayers, and they are often wrong. There were many more economists who believed that house prices, though high, were unlikely to fall across the board.

Of course, these expectations could have been distorted by ideology – it is hard to get into the past minds of economists. But there is a better reason to be skeptical of explanations relying on ideology. As a group, neither behavioral economists, who think that market efficiency is a joke, nor progressive economists, who distrust free markets, predicted the crisis.

Could it be corruption? Some academic economists consult for banks or rating agencies, give speeches to investor conferences, serve as expert witnesses, and carry out sponsored research. It would be natural to suspect us of bias. The bias could be implicit: our worldview is shaped by what our friends in industry believe. Or it may be an explicit bias: an economist might write a report that is influenced by what a sponsor wants to hear, or give testimony that is purely mercenary.

There are enough instances of possible bias that the issue cannot be ignored. One remedy would be to ban all interaction between economists and the corporate world. But if economists were confined to the ivory tower, we might be unbiased, but we would also be ignorant of practicalities – and thus even less capable of predicting problems. One way to restore trust may be disclosure – for economists to declare a monetary interest in a particular analysis and, more generally, to explain who pays us. A number of universities are moving in this direction.

But I believe that corruption is not the main reason that the profession missed the crisis. Most economists have very little interaction with the corporate world, and these “unbiased” economists were no better at forecasting the crisis.

I would argue that three factors largely explain our collective failure: specialization, the difficulty of forecasting, and the disengagement of much of the profession from the real world.

Like medicine, economics has become highly compartmentalized – macroeconomists typically do not pay attention to what financial economists or real-estate economists study, and vice versa. Yet, to see the crisis coming would have required someone who knew about each of these areas – just as it takes a good general practitioner to recognize an exotic disease. Because the profession rewards only careful, well-supported, but necessarily narrow analysis, few economists try to span sub-fields.

Even if they did, they would shy away from forecasting. The main advantage that academic economists have over professional forecasters may be their greater awareness of established relationships between factors. What is hardest to forecast, though, are turning points – when the old relationships break down. While there may be some factors that signal turning points – a run-up in short-term leverage and asset prices, for example, often presages a bust – they are not infallible predictors of trouble to come.

The meager professional rewards for breadth, coupled with the inaccuracy and reputational risk associated with forecasting, leads to disengagement for most academics. And it may well be that academic economists have little to say about short-term economic movements, so that forecasting, with all its errors, is best left to professional forecasters.

The danger is that disengagement from short-term developments leads academic economists to ignore medium-term trends that they can address. If so, the true reason why academics missed the crisis could be far more mundane than inadequate models, ideological blindness, or corruption, and thus far more worrisome; many simply were not paying attention!

Raghuram Rajan is Professor of Finance at the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, and author of Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy.

Malaysia's Sedition law’s overreach !

REFLECTING ON THE LAW By Prof SHAD SALEEM FARUDI

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The Sedition Act is open to many criticisms for its breadth and for its far-reaching implications on political life in the country. Some of its provisions do raise enthralling issues of constitutionality.

THE sedition charge against Sri Muda assemblyman Shuhaimi Shafiei draws our attention to the catch-all provisions of the controversial Sedition Act 1948.

Definition: Section 2 and 3(1) of the Act state that any act, speech, words or publication are seditious if they have a tendency towards any of the following:

> To bring into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against any Ruler or government.
Disaffection does not mean absence of affection but refers to disloyalty, enmity and hostility: PP v Param Cumarasamy [1986].

> To excite subjects to seek alteration other than by lawful means of any matter by law established.
> To bring into hatred or contempt the administration of justice in the country. In Lim Guan Eng v PP [1998], an opposition leader who complained that justice was selectively administered was convicted of this charge.

But in PP v Param the defendant’s criticism of the Pardons Board for not applying uniform standards in considering applications for mercy was held not to constitute sedition.

> To raise discontent or disaffection among the subjects. In PP v Ooi Kee Saik [1971] an opposition leader had accused the Government of gross partiality in favour of one race over another.

> To promote ill will and hostility between races or classes.

> To question the provisions dealing with language, citizenship, the special position of the Malays and natives of Sabah and Sarawak and the sovereignty of the Rulers. In Melan Abdullah v PP [1971] the editor-in-chief of Utusan Melayu had published an MP’s speech with the sub-heading “Abolish Tamil or Chinese medium schools in the country”.

Application of the law: In Param Cumarasamy it was held that intention to incite to violence, tumult or public disorder is not a necessary ingredient of the crime.

As long as the words were intentionally published and they had a tendency to cause ill will, etc, the offence is complete.

The prosecution need not prove that the act, speech or publication actually caused hostility, ill will or disaffection. It is no defence for the accused to argue that his words were, in fact, true and honest: PP v Ooi Kee Saik [1971].

Sedition can be committed either in public or in private. On the same set of facts the speaker, the printer and the publisher of a speech may all be prosecuted as in Ooi Kee Saik’s case.

Under Article 63(4) and (5) of the Federal Constitution, Members of Parliament are not exempt from the law of sedition for their parliamentary words or actions: Mark Koding v PP [1982]. 

Safeguards: Section 3(2)(a) of the Sedition Act says that a speech is not seditious if its tendency is only to show that any Ruler has been misled or mistaken in any of his measures.

Section 3(2)(b) states that a speech is not seditious if its tendency is to point out errors or defects in the implementation or administration of government policies with a view to remedying the errors or defects.

What this means is that implementation of government policies and programmes can be questioned.
But the existence of rights, privileges, powers, etc, cannot be put to debate.

Except in relation to sensitive matters, it is permissible to try to seek by lawful means the alteration of any matter established at law.

There is a defence of innocent and non-negligent dissemination in section 6(2).

No person shall be convicted if the publication was printed, sold or distributed without his consent, knowledge and without any want of due care: Melan Abdullah v PP [1971].

Under section 7, innocent receivers of seditious publications are protected if they surrender the publication as soon as the nature of the content has become known to them.

The offending passage must be read in context and as a whole: Mark Koding v PP [1982].
The presiding judge is entitled to look at the audience addressed.

Language which may have a tendency to incite youths may not have such tendency with professors or divines.

The judge is entitled to take note of the contemporary situation. In times of war, emergency or discord, a tendency to bring about one of the undesirable results may be more easily imputed than in times of peace and harmony: PP v Oh Keng Seng [1977].

Constitutionality: Though the Sedition Act has stood the test of time since 1948, it is not immune from judicial review.

Some of it’s provisions do raise enthralling issues of constitutionality.

If the Sedition Act is an Act to combat subversion, then it suffers from a number of manifest defects.
> Every law made under Article 149 must contain the recital prescribed in Article 149(1).

The Sedition Act contains no such recital. Absence of a recital amounts to a violation of a mandatory procedural requirement.

The alternative approach could be that the absence of a mandatory recital relegates the Act to the status of an ordinary law under Article 10 that is bereft of the special scope of Article 149.

> Under Article 149(1) subvesive action must be taken or threatened by “any substantial body of persons”.
Actions of lone dissidents are not within Article 149’s contemplation. Yet the Sedition Act criminalises individual acts of dissent or disaffection.

> In section 2 of the Act, the definition of “publication” includes all written or printed matters and any visible representation.

This means that even a purely private, non-printed, non-circulated matter that is left in a person’s drawer (but discovered by the police in a search under section 8(1) can be regarded as a “publication”.

This means that the Act goes for an overkill. Its prohibitions show no necessary nexus or connection with the action or threat of a substantial body of persons to do the prohibited things in Article 149(1)(a) to (f).

> In sections 2 & 3 of the Act, sedition is not to be judged by actual facts or by criminal intention but by a speculative and subjective “tendency”.

However, in Article 149(1), “tendency” alone is not enough. The alleged action must be of a nature so as “to cause”, “to excite”, “to promote”, “to procure” or be prejudicial to public order, etc.

If the Sedition Act is a law under Article 10(2) and 10(4), then its restrictions must fall within the borders of the explicitly enumerated grounds in these Articles.

It is arguable that many of the provisions of the Act, e.g. section 3(1)(a) on exciting disaffection against any government go far beyond the permissible limits.

In PP v Pung Chen Choon [1994] it was held that where a law authorises restrictions in language wide enough to cover restrictions both within and outside the permissible limits, the law cannot be upheld.

In the same case it was provided that in order to determine whether a particular piece of legislation falls within the orbit of permitted restrictions, the objects of the law must be sufficiently connected to the eight restrictions enumerated in Article 10(2)(a).

The connection must be real and proximate, not far-fetched or problematical.

There is emerging jurisprudence in the case of Shamim Reza that, as in India, parliamentary restrictions on fundamental rights must be “reasonable” in order to be valid.

The concept of sedition in Malaysia is much broader than in the UK, Ireland, India and Australia.

On ideal democratic standards, the law is open to many criticisms for its breadth and for its far-reaching implications on political life in the country.

For this reason it is ripe for review. Whether the technique for law reform will be legislative or judicial remains to be seen.

> Shad Saleem Faruqi is Emeritus Professor of Law at UiTM and Visiting Professor at USM

Home, not so sweet home

Ceritalah By Karim Raslan

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Many students abroad are thinking of staying back to work in London, New York or other cities, with their parents agreeing — and some even encouraging their kids not to return.

LAST month, just before I went to Davos, I gave a talk at Cambridge University. I first went there in 1982, some 28 years ago, and this visit made me feel very old. I suddenly realised that for the current students, I was like a relic.

Still, Cambridge — even after a gap of almost three decades — remains a lovely place. The town has barely changed, with students on bicycles everywhere. Indeed, the centre has been almost entirely pedestrianised, and ancient College buildings scrubbed clean.

The morning after the talk I found myself walking along King’s Parade — the town’s most prominent thoroughfare and through my old college, St Johns. It was a beautiful wintry morning, misty and with a light frost on the ground.

To my surprise, the colleges now charge tourists an entrance fee. However, with all the bravado of a former student, I just marched through the entrance, striding from one pebbled courtyard to another, past buildings that had seen the test of time.

It’s hard to express the sense of time passing. Here I was 28 years older, striding past buildings and a landscape (the trees and the river Cam) that has remained seemingly unchanged. I couldn’t help but wonder how I’d spent all the years.

I was in Cambridge to give a talk on Indonesia. It was also a thinly veiled opportunity for me to recruit people for my consulting practice, and indeed I was to do the same with students from Kings’ College, London, and from a dynamic Malaysian students group called UKEC.

My small business depends on drawing in bright, curious and hard-working young people who are willing to challenge assumptions, hit the ground, talk to businessmen, politicians, regulators and media practitioners while also ploughing through thousands of newspaper articles and reports.

In short, it’s not easy work; and the boss is very, very demanding.

I used to worry about recruiting, but nowadays, I’ve begun to realise that my regional focus — advising corporates, individuals and funds across South-East Asia — is an exciting proposition for young people hankering after experience and exposure.

Indeed, being in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand as well as Singapore has given me an enormous advantage in terms of recruitment in that, I’m able to offer the young people a real taste of doing business both inside and outside Malaysia.

Back when I was a young student, I couldn’t wait to return home to Malaysia. My enthusiasm to go home was infectious. I’d sit up all night with friends and talk about what I wanted to do with my country.

To be frank (and this is one of life’s little lessons), I’ve forgotten and/or failed to achieve the things I had set out to do. Instead, I’ve gone on and done other things.

However, nowadays when I meet with students, I sense a growing reluctance to return home. Many of the students are thinking of working elsewhere and making plans to get jobs in London, New York or other cities.

Indeed, when I check with friends whose kids are studying abroad, virtually all of them have agreed to let their kids stay on and work. Some have actually encouraged their kids not to return.

In the 1980s, this was a non-Malay phenomenon. In the 2010s, it’s a Malaysian trend as Malays have also joined the ranks of those who have elected to stay abroad.

Many of the students who choose not to return are sons and daughters of the middle class. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with us losing these young people? Maybe they’re not loyal enough? Maybe their semangat ke-Malaysia-an is too weak?

However, having chatted with the students, I’ve come to see that they love their home country as much as anyone else. But, when presented with alternative options, they chose not to return.

Isn’t this something we should be concerned about? Shouldn’t we be trying to make Malaysia more attractive for our bright, well-educated, young people? Shouldn’t we address the issues they face?

Top of the list is salary. Malaysian wages are caught in a deflationary trap — especially when compared with what’s on offer in the UK, the US or even Singapore.

Next up is a sense of frustration with the unnecessarily bureaucratic and unresponsive government machinery as well as the controls on personal freedom.

The breakdown between public and private morality also causes anguish for many, especially those still experimenting with life’s endless possibilities.

Young people don’t want to demonstrate all the time — they just want to know there’s a real and effective legal and political system that offers them a choice of leaders.

Malaysia won’t lure back the many tens of thousands of young people till we address these problems.

Despite all these hurdles, I’ve found that bright, ambitious young men and women will jump at a chance to work — even if the salaries aren’t great — so long as they’re given exposure and experience across South-East Asia, its 11 countries and 500 million people.

In short, we have to tell our young people that Kuala Lumpur, indeed Malaysia, can be a platform to explore the whole of Asean. Then they’ll come, and in their thousands.