Freedom: Too much or too little?

Read a NST news report on Tuesday, Feb 16 that Kelantan Menteri Besar and PAS spiritual leader Datuk Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat also known affectionately as "Tok Guru" observed that: "cases of babies being abandoned are the result of too much freedom among the youth". I can't tell whether he is mis-quoted and after all, this is the NST we are talking about, the government mouthpiece, but i'd like to share some thoughts on the subject of freedom in Malaysia. I don't think that too much freedom is the cause of social ills. Rather, it is the lack of a good educational system that is to blame. Freedom does not mean wanton disregard for morals. Freedom does not mean abandoning one's values and condoning acts of mindlessness. It is rather the opposite. True freedom leads to enlightenment and into the light away from the darkness. Freedom means achieving one's true potential as a human being. Freedom means getting closer to the truth. The word "freedom" is much abused and our understanding of it through popular media is warped. We confuse freedom with chaos. the two does not mean the same thing nor does one inevitably lead to the other. The problem is one of culture. In conservative Malaysian culture, freedom is not a top priority. Observance of rites, social graces and customs are top priority. Not freedom which is almost alien to Malaysia. But herein lies the paradox. Our observance of the culture of obedience and adherance to authority does have its positive points but it also means that our leaders are given awesome powers and we have seen in recent years how this power has been wielded to serve only the narrow interests of the vested few. So in retrospect, and with all due respect to Tok Guru who is an honest, pious and humble soul, i beg to differ. Our social ills are due to our lack of education and lack of guidance which comes partly from the lack of freedom, true freedom. Freedom to information and freedom to seek the truth. We need more freedom, Tok Guru, not less. We need guidance and more education to go with that greater freedom. Some hiccups will occur in the process but it doesn't blacken the worth of true freedom. Let's have some more in-depth perspective here.

heightened political and economic risk

Deputy Prime Minister Muyhiddin Yasin dismisses the Hong Kong-based political and economic risk consultancy (PERC) report in Jan 2010 that Malaysia's risk index has risen up a notch from December 2009 as coming from people who know not about Malaysia. I wish it were so. But with the Anwar Ibrahim trial for sodomy charges and what looks likely will be his eventual conviction next year, one fears for the worse in malaysia. If Anwar is convicted and goes to jail again, one can expect a showdown between Pakatan Rakyat supporters and Barisan Nasional's. All of which is bad news for Malaysia. As things stand, foreign direct investments to Malaysia are at an almost all-time low and there has been a precipitous outflow of funds from between 2008 and now. Bank Negara Governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz has brushed aside these concerns and attributed them to the world economic slump. But Malaysia alone has experienced these remarkable outflows. None of our other neighbours who are also affected by the world slump, has seen such outflow of funds. If the political stability which Malaysia has long been credited for has become our past glory sans post-March 2008 general elections, one can see where everything is headed. If there is an Anwar Ibrahim conviction and there are civil disturbances, the government WILL clamp down on civil liberties and use all available means to rein in anyone perceived to be linked to those disturbances. And past experience tells us that they tend to do so indiscriminately and with sledge-hammer blows instead of finely-tuned, accurate and just. It will be an excuse to crack down and for the government to re-assert control and hopefully (for the government) that by doing so, it regains its lost two-thirds majority in Parliament, that psychologically all-important water mark for the government to re-claim its legitimacy. One hopes that it will not come to that. But forces going in that direction have already been unleashed and it is hard to stop them once cut loose. It's a sad but all-too-familiar scenario for Malaysians. Our liberties will be pawned for the benefit of the minority ruling elites. At the end of the day, ordinary Malaysians, whether conscious of it or not, will bear the price for it. And what a terribly steep price it will be.

the great bust of 2010 (coming soon to an economy near you)

I'm writing this with 6 days to Chinese New Year ("CNY") and counting and the Malaysian stockmarket is so down that the bottom is nowhere in sight. Gone is the usual pre-CNY rally or maybe there could be a feeble run-up in the dying days of the year of the Ox. Frankly, i'm not surprised. I am in agreement with some economists who take a very dim view of events of the past couple of years, to wit, the pump-priming of economies world-wide with cash that ain't there. You see, when you prop up a corpse with no matter how much stuffing/binding ala "Heart of Darkness" John Malkovich the ending scene, the corpse sits upright but it's STILL dead meat. The vitality of the American economy is - how shall i put it - a thing of the past. We can count ourselves lucky that China and India are on the up and up thanks to their enormous domestic economies and that picks up a little of the slack. But don't hope too much. The Chinese economy is still but a third of the USA and India is even smaller. So all that pump-priming is wasted effort in my humble opinion. Let the corpse fall to the ground and let the shit hit the fan. At least we'll all get that short sharp shock (hopefully) needed to correct whatever inefficiencies in the world economy so we'd be re-aligned truly and better afterwards. Throwing money when you have no money to throw around is always bad business, me thinks. It leads to governments getting heavily in debt and that would drive long-term bond rates up per se. So logically they HAVE to raise interest rates in the US from the zero now. They have to, no choice about that. Well, we (Malaysia) are going to soon anyway. Hmmm, at least now i can afford to buy an economy meal with my interest from my savings. I hope.