Barisan Nasional parliamentary candidate for Rembau and Umno Youth deputy head KHAIRY JAMALUDDIN gives his views on the opposition’s economic platform and the choice before voters on polling day tomorrow FOR more than a week, I have been walking through the village roads of Rembau introducingmyself to voters as a first-time candidate.

I have visited countless houses and spoken at dozens of gatherings — some big, others small and cosy.

One of the key issues that I touched on in these meetings is the two diversely different visions of the future that are being offered by Barisan Nasional and the opposition.

I have explained that BN’s vision for the future is far-sighted, comprehensive and completely achievable.

There is nothing in the BN manifesto that is an empty promise, neither is there anything that cannot be implemented.

It is, above all, a responsible vision for the future which will not leave any mounting debts for our children to bear.

It is fiscally prudent and sustainable without endangering the longterm economic survival of our nation.

The vision presented by the opposition, on the other hand, is something that appeals to our base instincts. It is classic populist politics.

Who can’t agree with lower petrol prices, higher salaries and a whole host of other freebies? The opposition has been exploiting the public’s fear of rising prices and an uncertain global economic outlook.

They have taken this insecurity and turned their policy platform into an intellectually disingenuous bag of goodies that may be music to our ears but an unmitigated disaster for the future.

I don’t believe, in their heart of hearts, the opposition think they can win the elections and form a government.

Many of their leaders have admitted as much.

Their principal objective is to inflict as much damage as possible to the BN —hence a populist strategy.

The more they can eat away at BN’s support at the margins, the closer they will get to proving their point that there has been a marked erosion in support for the BN.

Since they know they will never be in a position to implement these promises, the opposition has recklessly toyed with people’s emotions for the sake of a few votes.

Let’s examine closely some of the many empty promises made by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and his friends. Some of these promises are shared by all opposition parties, some are party specific.

But there is one thing in common: implementing them would mean the future generations of this country having to pay a high price for their profligacy.

My personal favourite must be the whole business about petrol prices.

I picked up a Parti Keadilan Rakyat leaflet the other day in Rembau town with a picture of Anwar and a promise that the price of fuel would be reduced if his party came into power.

It went on to say that Anwar is capable of fulfilling this particular promise because during the eight years he was minister of finance, he managed to keep the price of petrol around RM1.10 per litre.

The problem with Anwar is he doesn’t quite tell you everything. He only tells you the bits that you want to hear.Well, here’s the other half of the story.

When he was finance minister, the global price of crude oil was between US$12 and US$22 per barrel —low prices which seem like they’re from another lifetime.

Today, crude oil has breached US$100 (RM320) per barrel and yet the price of petrol in Malaysia is only RM1.92 per litre —the second lowest in the region.

In other words, the increase in the global price of crude oil since Anwar was sacked to today has been 400 per cent. The increase in the price of petrol in Malaysia during the same period has only been 75 per cent.

When Anwar was minister, of course it was easy to provide low petrol prices, simply because the global price of oil was extremely low.

For Anwar to claim that this was due to his personal ability rather than the international market for oil, which is far beyond his control, is to blatantly present an incomplete and inaccurate account of the historical facts. But then again, who cares about the truth when your objective is to mislead people? Why should a charlatan care about the truth when he is taking credit for something that wasn’t his doing? The opposition parties say that they can pay for lower petrol prices by taking Petronas’ profits and turning it into further petrol subsidies.

They forget to tell you that Petronas already channels almost two-thirds of its gross profits back to the government in the form of taxes, dividends and royalties.

These monies go straight into development programmes. If the opposition had their way, the remaining third of Petronas’ profit would also be taken to pay for their promises.

But consider this: our oil reserves will run out in 10 years and by 2010, we ’ll be a net importer of oil. So whatever profit Petronas retains, they use as operating capital to drill for oil in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

If they don’t do this,we will have no energy resources in the future to leave our children, simply because the opposition convinced us to take the easy way out today instead of being prudent for the future.

Another reckless promise is one specifically targeted at the younger generation. One political party has promised to write off all outstanding PTPTN (National Higher Education Fund) loans. This is so wrong on many different levels.

First, it pretty much puts a tight slap to the faces of thousands of PTPTN debtors who have been diligently meeting their regular repayments.

Second, and true to the opposition’s tendency to want to bankrupt this country, this particular cunning plan is going to cost the government a whopping RM17.3 billion.

Just to put that into context, it’s about 75 per cent of the entire allocation to the Ministry of Education for the five-year duration of the Ninth Malaysia Plan.

All that to write off loans which if paid back to the government would ensure that thousands more are able to go to university in the future.

But none of this tops what Anwar probably thinks is his coup de grace for wooing the average man in the street: a RM1,500 minimum wage.

Wow, why didn’t anyone think of that before? A high minimum wage carrot is the simplest populist economic policy that most idealistic freshman undergraduate economics students think is the panacea to all the great ills of the world, until their professor demolishes the idea in the first tutorial.

Briefly, the opposition’s proposal will result in massive layoffs when companies realise they simply cannot afford an inflated payroll.

It will result in more graduate unemployment because companies will be extremely selective in recruitment.

It will result in companies which invest billions in our economy that create thousands of jobs relocating to other countries because with a minimum wage at that level we simply lose out in terms ofwage-based competitiveness.

And it will result in people actually having aworse standard of living because of the knock-on effect that a minimum wage would have on inflation, especially if there is no corresponding increase in productivity.

The prices of goods will skyrocket, perhaps faster than the rise in pay, leaving everyone worse off.

But these are all in the fine print that the opposition forgot to put in their manifesto.

Those are just some glaring examples of the sort of reckless promises that are being made for short-term political gain.

And what makes it all the more laughable is when the opposition say that these promises which are fiscally irresponsible and unsustainable will increase GDP (gross domestic product) growth to more than eight per cent. What it does to this country is actually the exact opposite.

I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation about the fiscal implication of the opposition’s promises.

The bottom line effect is the government’s budget deficit ballooning from a manageable 3.2 per cent of GDP currently to more than 15 per cent of GDP. It will send us into the arms of international creditors and saddle our children with debts and contingent liabilities that they will have to pay for.

It’s not been easy debunking the opposition’s promises.

In an age of instant gratification, people want to take it easy today and not think about tomorrow.

But the more that people have found out about what the opposition is not telling them, the more they have come around to the idea of not going with the easy choice of promises that were never meant to be kept.

Don’t think that voters in the rural heartland can be easily fooled by half-truths.

When we tell them that they are voting on two futures for Malaysia, they understand.

When we tell them that one future keeps us on the right track and the other bankrupts us, they understand.

When we tell them that one future is full of opportunities because of realistic promises and the other buried under a mountain of debt because we decided to spend whatwe don’t have, they understand.

Tomorrow,we have a choice of two futures. Vote for the right future for Malaysia.

source: nst