Malay Politics Playing a Different Tune!

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Politics playing a different tune

ANALYSIS By JOCELINE TAN

Malay politics is very personality-driven but it is also becoming celebrity-driven and the trend has caught on as both Umno and PAS vie to attract glamorous names to their side.

SOME people imagine that election fever is about to descend on us but for political parties hoping to cover new ground, it has been a case of celebrity fever.

Umno Youth’s latest celebrity connection is via pony-tailed Malay rocker Awie.

Awie and several other entertainment personalities have come onboard Umno Youth chief Khairy
Jamaluddin’s latest brainchild – a sort of Justin Bieber-inspired music talent show where aspiring artistes upload their performances on the Internet.

The established artistes will then pick through the videos and the finalists will vie for the top spot at a finale at the Umno PWTC headquarters.

Khairy described it as a new approach to source for talents in music.

But who is he kidding? It is Umno Youth’s latest attempt to get the attention of the young and it is a pretty cool idea. And if all goes well, Khairy should get the prize for most original idea by a political party to get Generation Y’s attention.



Umno Youth’s effort is a value-added response to Bob Lokman joining PAS in February.

Bob does not have the rocker appeal of Awie but he was famous in the Malay entertainment scene and his grandfather was the revered Tok Kenali of Kelantan.

He acted in a variety of movies including as an ustaz. He had a popular series called Taxi Tunai and his last major showbiz appearance was as a jury in the reality show Raja Lawak. He is also the composer of mega-hit Isabella, made famous by Search.

But Bob, now 47, has walked away from all that and is making waves as a crowd-puller at PAS ceramah. He has helped to modernise the party’s image among the Malay middle ground.

His physical appearance has become more PAS than even the long-time PAS members. He is rarely seen without his white kopiah and now sports a bushy and wiry black beard.

Bob, whose real name is Mohd Hakim Lokman, has been used as the “opening act” at PAS ceramah all over the country. There is no denying his impact.

He is said to have gone through some family crisis and his talks often start with an account of how religion gave him a new lease in life, and how PAS has met his spiritual needs.

PAS considers him such a big catch that he is featured alongside Datuk Nik Aziz Nik Mat on banners.
PAS has come a long way since the day s when it frowned upon music at its functions.

Earlier this week, Bob was hauled up by the Selangor Islamic Religious Department (Jais) for giving a religious talk in a mosque in Hulu Langat without tauliah (accreditation).

Jais does not care whether the speaker is a famous mufti or a celebrity; it is very strict about people from outside the state preaching without tauliah.

Umno Youth’s celebrity hook-up is somewhat different. It is borrowing on the fame of Awie while drawing in the younger cohorts through music and entertainment and via a channel that has become such an integral part of young lives – the Internet.

“It’s a way to attract young and first time voters.

“Young Malays have different aspirations; they are not keen on politics or serious issues, let alone ideology. Music and showcasing people like Awie will help us tap into this group,” says Pasir Salak politician Dr Faizal Tajuddin.

Many celebrities are actually quite wary of being associated with any particular political party. The Malay consumer market is not as extensive as, say, Indonesia; and if the supporters of one party reject you, it could take a huge chunk out of one’s marketability.

However, says Dr Faizal, some of entertainment’s biggest names have no qualms about being associated with Umno.

Film maker Tan Sri Jins Shamsud­din is a Barisan Nasional senator, crooner Jamal Abdillah signed on with Umno recently and songbird Datuk Siti Nurhaliza has performed at Umno gatherings.

Bob is not the first rocker to associate with PAS. Before him, there was the long-haired rocker Akhil Hayy, whom PAS people called the “ustaz rocker”.

But his appearances at PAS events dwindled off after he divorced his first wife to marry another celebrity, Wahida.

Malay politics, already personality-driven, is also becoming celebrity-driven.

Observers of subcontinental In­­dian politics say it is hardly new. Some of India’s most successful politicians were movie stars, such as the late MGR and former leading lady Jayalalita, who is currently the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.

The White House had Ronald Reagan and California had the Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger. And who can forget former Philip­pines president Joseph “Erap” Estrada, whose politics was more colourful than his acting career.

The day when a Malaysian artiste makes it big in politics may not be too far away, and as one cynical journalist put it: “After they become politicians, they can continue to entertain us with their antics.”

Can politicians also make the transition into acting? Why not? So many of them are already such good actors.
But the reality is that most politicians are actually quite staid and serious.

Otherwise political parties would not be trying to attract artistes and entertainers to add glamour and glitz to their agenda.

The 1911 Xinhai Revolution, a defining moment for China

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Midweek By Bunn Nagara

The 1911 Xinhai Revolution’s 100th anniversary, more than any other event in China’s long history, marks its modern coming of age.

GIVEN their shared history of war, few events marked by both Beijing and Taipei are happy occasions with common aspirations.

The 1911 Xinhai Revolution and its anniversaries are perhaps the greatest of these exceptions.



The 100th anniversary of this historical event, marked on Monday, shows the mainland and the outlying island at their closest point politically.

Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Straits hail the Xinhai Revolution for throwing off 2,000 years of oppressive dynastic rule. The event 100 years ago practically created modern China.

In contrast, the 1949 communist revolution is only 62 years old, and merely characterised contemporary China.

Characterisations of a nation, particularly of a large country with a rich history and culture, tend to be more limited in scope and impact.

Besides, the birth of Mao Zedong’s communist movement is celebrated only on the mainland, and even then by a diminishing circle of the party faithful.

It is almost universally rued in Taiwan.

The Xinhai Revolution however, as a defining moment for the Chinese nation, has also become a unifying factor for Chinese history and culture.

Its 100th anniversary in particular shows the event to be the biggest political occasion for both sides of the straits, while acting as a bridge between them.

It also serves as fertile ground for nurturing modern Chinese nationalism. This year’s anniversary pays great tribute to Dr Sun Yat-sen, a leading pioneer of the Xinhai Revolution.



Beijing stressed two key goals for the Chinese nation: rejuvenation and reunification. President Hu Jintao traced the pursuit of national rejuvenation to Dr Sun’s struggle, while his emphasis on peaceful reunification drew from an aspect of China’s “peaceful rise”.



In swift response, Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou identified the Xinhai Revolution as the common heritage of Chinese on both sides of the straits.

Besides endorsing Hu’s call for more cooperation to ensure peace and development, Ma also touched on the common concern that no party should disrupt the status quo.

This accords with Beijing’s two major priorities: that both sides abide by the “1992 consensus”, and that there should be no “Taiwan independence”. These themes are well accepted in Taipei.

Ma’s presidency over the past three years has seen steadily improving relations across the straits. His Kuomintang party is nationalistic, which gels with the mainland’s current tendencies.

Communist ideology is a “product” with declining popularity on the mainland, particularly as a capitalist-based economy continues to make giant strides.

It is a “sunset industry” despite the best efforts of the Communist Party of China, and few others know it better than party leaders themselves.

Hu and his colleagues, more as national than party leaders, realise that the structural integrity of the nation is an even greater priority than the viability of the party.

The main priorities are therefore political stability and national unity, whether this means reviewing some traditional controls or asserting a firmer grip on specific issues.

This has meant party hardliners like former premier Li Peng receding into the background, in terms of both public visibility and government posts.

It also means that leadership style has changed in the context of modernisation.

Deng Xiaoping was a landmark leader who ushered in a new, pragmatic, post-Mao China.

Then post-Deng, China no longer has any charismatic, ideologically domineering “paramount leader”.

Chinese leaders today are professional technocrats tasked with national administration.

Former president Jiang Zemin and former prime minister Zhu Rongji were both engineers, the latter with a good practical knowledge of economics.

Current President Hu and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao are also both engineers, the latter with a working knowledge of geology.

Their successors, respectively Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, are a chemical engineer and a lawyer-economist.

Next year’s succession also makes the 100th anniversary more significant.

That is why Jiang has appeared publicly with Hu at this week’s anniversary, to emphasise a sense of continuity.

In politics as in cross-straits relations in particular, continuity is crucial because it signifies stability and growth.

They are both cause and effect of improving ties between Beijing and Taipei.

Startup Lets You Save and Share Parts of Web Pages

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No need to copy and paste—Clipboard employs advanced Web technology to let users save the part of a page they want.

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The Web may make it easy to communicate with people thousands of miles away and put libraries full of knowledge at our fingertips, but plenty of simple things are still surprisingly hard to do online. Take saving a piece of a Web page. That specific task is trickier than it sounds. A startup called Clipboard is building a simple solution using some rather sophisticated Web technologies.

Clipboard allows users to select and store pieces of Web pages in a cloud-based account. Users can comment on items, tag them, and search them. The site allows people to keep clippings private, share them with specific people, or offer them to the public. The new site has been in stealth mode until today, but it's now opening up for a private beta test (readers of Technology Review are invited to participate and can sign up here).

The site's founder is Gary Flake, who previously founded Microsoft's Live Labs, Yahoo Research, and Overture Research. Flake says that Clipboard grew out of his own needs. He couldn't find a satisfying way to save and share information he found while searching the Web. In fact, he describes a laborious process that will sound familiar to many Internet users: After finding something interesting online, he says, he would highlight it, hit control-C, open a word processor or e-mail program, paste the content in, and save or send it. "That's the state of the art for saving things on the Web," Flake says. "For me, there was a huge void waiting to be filled."



Of course, plenty of existing services let people save and share things they find online. People often post links to social networks such as Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, or to dedicated bookmark sites such as the newly revived Delicious. Services such as Evernote allow people to build up a digital memory cache loaded with notes, photos, and saved information from websites.

But when he went through what's already out there, Flake says, he couldn't find anything that met all of his requirements. He wanted to save items from the Web in a form that preserves the way they look, so that he can benefit from his visual memory of the page. He wanted the clips to continue to work—links should function and video should play. Finally, he wanted the things he saved to be portable, stored in the cloud, and easy to put there from a browser on any computer.

Flake describes Clipboard as a Web service that sits on top of the Web pages open in the browser. To use it, a person installs a bookmarklet in the browser. However, clicking the button doesn't take the user to a new Web page—it launches Clipboard's lightweight JavaScript application. When running, the application lets a user select portions of an open Web page. It then runs an extraction algorithm that analyzes the page and figures out how to write HTML and CSS that will re-create what the user selected.

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A 10-step plan to improve inefficient civil service in Malaysia!

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A 10-step plan to excellence

Question Time By P. GUNASEGARAM

Cutting the numbers, raising salaries of good employees and emphasis on efficiency are some of the keys to improve the civil service.

COMPARISONS with other countries indicate that we have too many civil servants for the population (about 25 million). Some 1.3 million civil servants, together with retirees, accounted for nearly two-fifths of the Federal Government’s operating expenditure last year of over RM150bil.

A bloated civil service not only sends the wrong message by keeping too many people unoccupied, it also leads to a considerable waste of government revenues and needlessly high expenditures which could have been better utilised elsewhere.

There are two sides to a large, inefficient civil service. As the numbers come down, you need to increase the rewards to retain the better people and improve the quality of entrants.

For illustration, if you cut the number of people in service by 50% and increase salaries by 50%, you actually save 25% in costs.

That may be too drastic a cut even for the civil service but a target to reduce it by a third over five years by natural attrition, getting rid of incompetent, lazy staff and very selective and prudent hiring is possible.

To encourage people to stay in the service and to recruit new, more able people, the salaries can potentially be raised by a third over five years.

Despite the salary increase, there will still be savings in costs of about 11% – if you don’t believe me, you can work it out yourself.

Remember too that the one-third salary increase need not be – indeed should not be – across the board.

It should be tweaked to give good ones better increases and bad ones smaller or no salary increases at all.
But this needs to be done under a clearly specified framework to prevent abuse.

As with many other institutions, the civil service has become highly politicised and some top civil servants have taken after the image of their political masters, demanding special treatment, special privileges and keeping their noses in the air.

They have come to consider themselves a law unto themselves and not only neglect the rakyat who they are supposed to serve but treat them with contempt, disdain and disrespect, leading to an outpouring of complaints against them, which they coolly ignore.

That attitude needs an about-turn.

It is therefore very timely that the Budget is now addressing some issues surrounding the civil service, including a mechanism to remove non-performers in the civil service. Hopefully, something will come out of that.



Meantime, here’s a list of 10 things which are imperative for change in the civil service and a move towards excellence.

1. Eliminate corruption and patronage. As has been pointed out, delays are in themselves a cause for corruption because people will seek to use nefarious means to avoid them, such as pay to put a file on top of the pile. While efficiency builds up, it is necessary to take a strong stand against any kind of corruption and patronage at all levels. The best way to do this is to issue a stern warning and take action against anyone found to be flouting the rules.

2. Recruit, reward and retain the best. You can’t have an excellent civil service without excellent people. You must recruit the best people, give them the right rewards and incentives and do your best to retain them by giving them more responsibilities, promoting them and giving them incentives.

3. Make service the aim. Considering the shabby treatment that many Malaysians receive at government departments, including the police, it is clear that the concept of service is alien to many civil servants. They exist for the public, not the other way around, and their assessment must include how well they satisfy the public in the performance of their service. This leads us naturally to our next point.

4. Encourage and act on public feedback. All counters which deal with the public must have ready feedback for public complaints. If a member of the public feels he has been badly treated, he must be given the immediate right to speak to a superior and make a complaint on the spot. Video cameras can be installed to help obtain the actual sequence of events. Superiors must act on public feedback and if a civil servant treats badly a member of the public, he must be punished.

5. Make it Malaysian. The statistics indicate that before 1970, the civil service was more Malaysian in that it better reflected the racial composition of the country compared to now when an estimated 80% or more of civil servants are bumiputras. This often leads to allegations of bias and a civil service that is not always sensitive to the needs of different races and cultures. Efforts should be made to recruit more non-bumiputras into all areas of the civil service. With an accompanying improvement in salary and benefits, it should not be a problem.

6. Use measurable standards. For performance appraisal, it is always good to use a measurable goal such as number of people seen in a day for a counter service, or number of projects approved. The goals will be different for different departments and for different levels within the same department but an effort should be made to quantify effort, even if work also has to be assessed qualitatively. The important thing is to keep any kind of bias out.

7. Reward good work. For any organisation to be vibrant and vital, it is important that good people are rewarded by offering them better increments, promotions and being put on the fast track for movement up the organisational ladder. That helps to ensure that as they progress, there will be increasingly better people at the top.

8. Punish poor work. The first part in dealing with poor work is to try and remedy the situation by pulling up the person, helping him, and giving him the means, the time and help necessary to do the job properly. If this does not get improvement, then it is necessary to reflect this in his benefits, clearly explaining what he will have to do to get back on the growth path. Sometimes even this fails, which leads us to the next point.

9. Get rid of deadwood and incompetence. If sufficient effort has been made to rehabilitate a worker and if that still fails, then the Government has no choice but to sack the worker. Clear procedures must be put in place so that there is no discrimination and that all inquiries are properly conducted before dismissal.

10. Keep political interference out. Sometimes, it is the politician who keeps the civil servant from performing his job. Politicians should set policy with input from the civil service and in the process they must have respect for the expertise developed within the service. Once policy is set, they must allow the civil service to implement it without hindrance, only interfering if the civil service baulks at implementing policy.

Few countries have become world class without an excellent and efficient civil service to support the transformation. If we don’t elevate our civil service significantly to much higher standards, we are all going to be losers.

> Managing editor P. Gunasegaram loves how he can renew his passport in just one hour, a clear indication that the civil service can perform.

Learning from Steve Jobs: from Garage to World Power!

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Learning from Steve Jobs

Ceritalah by KARIM RASLAN

Before we can start talking about the need for innovation or speak of the need to create geniuses, we have to learn that creativity and innovation are first and foremost cultural phenomena.

STEVE Jobs is dead. Apple’s co-founder did more than anyone – and this includes his arch-rival Microsoft’s Bill Gates – to make computing manageable for everyone. Indeed, even my seventy-something mother owns a well-used iPad2.

Jobs’ brilliance lay in his ability to look at technology from the viewpoint of the user, stripping down the complexity and jargon until a machine became a tool in the hand of the user.

He asked straight forward but critical questions: what do consumers want and need? How can I meet these demands?

Instead of producing computers that flaunt their sophistication, Jobs made his devices ever more accessible and simple.

Apple products were the perfect marriage of form and function. They were sleek, intuitive and useful – objects that we enjoy touching and holding so much so that we develop a strange emotional link with them.

In order to achieve this aim, Jobs also upended the way we’ve traditionally thought of music, books and films – freeing them from their analogue formats. He discarded the old-fashioned ways of receiving entertainment and placed his products – the iPod, the iPhone and iPad at the heart of future solutions.

His success was prodigious and extraordinary. At one stage last year, Apple briefly eclipsed ExxonMobil in terms of market capitalisation.



Indeed, it’s estimated that well over 100 million iPhones and 25 million iPads have been sold to date. That the Indian government, on the day he died, rolled out its own tablet computer, called the Aakash (or “Sky”) is a greater tribute than the legions of obituaries.

The global outpouring of grief on Jobs’ death is hence a measure of the man’s reach even in death. It’s also a testament to his iconoclastic style as well as his breath-taking ability to think unconventionally.

Furthermore, Jobs executed his ideas with flamboyance and flair, disregarding the consequences as his various inspirational ideas wrought havoc with long established industries.

Standing back from the man’s achievements, it’s hard to deny that all entrepreneurs have a little bit of Steve Jobs in them.

They all possess a modicum of his verve, dynamism and, yes, madness. Wouldn’t they have become bank managers or civil servants otherwise?

However, we can’t deny the element of luck either: had Jobs died in the 90s, he would probably have been consigned to history’s footnotes, yet another businessman ousted from a company he had founded.

Also, as the son of a Syrian emigrant, Jobs was lucky he was born in America, where the opportunities to succeed were more pronounced than anywhere else.

Indeed, it’s hard to see where else a college dropout could turn a company that he started in his parent’s garage into a multinational with a market capitalisation of US$222.12bil (RM694.78bil).



This is not to say he was some kind of secular saint. His paranoia and abuse of friends and subordinates alike were well-documented. Neither was he a flag-waving patriot either.

Unlike Henry Ford, most of Apple’s products were contracted out to East Asian manufacturers, particularly China, where allegations of sweatshop labour and poor working conditions continue to haunt the tech-giant even today.

Nevertheless, no one can deny that Jobs displayed the individualism and entrepreneurial spirit that are the hallmarks of the American character.

Indeed, if we shift the discussion from Jobs to the idea of entrepreneurialism, we have to acknowledge that we are all shaped by the environment we are born into.

We can separate ourselves from the world that surrounds us on our birth.

So as we start talking about the need for “innovation” in Malaysia’s economy or speak piously of the need to “create” geniuses we have to address the national condition.

Let me ask a question then: what if Steve Jobs were born in Malaysia? Could he have reached the same dizzying heights or would he have been consigned, like so many others, to dead-end jobs.

Alternatively, would he have directed his prodigious talents to chasing after government contracts? I’m not joking.

If Malaysia is to compete in the future, we have got to learn that creativity and innovation are first and foremost cultural phenomena. These are things that you cannot pay for or legislate into existence.

Creativity cannot thrive in an environment where the balance between risk and reward is skewered. Can we truly say we’re allowing people to reach their fullest potential when our obsessions with race and religion are so dominant?

Innovation in Malaysia is hampered by our Government’s constant interventions: protecting and bailing-out businesses and individuals that ought to have gone bust ages ago.

There’s absolutely no incentive for people to think unconventionally if the most important criteria for creating wealth is your “know who” rather than “know how”.

How many Malaysian Jobs’ or Gates’ or Zuckerberg’s have we smothered because they lacked connections or were born in the “wrong” community?

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak has declared 2012 to be the “National Innovation Move­ment” year, but it won’t count for much unless we start really rewarding hard work and genius rather than mediocrity or mindless conformity.

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Occupy Wall Street/DC: Change-mongering U.S. needs change too, backed Democrats!

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The group included protesters affiliated with Occupy DC, to make a point about the massive military spending and the use of deadly drones - AP

"Occupy DC" protesters comprise various groups and have split up to protest and meet later in the square [Reuters

Change-mongering U.S. needs change too

(Xinhua)

BEIJING, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Occupy Wall Street protests have grown over the past three weeks into a coast-to-coast movement targeting corporate greed and money influence in the United States.

Popular protests are not uncommon these days. From the Arab world to debt-ridden European countries, people are taking to the streets to make their voices heard for different reasons.

For Washington, the irony is that the United States, which has long branded itself as a staunch defender of human rights and a force for change across the world, is suddenly confronted by its people defending their own rights from the greedy Wall Street and demanding to change the status quo.

Young people, many unemployed or under-employed, compose the bulk of the protesters. Their frustration has exposed some fundamental problems with the economic and political system of the world's sole superpower.

Unbiased eyes can see through these anti-Wall Street protests a clear need for Washington, which habitually rushes to demand other governments to change when there are popular protests in their countries, to put its own house in order.

First of all, Washington should rein in its runaway financial sector. The Wall Street, as the global financial center, has its role to play in allocating resources more efficiently not only for the United States but also for the world economy.


But when more and more people on the Wall Street are trying to make quick money by pure speculation or by creating complex derivatives that no one really understands, there are legitimate reasons for concern.

Simon Johnson, former chief economist with the International Monetary Fund, once blasted the "overgrown" financial service industry in the United States for creating the global financial crisis.

In a speech at Peking University of China in June 2010, he said the U.S. financial industry, which was getting bigger each day, not only was the cause of the latest financial wipeout, but also could bring about other crises in the future.

Besides bringing the Wall Street back to its original purpose of better allocating resources, Washington should also face up to its own problem of income gap.

Over the years, the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States has kept widening.

According to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz, the protesters' "We are the 99 percent" slogan refers to the fact that the top 1 percent of Americans own more than 40 percent of the nation's wealth, while the bottom 80 percent only have 7 percent of the wealth.

Meanwhile, the top 1 percent "is taking in more of the nation's income than at any other time since the 1920s," said the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a U.S. premier policy organization working on fiscal policy and public programs.

Moreover, such an inequality in social wealth distribution has been exacerbated by the global financial crisis.

Equally painful to the protesters is the fact that these days politicians in Washington appear more interested in political wrangling for personal and partisan gains rather than working together to solve the fundamental problems facing their country.

The U.S. officials have urged their European counterparts to work together to solve the sovereign debt crisis, but the country itself has chronic fiscal shortfalls and trade deficits that are just as grave.

And there is another somber fact: In the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, the chance of the Democrats and Republicans working together to bring the U.S. fiscal house into order is rather slim.

While the protests have garnered support from more and more students, unions, small business owners, celebrities and elected officials, no one wants to see the Occupy Wall Street movement evolve into violent demonstrations or spin out of control.

The rationale is clear: Political chaos in the world's largest economy is the last thing investors need at this time of renewed tensions in the global markets.

But if Washington fails to heed the calls of the protesters and address its fundamental problems, its messy house could become a headache for others in the world as well.

by Liu Qu, Ming Jinwei
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Democrats back 'Occupy' protesters

Eric Lichtblau, Washington,October 12, 2011

LEADING Democratic figures, including party fundraisers and a top ally of US President Barack Obama, are embracing the spread of the anti-Wall Street protests in a clear sign that members of the Democratic establishment see the movement as a way to align disenchanted Americans with their party.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party's House fundraising arm, is circulating a petition seeking 100,000 party supporters to declare: ''I stand with the Occupy Wall Street protests.''

The Centre for American Progress, a liberal body run by John Podesta, who helped lead Mr Obama's 2008 transition, credits the protests with tapping into pent-up anger over a political system that it says rewards the rich over the working class - a populist theme now being emphasised by the White House and the party.

Leading Democratic figures are embracing the spread of the anti-Wall Street protests. Photo: Getty Images

Judd Legum, a spokesman for the centre, said that its direct contacts with the protests have been limited, but that ''we've definitely been publicising it and supporting it''.

He said Democrats are already looking for ways to mobilise protesters in get-out-the-vote drives for 2012.
But while some Democrats see the movement as providing a political boost, the party's alignment with the eclectic mix of protesters makes others nervous.

They see the prospect of the protesters pushing the party dangerously to the left - just as the Tea Party has often pushed Republicans further to the right and made for intra-party conflict.

Mr Obama has spoken sympathetically of the Wall Street protests, saying they reflect ''the frustration'' that many struggling Americans are feeling. Vice-President Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, have sounded similar themes.

The role of groups like the Democratic campaign committee and Mr Podesta's group, sometimes working with labour unions, moves support from just talk to the realm of organisational guidance.

It is not clear whether the leaders of the amorphous movement actually want the support of the Democratic establishment, given that some of the protesters' complaints are directed at the Obama administration.

Among their grievances, the protesters say they want to see steps taken to ensure that the rich pay what they see as a fairer share of their income in taxes, that banks are held accountable for reckless practices, and that more attention is paid to finding jobs for the unemployed.

The protests also provide yet another dividing line between Democrats and Republicans in Washington - one that seems likely to help shape the competing themes of the 2012 presidential election.

Leading Republicans have grown increasingly critical of the protests.

Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, called the protesters ''a growing mob'', and Herman Cain, a Republican presidential candidate, said the protests are the work of ''jealous'' anti-capitalists.

Robert Reich, the former labour secretary under president Bill Clinton, wrote in a blog post last week that the protesters' demands on taxes dovetail with Democrats' themes, but that the protests should still make the party wary - not least because the Democratic Party relies on Wall Street for significant campaign contributions.

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Why 'Occupy Wall Street'? Job growth fails to dent US unemployment rate!
Wall Street protest grows to "occupy" Washington against corporate greed 

China bashing not the solution !

Image via Wikipedia

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GLOBAL TRENDS By MARTIN KHOR

The US Senate is scheduled to vote this week on a “currency Bill” to allow actions against China’s imports. But blaming China may unleash a trade war without solving America’s problems.

IS China’s currency and trade performance a threat to the United States? Or are American politicians using China as a scapegoat for the country’s economic problems?

“China bashing” has been on the rise in the United States. It is widely thought that politicians of both parties are doing it to gain popularity in view of the coming elections.

For some years, Congress members have threatened to take action against Chinese imports to retaliate against what they see as China’s manipulation of its currency level.

The politicians say that the Chinese yuan is lower than what it should be if there were no government intervention.

They charge that the undervalued currency enables China to have a large trade surplus vis-a-vis the United States, and that this has caused the loss of American jobs.

These charges are refuted by the Chinese government, which argues that the US trade deficit is due to domestic factors and not Chinese policy. It also points to the 7% appreciation of the yuan versus the dollar in recent months.

This issue has been a central economic policy issue between the two major countries. It could escalate into a major battle on the ground.

The US Senate is scheduled to vote tomorrow on a Bill aimed at enabling import tariffs to be placed on Chinese imports as a retaliation against the alleged currency manipulation.

In a first step, the Senate on Oct 3 voted 79-19 to allow a week-long debate on the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011. The Bill mandates a process for imposing tariffs on imports of a country with allegedly “misaligned currencies”.

Though China is not named, it is obviously the target. The Bill would in effect require the US Treasury Department to determine if China was manipulating the yuan. If it finds this to be the case, extra tariffs can be placed on some imported Chinese goods.



The Bill is expected to pass in the Senate. But a similar Bill has to also go through the House of Representatives, and be approved by US President Barack Obama, before trade measures can be taken.

These two steps are far from assured. Although it seems the majority of the House are in favour, Speaker John Boehner said last week it was dangerous to be moving legislation through Congress to force “someone to deal with the value of their currency ... while I’ve got concerns about how the Chinese have dealt with their currency, I’m not sure this is the way to fix it”.

Obama last Thursday accused China of “gaming” the trade system to the disadvantage of other countries, especially the United States. But he also expressed concern that the Senate Bill “may not actually work … as it may be only ‘symbolic’, and would probably not be upheld by the World Trade Organisation (WTO)”.

Nevertheless, the probability of the passage of the Senate Bill has heightened US-China tensions and raised the potential of a serious trade war.

As could be expected, Chinese government agencies and think tanks are reacting strongly to what they perceive as a protectionist move.

The People’s Bank of China (its central bank) said the Senate Bill would not help resolve the United States’ domestic issues such as the trade deficit, low level of savings and high unemployment, but could potentially affect the economy and market confidence.

It added: “The passage of the Bill may seriously affect China’s currency reforms, potentially leading to a trade war between the two sides.”

Xu Mingqi, deputy director of the Institute of the World Economy at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, had this to say: “It is easy for the US to make China a scapegoat of its domestic problems at a time when its economy remains weak with a high unemployment rate and the next general election only 13 months away.”

In the event the Senate Bill makes its way into actual law, a dispute case will most likely be taken against the United States at the WTO.

WTO rules do not allow countries to impose punitive duties on the basis that a certain country’s currency is undervalued. That this is so is appropriate. Valuing currencies to see if they are “manipulated” is very complex and difficult.

For example, the United States has also been accused of pushing its currency down through its controversial policy of “quantitative easing” (central bank pumping of funds into the banking system).

And is Switzerland “manipulating” its currency by announcing it will not tolerate further appreciation of the franc?

Allowing the currency issue to be a subject of possible unfair practice open to trade sanctions will open the road to many other issues being similarly recognised, such as a country’s tax rates, interest rates, and labour and environmental standards. There will be no end to having reasons for new trade protectionism.

A US law based on the Senate Bill will probably be found to be inconsistent with US obligations in the WTO. But by the time the WTO dispute system panel makes a final ruling (this may take years), some damage may already be done should the United States act against Chinese imports in the meantime.

China may not take the US actions lying down, and can come up with retaliatory action on US goods. Thus, a trade war may be unleashed.

Interestingly, although some well known American economists like Paul Krugman and Fred Bergsten advocate US action against Chinese imports, some business associations as well as important newspapers like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times have come out strongly against the Senate Bill for its protectionism and trade war potential.

The high-pitched attack on China because of its large trade surplus with the United States is misplaced. Little of the gross surplus actually accrues to China.

A 2010 paper by the South Centre shows that only a small part of China’s exports to the United States is actually retained as income in China.

For example, in 2005, China’s gross trade surplus with the United States was US$172bil (RM543bil), but in value-added terms (what is earned by the respective countries after deducting the import content of their exports), it was only US$40bil (RM126bil).

Further, a large part of the Chinese trade surplus in value-added terms was earned by foreign firms in China and thus, does not belong to China. As a result, income left in China was no more than 30% of the total value of exports to the United States.

Therefore, the criticism that China enjoys extraordinarily high trade surpluses with the United States is misplaced.

Also, even if US trade measures reduce Chinese imports into the United States, this does not mean that the US import bill will be reduced.

Goods from other developing countries such as Vietnam or Indonesia may just replace the Chinese goods.

Therefore, US actions based on the Senate Bill would hardly help the United States get rid of its trade deficit.

It is best that the United States take domestic actions to address its domestic economic problems, rather than make a scapegoat of other countries and potentially unleash new trade wars.

Youngsters restless for change

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By AMY CHEW sunday@thestar.com.my

The New Deal proposals for Malaysians have caught the attention of some young people who hope they will become a reality.

THE youths of today are a generation in a hurry. Born into the digital age, the pace in which their world spins often leaves their parents and the establishment struggling to keep up with their expectations.

They sometimes lament that established institutions  are out of tune with their needs and aspirations, whether politically, economically or socially.

The young generation is also much bolder and articulate in expressing their needs and dissatisfaction.

 

Deal for all: In the New Deal, Dr Chua is believed to be speaking for a 1Malaysia and is bent on pushing for equal rights for all Malaysians.

When the MCA announced a New Deal for Malaysia based on fairness and bravery last week, where affirmative action must be based on needs and merits, as well as others, it drew both plaudits and scepticism from the young.

Even as they welcomed party president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek's speech on the New Deal, they expressed scepticism over whether it would receive the necessary support from other Barisan Nasional partners to be realised.

“Reading the speech, I was filled with great hope for the future, my future and the future of the youth today,” says 25-year-old Vince Chong, deputy chairman of the National Young Lawyers' Committee of the Bar Council.

“That is essentially the crux of Dr Chua's speech he was selling hope. And the reforms that he proposed as key points for the New Deal are exceptionally appealing.

It is about time the MCA speaks up so that they are part of the making of policy proposals. - WAN SAIFUL WAN JAN

“But I am also alive to (the fact) that reality may not allow it. The road to realise all key points of the New Deal is exceptionally tough. And there must be the political will to back it, not only from Barisan members but also members of the Opposition,” adds Wong.

The Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas), a non-profit think tank, has described MCA's call as a “very bold move” even though there is nothing “radical” in the New Deal.

“The announcement (New Deal) was very exciting, not because of the content but because MCA as one of the senior partners of Barisan National is beginning to speak out,” Ideas chief executive Wan Saiful Wan Jan says.

“And it is about time that the party speaks up so that they are part of the making of policy proposals,” adds Wan Saiful.

Under the New Deal proposal, affirmative action must be based on needs and merits. If any particular group is poor, it must continue to receive help.

Last month, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak reportedly said that any affirmative action to help bumiputras should be based on meritocracy to ensure only the deserving ones are promoted,
“Hopefully, with MCA speaking out, the PM will feel he has the political support to implement it,” says Wan Saiful.

As a Malay, Wan Saiful, 36, personally believes it is “unfair” to have policies based on race.

“Malays are beginning to speak out against affirmative action,” Wan Saiful observes.

“There will always be extremist elements from all races. But there are also unifying forces from progressive elements of many parties,” he says, adding that his organisation is “more than willing” to talk to people from all races who need help or to listen to their concerns.

Political scientist Ong Kian Ming of UCSI University describes the New Deal as “bold” and, in some ways, beyond what Najib has proposed as part of the political transformation programme.

“For example, Dr Chua called for the abolition of the restriction in the AUKU (University and University Colleges Act) which prevents students from being members of political parties,” says Ong.



“His outreach to young voters and the emphasis on demands beyond that of the immediate concerns of the Chinese community show that he is in touch with political reality post 2008,” he says.

However, Dr Chua faces challenges in making the New Deal a reality as much would depend on the votes MCA can recapture in the next general election as well as how much support the party will get from Umno.

“The New Deal has many good aspirations but the larger electorate will quickly move on to focus on Najib's transformational agenda rather than the MCA's own transformational agenda,” adds Ong.

Najib appears not to be relying on MCA and MIC to reach out to the Chinese and Indian voters but is instead relying on his own popularity, according to Ong.

“This may not be sufficient in swinging enough votes to win back some of the seats which MCA lost in 2008 especially in areas with strong PR incumbents and relatively weak MCA candidates,” he says.

For Chew Hoong Ling, 31, the most important part of the New Deal is the economic proposal.

“People will not complain and will even close an eye when they have enough to eat. But when people struggle while the leaders are seen to be lavish and corrupt, the people will turn the tables (against them),” says Chew, a member of the National Youth Consultative Council.

Chew is calling for the empowerment of youths to give them the opportunity to be entrepreneurs and not just employees.

“We have babies born every year but the leadership hoards positions for over 10 years. How can young people climb up the (corporate) ladder in their lifetime?

“There should be policies to empower youths in other sectors and facilitate youth groups to be entrepreneurs,” she says.

For the young who are well educated, they have no patience to wait for changes as their education affords them the mobility to move to places with better opportunities. This mobility also gives them the ability to effect changes to their lives without intervention from the state.

“Brain drain will continue to happen until major reforms are made by the ruling government where there is meritocracy, where contracts are given out based on merit,” says William Lee, 27, a web designer.

Lee, who graduated from Monash University, Melbourne with a degree in electrical and computer systems engineering, is planning to leave for Australia.

“I plan to leave the country as a back-up plan', in case things don't work out here,” he says.

Lee says he and his friends started their own businesses with their own efforts.

“We did it ourself. Nobody helped us.”

Ann, a financial executive, believes Dr Chua speaks for all Malaysians in his New Deal.

“Given his ideology of the New Deal, I would say he is really speaking 1Malaysia and pushing for equal rights for all Malaysians.”

In the following weeks, Sunday Star will explore the key points of the New Deal articulated by Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek. 

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