Zahid’s outburst exposes confused thinking

In Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s view, Malaysians ‘must’ remain silent about the unfairness of the electoral system.

COMMENT

Public outrage over Umno vice-president and Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s childish tantrum telling Malaysians to shove off if they don’t like the electoral system is far from over.

The ‘wet behind the ear’ Home Minister was quoted in the Malay daily Utusan Malaysia last week telling off those unhappy with the first-past-the post electoral system to migrate to countries that practice Single Transferable Vote (republics).

His retort set off an avalanche of criticism from the general public and political writers, including Raja Petra Kamarudin (RPK), and DAP leader Tony Pua.

Raja Petra dared Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak to sack Zahid should he refuse to publicly apologise and resign.

Pua said that Zahid was being arrogant by denying Malaysians the right to a better voting system by telling them to migrate if they were unhappy with a flawed system.

Two days later, newly-minted Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaludin said that Zahid “was merely expressing his own opinion” and that “it did not reflect Najib administration’s official position”.

While most reasonable Malaysians are still furious with a curlish Home Minister, many, including Zahid, may not be aware that thousands of Malaysians have already left the country.

More than one million Malaysians decided to migrate but perhaps not for the reasons Zahid wished for.

People migrated mainly for jobs, opined a well known economist Dr James Alin in Kota Kinabalu.

In his paper “Should I Stay or Should I Go” (published in June last year), the academic wrote that Malaysia was experiencing a serious brain-drain problem.

Malaysia losing ‘skilled talents’

The country, he noted, was losing highly skilled individuals aged 25 years and above with academic and professional degrees.

In 2010, there were 121,662 highly skilled Malaysians working in Singapore as compared to 66,452 in year 2000.

According to Alin, Malaysian emigrants to Australia in year 2000 was 38,620. But this increased to 51,556 in 2010.

Smilar trends were noted by the United States of America. The numbers had spiked from 24,085 to 34,045 in 2010.

In the UK it moved from 12,898 to 16,609 while in Canada it increased from 12,170 to 12,809. Other countries also saw similar shifts.

Emigrants to Brunei shot up from 6,438 to 10,208; India 1,509 to 4,503; China 2,655 to 3,496 and Taiwan 2,916 to 3,235..

“Malaysia needs talent, but talent seems to be leaving. With more Malaysians migrating, the skills and talents base will be shrinking,“ warned Alin.

He further said that in addition to higher earning potential and better career prospects abroad, Malaysians migrated to seek a better quality of life that includes superior education standards for their children, good governance and more political freedom.

Alin told FMT that the Chinese Malaysians who made up majority of the brain-drain feel that the Bumiputera policy has caused social injustice.

“They voiced dissatisfaction; they are fed up at being constantly reminded that Chinese have fewer rights than the Malay. Brain-drain is not a new phenomenon,” said the economist.

‘Not brain drain’

Alin cited former Singapore premier Lee Kuan Yew who wrote in his book ‘From Third World to First’: “… when I told PM Tun Razak (Hussein) in early 1970s that Malaysia was suffering a brain drain, losing many well-educated Chinese and Indians to Australia and New Zealand, he replied, ‘this is not a brain drain, it is a trouble brain; it drains trouble out of Malaysia’”.

Zahid’s loss of temper over BN’s poor showing in the election has highlighted two troubling trends – one is that Malaysians ‘must’ remain silent about the unfairness of the system and the second is that highly skilled Malaysians are in fact leaving the country.

But the research also showed that Malaysians who were disillusioned with corruption and an incompetent government however also wanted to stay and fight for a better Malaysia.

The data supports the hypothesis of ‘exit, voice and loyalty’ that equates the voter to a consumer who encounters poor performance from a firm.

The person has three options; remain loyal and tolerate the “lemon” (lousy politicians) for it provides in exchange for some future reward, or hope of improvement, or ‘exit’, – opt to walk out and patronise competing firms.

In the context of the voter, the state is similar to a firm and “exit” means leaving one’s homeland. But this tends to be much costlier than voting, petitioning and protesting.

But favoured destinations – developed countries – too tend to obstruct entry for political dissidents.

In this scenario the Malaysian has no choice but to speak up to mobilise public opinion for a fairer Malaysia.