I AM writing this piece to respond to an opinion piece written by Koon Yew Yin entitled “Uncle Koon’s short comment: Was Malaya better under British rule?”, published by FocusM on Oct 4.
From time to time, capitalists and their operators such as technocrats, neoliberal thinks tanks and business executives provide suggestions to so-called develop Malaysia.
In reality, this so-called developmental-nationalism is used to ‘repackage’ their personal agenda to attain indirect bailouts from public wealth through Government.
One of such is our Uncle Koon, the founder of IJM Bhd and Gamuda Bhd.
In August 2019, Koon came under fire for proposing to use taxpayers funded army personnel as labourers at palm oil plantations, supposedly to reduce ringgit outflow through migrant workers.
In reality, this was to serve his personal economic agenda particularly, IJM Plantation Bhd.
Then, the cumulative loss of IJM Plantation Bhd for FY 2018, 2019 and 2020 was about RM85 mil.
KLK Bhd later acquired IJM Plantation Bhd at discounted valuation.
This is a typical hypocritical example of socialising costs but privatising profits.
If Koon was so concerned of the ringgit outflow, he could have mobilised all the palm oil corporations to increase workers’ wages and improve working conditions to attract more Malaysians.
The suggestion to use our army for palm oil plantation draw heavy criticism from many quarters, including Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM).
Subsequently, Koon went silent on civil servants for more than a year but have now returned to target the emolument enjoyed by our civil servants.
Koon was criticising our civil servants by comparing macro-ratio of population to civil servants, with other neo-liberal nations.
The use of macro-ratio is a form of statistical manipulation because it does not really compare social advancement institutions like public healthcare and education provided by Malaysia to address inequality.
This systematic use of statistical manipulation sets the stage for retrenchment of civil servants to reduce emoluments.
Reduction in the public emoluments will surely benefit him directly.
Koon’s corporations will benefit from either lower corporate taxes or larger fiscal space for new Government construction projects.
But the retrenchment of civil servants will increase unemployment and that will allow corporations and businesses to suppress wages further, making the working class poorer but capitalists like Koon richer. – Oct 5, 2021.
Sharan Raj is the central committee member of Parti Sosialis Malaysia.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
Pic credit: Unsplash
