Happy holiday? Think again

 

Kuala Lumpur won football’s Malaysia Cup recently, and all hell broke loose. Or rather, all hell shut down.

A public holiday was declared, and many happily enjoyed it and a fun time was had by all. But perhaps not by all.

A lot of pesky people conspired to find something wrong with it, such as

• The unemployed, who are not paid to go on holiday;
• Businesses, for whom random holidays mean money lost, now and likely in the future;
• The rakyat who had many aspects of their life disrupted; and
• The poor, who make a living the hard way, having farms or small businesses, where nobody gives them any paid holidays.

Bah, humbug! Who cares! Facebook loves it!

Humbug indeed. I’m actually quite experienced in this matter.

I had to deal with this in the late eighties when Kedah reached the final of the Malaysia Cup and declared a holiday. Kedah didn’t even win it actually. They made it to the final three more times, with holidays declared each time.

The impact on businesses was horrible. Production, supplies and customers were disrupted, and it was very embarrassing having to deal with the HQ and customers and suppliers. The stuff they said was just, well…not nice.

And here we’ve got this happening again – in KL! Whatever the costs of the impact to Kedah, just multiply it hundreds of times over.

Cuti-Cuti Malaysia

Given that the lockdowns have halted many holidays and vacations, this gives a new meaning to Cuti-Cuti Malaysia. Somebody is meeting his or her KPIs to increase the number of Malaysia’s holidays every year.

I don’t want to tell the federal territories minister what to do – he’s a minister who must’ve taken all the weighty stuff into consideration. And it turned out it was the Cabinet’s decision anyway.

And I think it’s so insulting that banks remained open as usual, despite the holiday. Pretty insulting move by the poor, too, who worked because otherwise they wouldn’t earn anything that day.

Given my expertise and years of experience in this (dealing with the Kedah experience added years to my life), I’d like to make these suggestions to the minister (and the Cabinet).

Giving a paid holiday for such a celebration is certainly a popular move (check out Facebook!), but it also costs money. Salaries were paid for no work done, and those who had to work will have to be paid extra.

But to be fair, given that the minister (or Cabinet, or perhaps the taxpayers?) has paid for that day of non-service of the many government employees, he (or they, or likely us) should also pay for the holiday of the non-government employees too.

They should also pay for the street hawkers who had no business, and the manual labourers who had to work because, well, they are from the B4 (Work B4 Eat) group. They all should receive compensation, or at least food, from the government.

Given that there’ll be disruptions to production and services, the minister (and the Cabinet, and I guess ultimately, us) should also pay for these, as it’s not the fault of the businesses that things suddenly closed down.

We should deduct a one-three-hundred-sixty-fifth portion from our assessment and other local taxes to City Hall, given that we didn’t get any service that day. That’s usually how it works in the real world.

We could have celebrated the Malaysia Cup with a parade through the city streets. That would’ve been cool, except that nobody might turn up, and destroy the argument this was something actually worth celebrating.

I’ve been wracking my brain to figure out why in this day and age, do we still have this peculiarly third world arrangement.

Money come, money go

I can think of only two possibilities.

One is that politicians aren’t familiar with the relationship between money coming in and money going out. For politicians, money comes in easily when you’re appointed a minister or adviser or sign a white paper or receive a political donation.

In the real world, people have to work hard to earn every single sen, from farmers and fishermen to business tycoons and canteen operators and stalls selling lunchtime food to the office crowds.

They take RM10 worth of raw materials, add RM5 worth of labour and marketing and creativity, and hope to sell it for RM20. The RM5 profit is for them to live on, and also to pay taxes that help others live on.

They don’t live in a world where you take something worth RM10, mark it up to RM20 and pocket RM15 by actually giving only RM5 worth of value to the end users. And pay no taxes.

When money comes easily, nobody cares about cost. Costs are always picked up by somebody else, usually by people who can’t vote you out of power.

Those who can vote you out won’t, because they’ve been conditioned to feel so happy at the great generosity you’ve shown. Dumb, docile and delirious, as is the case nowadays.

Not to mention, these people aren’t voted in by the KL people anyway. Some people equivalent to the population of two city streets somewhere far off can decide what happens in KL.

The other possibility is a simple case of the minister (and Cabinet) deciding he wants to do whatever he wants regardless of the costs, and screw everybody and everything else.

It’s just another chapter in a long line of distractions, driven by sheer irresponsible incompetence and arrogance. People are literally going hungry and yet here we are “celebrating”.

I wish our leaders would just get back to shouting about airline stewardess’ skirts and alcohol names and similar weighty stuff, while we get on with our life, albeit slightly cheesed off. It’s less costly this way.

Grab, which started in Malaysia and has just been listed in the US at a valuation of around RM160 billion (yes, billion) must be thanking God they are in Singapore and not here having to deal with this phenomenon.

And I can see Indonesia’s President Jokowi coming out with a new promotion plan to encourage investment in Indonesia – “Invest in Indonesia- No Random Holidays!”

Any investor looking at Malaysia would be looking twice now, but I’d still encourage them to look at Penang, my hometown.

We have never won anything in football for generations, back to the days when I used to go and watch Penang regularly lose at the City Stadium decades ago.

So, no chance of a random holiday in Penang – guaranteed! - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.