PERSONALLY, I feel that Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman’s wild premonition that the removal petrol, education, and healthcare subsidies for the top 15% of the country’s population will trigger a class war is at best a shoddy attempt at hair-splitting, and at worst, a sign that the Muar MP is suffering from hysteria.
It is a case of hair-splitting if the crux of Syed Saddiq’s wildly exaggerated claim lies in the definition of top 15 (T15) households.
According to Syed Saddiq, the top 15 of households earn about RM12,000, and with an average household of 3.8 people, families with two working members earning a combined RM12,000 would be denied these crucial subsidies.”
Using this basis, Syed Saddiq then conveniently broadened the scope of T15 to include all or a large section of the middle class, before wildly imagining that the removal of the subsidy to “all of the middle class” will result in perhaps all or most of the middle class in the country.
Now I might not be exactly familiar with how the top 15% of household in the countries to be defined as households with a combined income of more than RM 12,000.
However, I am more than sure that when Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim used the term when unveiled Budget 2025 last week, he was referring to a group of people whose circumstances in life is so dissimilar to that of the working class, that the mere removal of such humble items like petrol and diesel subsidies will not throw them into the throes of poverty and destitution.
By right, if you belong in the top 15% household of a country, you should not be interested to engage in a class war with the working class over things like the humble petrol and rice subsidy, any more than a top-grade fighter jet will be interested in engaging with a soldier who is shooting at it with an assault rifle.
That, by the way, should be an accurate analogy to represent the difference between the life of a working-class household, who wouldn’t mind queuing up for hours to buy RM1 rice, and a member of a T15 household, who does not even look at the price on the menu before placing an order.
During the unveiling of the budget, Anwar already mentioned that when he refers to the T15, he is referring to the “Mahakaya” group.
Is it not obvious for someone like Syed Saddiq that Mahakaya does not refer to people who are in the middle-income bracket who will find their lives upended if they have to pay a few ringgit more for a litre of petrol?
As a politician, Syed Saddiq might have 101 political problems with Anwar or Pakatan Harapan (PH), but whatever your problem is, don’t conflate it to become the problem of the working class.
Your problems can be resolved with minimum affect to your life and lifestyle, if you just quit your job.
The working class has waited for generations for someone to address our problem before Anwar took the helm, and we might have to wait for generations if Anwar is delayed or frustrated, because some garden variety politician wishes to frustrate Anwar’s initiative for some personal or petty reason.
Every reasonable person should understand from what Anwar said when he unveiled Budget 2025, that he intends to shift the resources of the country from being elite-centric to working class-centric.
What we expect from our politicians, including opposition politicians like Syed Saddiq, is to provide meaningful input that will materialise the shift of resources, not nitpick and split hairs over trivial matters to the point that the redistribution initiative is delayed, stalled or abandoned.
No matter how intelligent you think you are in framing the argument, at the end of the day, how you will be seen will depend on your intentions and aim. Do you really want to be seen as someone who is being petty and trivial in a matter of great importance to the working class or as a useful tool to the “Mahakaya”?
Anyway, if Syed Saddiq is really interested in preventing a class war, rather than immerse himself in pedantic disputes over petty definitions and take up the cause of the top 15% of the country who should be more than capable of taking care of themselves without his involvement, maybe he should look into the matter that truly reflect the middle class and the working class, who make up 80% of the country.
It is not as if there is any dearth of issues affecting the middle and the working class.
If you can’t help, then at least don’t be a dog in the manger, and get in the way of other people like Anwar from helping them. – Oct 24, 2024
Nehru Sathiamoorthy is a roving tutor who loves politics, philosophy and psychology.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
