Rapid political reform needed to solve economic woes, says PKR MP

Subang MP Wong Chen says the government cannot point the finger at Najib Razak for all its woes much longer.

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia needs rapid political reform and better governance to solve its economic woes, a PKR MP said.

Wong Chen acknowledged that global headwinds were one reason for the sombre outlook as the government’s first anniversary nears.

The Subang MP said the administration’s top economic managers should do some soul searching on the signals they had been sending to investors.

“If the government followed through with delivering rapid political reform – as it promised when it came to power – investors may be singing a different tune,” South China Morning Post (SCMP) quoted him as saying in its This Week in Asia section.

SCMP noted that recent macro indicators suggest slumping investor confidence as May 9 nears and said the question the administration faces is whether it has the economic management chops to steward Southeast Asia’s third largest economy.

Wong said the government could not keep pointing the finger at former prime minister Najib Razak for much longer for all the woes it was facing.

“Financial reforms are difficult because you need money. But what about political reforms? Why haven’t we done it?

“It’s just words; amending laws that we have been dissecting for a decade (in opposition) … there is just no political will.”

He said the “low-hanging fruit” to convince investors the government knows what it is doing is “not economic reform but political reform and better governance”.

“It’s better governance that will create the democratic dividends that will solve our economic problems,” he said.

Shahril Hamdan, deputy Umno Youth leader, told the paper that given the steady performance of Malaysia’s neighbours, the logical conclusion was that it was domestic factors, such as “haphazard policymaking and policy U-turns”, that were dampening investor confidence.

He agreed with Wong that the PH government could no longer use the 1MDB scandal as a scapegoat for bearish economic sentiment.

“There is a palpable sense of fatigue in Pakatan Harapan always using 1MDB as the first port of call.

“There is a shift now … a few months ago when we raised issues, the public reaction was always ‘where were you during 1MDB?’ I think there is much less of that now,” Shahril was quoted as saying.

However, the report said economics expert Yeah Kim Leng offered an independent view that was not as damning of Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s administration.

“The worst of the political transition is over, a testimony in part to the resilience of the private sector,” the Sunway University professor was quoted as saying.

“The nation’s economic fundamentals have remained relatively intact while certain key government debt and fiscal metrics are on the mend, following a litany of financial scandals associated with the previous administration.”

Yeah said the resumption of the RM44 billion East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) project and the Bandar Malaysia development, worth about RM140 billion, could well be the silver bullet the economy needed.

“While there remain concerns about the projects adding to the country’s debt-servicing burdens, given the country’s expected growth trajectory, the increase remains manageable.

“The economic spillovers of the two projects, particularly in attracting foreign investors, will be the key determinant in achieving higher growth and investment levels, and therefore greater economic dynamism of the country in its quest to escape the middle-income trap,” he said. - FMT