The clear announcement on May 31, 2020, by the Minister of Finance, Tengku Dato’ Sri Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz, of his 6R Economic Recovery Plan is most welcome, especially at this time of concern and anxiety!

The first 4Rs – Resolve, Resilience, Restart and Recovery – are presently on track and could be achieved with a stronger political will to move faster.

These aspirations will raise our hopes and expectations for better economic growth, fairer income distribution and higher human welfare, for all Malaysians, regardless of race!

But to fully achieve all these six goals and especially the last 2Rs - Revitalise and Reform – our present Economic Model must be transformed significantly!

We cannot do more of the same. We cannot carry on with business as usual. Some old norms must be radically reformed and new thinking adopted to be more successful.

Uncertainty

The world economic recession, our own impending recession and the COVID-19 crisis have all caused a great deal of uncertainty regarding our future well-being. The political turmoil currently experienced in our country has further eroded our confidence and reduced our hopes for our brighter future.

Hence, the Finance Minister’s 6R recovery plan is very welcome, as a light in the dark tunnel.

However the 6R plan together with the 2021 Budget and the 12th Malaysia Plan cannot and should NOT be a repeat of the old normal policies.

The world economies, including Malaysia, are facing a socio-economic crisis, largely due to some wrong policies in the past and bad implementation. Some of these weak policies and mistakes have been as follows:

1. The wide and worsening unsustainable income gaps between the rich and the poor. The new norm economic model should aim to narrow this unfair income and large wealth disparities. This would mean taxing the very rich much more in order to raise the standard of living of the poor who are struggling to make ends meet!

2. The basic needs of the rakyat (people) have to be more adequately met in the recovery plan and especially in the 12th plan. The COVID-19 crisis has revealed more starkly the large numbers of poor, the hungry and the homeless amongst us, who are embarrassingly better off. In fact, the cramped and dirty housing provided by wealthy contractors has largely caused COVID-19 to spread amongst us all. Surely, we could do better to build more low-cost but healthy houses for the poor!

3. Budgets and five-year plans are not exclusively concerned only about economic growth and raising incomes. More importantly, budgets and five-year plans are meant to improve the quality of life of all Malaysians. Hence, our human rights, our many unfulfilled social reforms and our environment have to be promoted and protected and enhanced more effectively. This can be easily achieved by adopting and seriously implementing the many United Nations’ proposals that we have been somewhat neglecting in the past. This includes the UN’s 17 Sustainable Goals that we should implement with a stronger political will!

4. The 6Rs are great aspirations, but the question in most of our thinking minds is - will the new government really be able to implement the last two most important Rs - Revitalise and Reform?

Revitalisation and reforming the economy would or should mean inter alia:

a) Restructuring our education system to make it more internationally competitive.

b) Reforming our labour policies especially in regard to employing such large numbers of foreign labour.

c) Reorganising the public services to make them much more multiracial and multi-religious to better reflect our national population composition.

d) Redefining the role and scope of the private sector. Should we depend so much on government-linked companies that squeeze out the business sector?

e) Ensuring our national institutions are more professional and honest and fair in upholding a more efficient administration that is free from politicisation and corruption.

Conclusion

The government’s 6R strategy is encouraging, promising and welcome, and needs our full support. But unless the government’s new 6R socio-economic strategy fully takes into account the above and many other public policy issues that can be discussed more openly and widely with the NGOs, universities and business and community leaders, we will not progress much.

Instead, we will stick to the old normal and play the old records and lose our momentum to move to the new normal and the new model of the socio-economic model that we all desperately need to move ahead faster for the benefit of all Malaysians and especially the poor in our society!

-- BERNAMA

Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam is Chairman of the ASLI Center of Public Policy Studies.