Counting words: What’s in Najib’s budget speech?

BUDGET 2018 | With the 14th general election in the coming months, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s Budget speech has offered him an unparalleled opportunity to hog the limelight as he addressed the nation.

As with the previous year, Malaysiakini took the opportunity to count how often certain keywords were used in order to gauge the focus of the speech.

Below are the findings, based on the official English-language text released by the Finance Ministry shortly after the speech was delivered.

Indian M’sians get more attention

The ethnic Indians are mentioned more often in Najib’s speech compared to any of his previous budgets. 

For every 1,000 words in his 11,415-word speech (excluding sub-headings, formalities, and salutations), Indians are mentioned 1.2 times compared to a mere 0.5 times last year.

The previous record was 0.7 times for every 1,000 words in his speech in his 2013 budget, which also later turned out to be an election year.

This not only includes a Deepavali greeting for the 2018 budget speech, but also a RM50 million allocation for 35,000 Indian entrepreneurs, and another RM50 million for the community’s socio-economic development.

In addition, Najib announced that Permodalan Nasional Bhd will distribute 1.5 billion units of Amanah Saham 1Malaysia for the community, and this will be backed by an RM500 million fund over five years.

Bumiputeras, meanwhile, are also mentioned slightly more often in this year's speech, but the count remains unchanged for the Chinese Malaysians and Orang Asli communities.

Sabah and Sarawak back on the agenda

Sabah and Sarawak had been mentioned with increasing frequency in Najib’s budget speeches in the run-up to the 2013 general election until the 2016 Sarawak state election, after which it nosedived in the 2017 budget speech tabled last year.

With the 14th general election around the corner, however, mentions of the two Borneo states had gone back up and are at the same level as his 2014 budget speech.

The 1MDB flat-liner

Najib continued to mention the term "1Malaysia" that he helped popularise – more as a brand-name for a range of government initiatives than a concept he espoused in his famous 2009 speech.

However, the scandal-hit 1MDB had been omitted from Najib’s speeches for the fifth year running.

The state investment fund was Najib’s brainchild and once headed multiple billion-ringgit projects before suffering losses of up to RM40 billion.

The recent omission should not come as a surprise. Since the 1MDB scandal surfaced, the government took the Public Account Committee’s recommendation to place 1MDB assets under the Ministry of Finance Inc’s control.

1MDB is now little more than a shell company.

More bite, less self-praise

Last year, Malaysiakini reported that Najib’s budget speeches had become increasingly political and this year was no exception. However, there appears to have been a shift in focus.

Last year, Najib often made references to “Barisan Nasional”, usually in the context of praising the “Barisan Nasional government” while simultaneously attacking the opposition and certain “parties”.

This year, the mentions of BN had become infrequent, while there is an uptick in (usually negative) references to the opposition.

Some caveats

As with the previous year, this analysis is based on a prepared speech and does not include any off-the-cuff remarks that Najib may have made.

In addition, there appear to be differences between the official English-language text and the official Malay-language text.

For example, the Malay edition contained Najib’s remarks that are an apparent response to his predecessor Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s attacks on his Bugis heritage. This was completely absent in the English edition. - Mkini