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Local democracy or local comedy?

Anil Netto
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Few of us are aware that our country had a thriving system of elections to local councils in the 1950s and 1960s.

Back then, we had 373 local authorities – 40 town councils, 37 town boards, 289 local councils and 7 district councils. Out of some 4,200 local councillors (not including those in the Kuala Lumpur municipality), more than 3,000 were elected. George Town, Ipoh and Malacca were the most prominent of these councils and Penang itself had fully elective councils throughout the state, including the mainland. In fact, the first elections in Malaya were held in George Town in 1951 to elect nine councillors.

The government later abolished local government elections. The deathblow came with the enactment of the Local Government Act of 1976, which effectively killed off local council elections and replaced them with a system of appointments that rewards ruling coalition politicians and supporters with positions in local councils.

This is an extract from a piece I wrote for the Malaysian Herald:

I once watched a hilarious comedy performance by Comedy Court’s Indi Nadarajah and Allan Perera, in which one of them played the part of an elected representative chastising a colleague for not coming up with more ‘creative’ ways of justifying junkets abroad. With these creative justifications, there would be no need to worry about being caught for wasting taxpayers’ money on tours that include, say, belly dancing performances along the Nile. Our two comedians concluded that such foreign junkets could easily be explained away by euphemisms such as “understanding cultural practices” (belly dancing!), “studying the landscape” (a golfing holiday), and “examining consumer spending patterns” (a shopping/sightseeing tour)!

Now you might wonder what local council elections have to do with Christianity. Actually, a lot. Grassroots, bottom-up democracy at the local level is very much in line with Catholic Social Teaching (CST). One of the most constant and characteristic directives of CST is the principle of ‘subsidiarity’, which has been present since the first great social encyclical Rerum Novarum. This principle, which implies participation, means that responsibility for decisions should be as close as possible to the grassroots. This would allow people or communities who are most directly affected by decisions or policies to participate in the decision-making process.

“Participation in community life is not only one of the greatest aspirations of the citizen, called to exercise freely and responsibly his civic role with and for others, but is also one of the pillars of all democratic orders and one of the major guarantees of the permanence of the democratic system” (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, No. 190 ‘Participation and democracy’).

Do we have such participation in community life as part of our democratic system? The only time we have a say is once every five years during the general election, during which there is an intense media and PR campaign to get people to vote in a certain way. But these elections do not cover town councils.

Surely, democracy is more than that. Authentic democracy means public and popular participation in the decision-making process at all levels. Reviving elections to local councils would go a long way in restoring genuine democracy at the local level….

People in the dark over Asean Charter

Anil Netto
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Few people are even aware that a major development is taking place in South-East Asia. As usual, we are in the dark.

Before long, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) will come up with a Charter. In other words, work is in progress towards coming up with a ‘constitution’ for the regional grouping of 10 nations.

Strange, they are talking about forming an Asean Community by 2015 and yet most people don’t have a clue what’s going on.

Here’s an extract from a piece I wrote for the Malaysian Herald last October:

You would think that on a subject of this importance, the people of Southeast Asia would be consulted and a broad range of views solicited. You would think that our newspapers and television and radio programmes would be discussing this week in and week out to discern what exactly should be included in such a Charter. You would think that our political leaders would be asking us for our views and suggestions.

That’s not happening, is it?

Perhaps that’s because the real intention of such a Charter is to come up with a regional framework to facilitate business and trade. Maybe the ordinary people come a distant second. It reminds me of the high-level secrecy surrounding the negotiations for the Free Trade Agreement between Malaysia and the United States… Not good…

Human rights groups and other civil society organisations are now pushing for the inclusion of certain crucial ideas into the Charter.

They want the Charter to be people-centered as opposed to business- or trade-centred. In other words, the interests of people (labour) should take precedence over the interests of corporations (capital).

Bearing in mind there are quite a few authoritarian and undemocratic governments in the region, they also want the Charter to uphold universally accepted democratic and human rights norms.

In particular, these human rights groups are asking the drafters to ensure that human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related Conventions are explicitly upheld in the ASEAN Charter. The recognition of these rights should form the overarching framework of the Charter, which should also be gender-sensitive and oriented towards sustainable development.

But all the fine words in the world will be useless if they remain mere words on paper. Activists want the drafters to ensure that effective monitoring and enforcement mechanisms and institutions are provided in the Charter. These mechanisms could include semi-judicial bodies such as a regional human rights commission and judicial bodies such as a regional human rights court.

Watch what’s happening to your EPF money

Anil Netto
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So now the EPF is set to take over RHB.

The first question that comes to mind is, isn’t the EPF biting off more than it can chew? What does it know about managing a bank – or even supervising the management of a bank?

It already has plenty on its plate just managing its own funds – or rather, the public funds of EPF contributors – and ensuring that Malaysians get a decent rate of return on their pension savings.

If the EPF is so confident about managing a bank, perhaps it can tell us how and why it ended up holding a stake in a banking group which is now saddled with RM3.6 billion in debt.

That’s not all. I say, watch your EPF money closely. The EPF could also end up financing infrastructure projects under the so-called Private Finance Initiatives, which will finance RM20 billion worth of projects under the Ninth Malaysia Plan. I say “so-called” because the money is reportedly expected to come from the EPF, which manages public funds, your money – not private money.

This is the piece I wrote for Asia Times Online last October:

PENANG – Malaysia is poised to experiment with the next phase of its privatization process through the initiation of so-called private finance initiatives (PFIs). But the Malaysian version of the internationally recognized investment vehicles will be unique in that it will be the public rather than the private sector that takes the risks. Full article: Malaysia’s new-fangled privatisation fudge

Heroic martyrs spur Latin America in new direction

Anil Netto
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I find Latin America a fascinating continent, though I have never been there. But I am inspired by the stories of the suffering of countless numbers of ordinary people who resisted the authoritarian rule of US-backed right-wing regimes. Many of these regimes served to protect the economic interests of the local (largely white) wealthy elite as well as the economic agenda of US corporations.

Thousands were killed or tortured – brutally – at the hands of death squads during the Reagan years. Others simply disappeared.

Heroic peace- and justice-loving women and men rose to resist such tyranny and oppression through sheer moral force. And their blood soaked the soil of the continent. People like Oscar Romero (El Salvador), Chico Mendes (Brazil), Ita Ford (El Salvador)… It’s a long list. Today, their sacrifices have inspired a new generation to take a more independent political, economic and social path, rooted in their local indigenous cultures, towards justice and peace.

This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for the Malaysian Herald last October…

When people wonder about the legacy of the late Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated while celebrating Mass in El Salvador in 1980, they need look no further than what is happening in Latin America today.

Romero fought for the rights of the peasants in El Salvador and was at the forefront of the Church’s struggle on behalf of the poor. This move of his angered the vested business and economic interests in the region.

Political analyst Noam Chomsky has said the United States virtually declared war on the Catholic Church in South America for taking the side of the poor. The United States would have been so much more comfortable if the Church had remained on the side of the rich and the powerful.

So many priests, activists and community leaders were tortured, murdered or simply ‘disappeared’ during the bloody 1970s and 1980s. In November 1989, six leading Jesuit intellectuals and two of their employees were murdered by a US-trained elite battalion.

Shortly before he was murdered in 1980, Romero wrote a letter to President Carter, pleading with him to end US support for state terror. Chomsky recounts how Romero informed the rector of the Jesuit University, Father Ellacuria, that he was prompted by his concern over a “new concept of special warfare, which consists in murderously eliminating every endeavour of the popular organisations under the allegation of Communism or terrorism…”

Carter never responded and instead sent more financial aid.

This tactic of smearing and targeting those who champion the interests of the people, especially the poor, continues to this day around the world.

Minutes before he was murdered, Romero had read from the Gospel of John: “Unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains only a grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit ”(Jn. 12:23-26).

Romero’s funeral was the largest demonstration in the history of El Salvador if not Latin America. The government was so nervous that it lobbed bombs into the crowd attending the funeral, killing some 30 people and injuring hundreds.

Today, Romero’s grain is bearing much fruit in Latin America. An entire continent is rising to resist the might of US-sponsored corporate-led globalisation, which promotes neo-liberal economics that widens the gap between the rich and the poor while fabulously enriching a tiny minority.

Dabbling with the dark side

Anil Netto
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It is something of a joke these days to see the US State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. Talk about the pot calling the kettle(s) black.

Since the 11 September 2001 attacks, the human rights struggle has suffered a beating at the hands of the United States. In particular, the obnoxious practice of detention without trial has been given a new lease of life.

The United States is holding close to 14,000 prisoners in Iraq, another 500 in Afghanistan and nearly 500 more in Guantanamo Bay. That’s not counting the unknown number of ‘suspected terrorists’ held by the CIA in secret “renditions” at various locations around the world. God knows how many of them have been tortured.

That’s not counting the hundreds of others held without trial by other countries in their own regional ‘wars on terror’. For instance, in Malaysia, there are close to 100 people being detained without trial at the Kamunting Detention Centre – over 50 of whom are alleged JI members and half a dozen alleged KMM members. Neighbouring countries in Asean too are holding alleged terrorists without trial using similar undemocratic laws.

Torture (whether physical or psychological) and detention without trial violate natural law as well as international law. So why are these “civilised” nations doing it – or turning a blind eye to such practices?

This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for the Malaysian Herald last October, in which I highlighted the illuminating analysis provided by Middle East historian Juan Cole.

Indeed, militarism, manifested in the “war on terror”, is the dark side of neo-liberal globalisation. Many analysts believe the ‘‘war on terror’’ has been hyped up to mask the United States’ rush into the Middle East to take strategic control of crucial oil reserves as global oil production reaches a plateau in the next few decades.

But why is the United States so keen on allowing torture? ‘‘Boys and girls, it is because torture is what provides evidence for large important networks of terrorists where there aren’t really any, or aren’t very many, or aren’t enough to justify 800 military bases and a $500 billion military budget,” says analyst Juan Cole, a professor of Modern Middle East History at the University of Michigan….

“The Bush administration needs the Terror/al-Qaeda bogeyman to justify the military occupation of strategic countries that have or are near to major oil and gas reserves,” says Cole, in his “Informed Comment” blog. “It needs al-Qaeda to justify the lily pad bases in Kyrgyzstan etc. But the problem is that we now know that serious al-Qaeda is probably only a few hundred men now, and at most a few thousand.”

How do you prove to yourself and others a big terror threat that requires a National Security State? You torture people into alleging it, he says. “Global terrorism is being exaggerated and hyped by torture just as the witchcraft scare in Puritan American manufactured witches.”

Dam-it, what’s going on here?

Anil Netto
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It looks like some of our planners are on a dam-building spree, even though the Bakun Dam is expected to produce electricity that the country does not really need for now.

For one thing, Malaysia has a 40 per cent reserve capacity now – even without including the expected excess electricity from Bakun. Even by 2010, we would still have 30 per cent excess capacity. It is only by 2012 that the excess capacity would drop to around 20 per cent.

With all this surplus electricity floating around, it is surprising that they are even thinking of building more dams – and in Sarawak of all places. Imagine, they haven’t figured out what to do with all that electricity from Bakun, and they are talking of newer bigger dams.

Will Tenaga be forced to buy some of that excess electricity – and at what price? 12 sen per unit (the price recently negotiated with Independent Power Producers)? Or 17 sen per unit (the high price agreed when the original Bakun power purchase agreement was signed in 1996)? In the first place, why should Tenaga buy electricity at these prices when its own power generation plants are among the most cost efficient?

Or will the government approve the construction of polluting aluminium smelters in Sarawak to suck up the excess power from Bakun? Now there is even talk of Tenaga taking up a stake in the highly risky business of sending all that excess electricity by submarine cables to the peninsula.

And what about the catchment areas for Bakun? Is there sufficient protection to ensure they are not stripped?

Perhaps we can say thanks to Mahathir for getting us into this mess in the first place. If only we had the vision to use all that money to carry out research into cleaner, less environmentally damaging, alternative sources of energy. If only we could also think of conservation of energy instead of finding new ways of using up electricity that we didn’t really need in the first place. If only…

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 10 (IPS) – Even before the problem-ridden Bakun Dam in eastern Sarawak can be completed, officials are talking of plans to build two more hydroelectric dams in the state, one of which could make Bakun look puny by comparison.

Concerns over the necessity for such dams, how the surplus electricity will be used, the resettlement of indigenous people, and the ‘development’ of catchment areas appear to be going unheeded.

The turbines powering the 2,400 Mw Bakun Dam along the Balui River could start churning by 2009, but planners are still mulling over what to do with all that excess electricity.

Should they approve a power-guzzling — and extremely polluting — aluminium smelter plant in Sarawak? Or should they channel the excess power to the more industrialised Malaysian peninsula via submarine cables laid on the bed of the South China Sea?

The former option would require the participation of major transnational corporations with questionable benefits for the rural economy of Sarawak.

The option to lay cables, on the other hand, would be expensive and is fraught with technical uncertainties. Full article: Surplus electricity – But bigger dams planned

How the NEP equity targets miss the point

Anil Netto
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So is the bumi share of corporate equity 18.9 per cent? Or 45 per cent?

Here’s something to think about this weekend.

In many ways, the NEP 30 per cent target has become almost sacrosanct. On it hinges much of the political legitimacy of a party like Umno – for persistent underachievement can be used as a clarion call to mobilise support along racial lines

But is share ownership a really meaningful indicator of economic well-being for most ordinary Malaysians?

This is an extract from a piece I wrote for the Malaysian Herald last October.

To measure economic justice by looking merely at equity ownership – i.e. the ownership of shares – among the various communities is misleading

Whether we use the par (nominal) value or market value of shares in our calculations, whether we use only listed firms or all firms, whether we include government-linked companies in the bumiputra share – all of this misses the point.

The truth is only a tiny percentage of Malaysians actually own shares. And among those who do hold shares, a small group of them control the bulk of the shares, while the rest are just small-time investors.

What about the vast majority who do not own shares or unit trusts? Where do they fit in?

In truth, the gap between the rich and the poor in Malaysia – like in the United States and many other countries in the world – has been widening. Even among the bumiputras, the gap between the rich and poor has grown larger.

According to the UNDP Human Development Report 2005, only nine countries have reduced the gap between rich and poor. On the other hand, 80 per cent of the world’s population have experienced an increase in income inequality.

Could this be the result of the headlong rush into full-blown market capitalism and corporate-led globalisation?

This is what we should be looking at.

So we need to look at how we can empower our own marginalized communities and other people displaced by ‘development’ – through education, through skills training, by creating the means for economic self-sufficiency.

At the same time, we need to develop our rooted-ness in our ancient cultures and spiritual traditions and not succumb to the overwhelming culture and materialistic values of the global market. We need to promote food security through organic, sustainable traditional farming – not through large-scale cash crops using pesticides and low-wage plantation labour. (I see the government has ‘temporarily’ lifted its ban on the toxic herbicide, paraquat.)

At the end of the day, full-blown market capitalism of the neo-liberal variety is deeply flawed and leads to wide income disparities. It focuses excessively on material development – to the detriment of the environment, the ancient cultures we share, the traditional wisdom and our rich knowledge-base in farming, in healing, in the spirituality found around Nature (see how Jesus often went to the hills to meditate), which are all sidelined.

We should go beyond statistics and look at the authentic development of the human person and create a climate that empowers communities by providing them the means to become self-sufficient.

The Top Five Ways They Block the Real News from Reaching You

Anil Netto
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Ever get the feeling that what you read in the newspapers is not really journalism. Well, you wouldn’t be far wrong. Much of what passes itself off as journalism today is actually slick public relations disguised as journalism, or more accurately, Corporate Media Propaganda.

It was the Australian social scientist Alex Carey who observed that there were three developments of major significance in the last century: “the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.”

This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for the Malaysian Herald last October:

Power is now moving into the hands of the transnational corporations – and the structures that support them. The corporate media’s role is to condition the public into blindly accepting such a fundamental shift in the way our economies are controlled and managed.

Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky introduced their ‘propaganda model’ of the media in their book ‘Manufacturing Consent’ in 1988. Basically, they said the media have five types of filters that determine what gets presented as news and what does not. They also showed how dissenting views get very little space – in stark contrast to the political-corporate powers-that-be who have easy access to the media (and the public).

Some of these state-corporate hidden messages include the notion that economic growth is the best way forward, that the neo-liberal corporate-led model of globalisation is the best thing since sliced bread, and that corporations are essentially benevolent.

The first filter that determines what is reported is of course the corporate ownership of the media, which heavily influences what is transmitted to the public.

The second is massive advertising revenue which again conditions a newspaper to be “friendly” to business interests for fear that firms may withdraw their advertising spending and go elsewhere.

The third filter is the sourcing of news. Ever notice how the media often quote speeches and statements from the centres of power – whether it is the White House or Putrajaya or economic interests – that are closely linked with the promotion of business interests? And notice the scarcity of interviews with the poor and the marginalised.

The fourth filter comes in the form of negative responses to a media statement or programme – that is public complaints, threats of lawsuits or punitive action or official warnings – all of which can put fear in media owners.

The fifth filter is the demonisation of enemies – whether they are communists, dictators, activists protesting against corporate-led globalisation, environmentalists, or anyone who has a different view about how the economy should be run. These dissidents are often portrayed as crazies, mavericks, ‘radicals’, and fringe groups.

Makeover for predatory IMF and World Bank

Anil Netto
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While attending the Annual Meetings of the Boards of Governors of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Singapore, I soon realised that a slick makeover job, a real PR job, was underway.

In recent years, these two global financial institutions have received some bad press for the tremendous damage their policies have had on developing nations.

The PR job required a range of sweeping cosmetic measures. But could such measures really save the Bank and the IMF from their serious image and credibility crisis? No way.

This is the review I wrote for Inter Press Service after the Annual Meetings were over.

‘There’s no doubt in my mind that the Fund and Bank cannot be reconstructed,” said Glasgow-based political scientist and author John Hilley, who has written about neo-liberal militarism, the Fund and the Bank, in e-mailed comments to IPS. ‘‘Both need to be replaced by bodies concerned with people and planet rather than austerity prescriptions and business values.”

Critics said the elite closure and containment of dissident voices in Singapore should serve as a reminder that these bodies cannot be ‘constructively engaged’.

Hundreds of civil society activists were forced to divide their numbers between Singapore, where accredited activists were ‘constructively engaged’ inside the convention centre, and neighbouring Batam in Indonesia, where others held protests and parallel meetings. This divide-and-rule tactic may have weakened the overall impact of the usual civil society protests surrounding such meetings.

‘‘The Singapore meetings really showed how undemocratic the Bank and the Fund were,” said Achmad Ya’kub of the Indonesian Federation of Peasant Unions (FSPI), who was deported after being interrogated for 14 hours in Singapore. ‘‘They lost the very little credibility that they still had.”

The sentiment in some activist circles is that civil society organisations should boycott all future meetings with the Bank. Civil society ‘engagement’ in the consultative process, it is argued, indirectly helps to legitimise the WB-IMF annual proceedings..

Hilley warned that no one should be taken in by the supposedly more benign face of the Bank. ‘‘The Wolfowitz presidency, the IFC’s business agenda and the resolute adherence to growth-based policies are all testament to the Bank’s real priorities,” he said. The IFC (International Finance Corporation) is the private sector arm of the Bank, whose president, Paul Wolfowitz, is widely seen as an architect of aggressive U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and the Middle-East. Full article

Economic growth or economic sufficiency?

Anil Netto
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With global warming creeping up on us, it is clearly time to take stock of the way we do things. Few people would dispute that our pattern of unbridled economic growth is contributing to climate change as never before. Factories spew toxic emissions into the murky skies, lorry and car exhaust pipes belch fumes into the air while bulldozers mow down pristine rain-forests.

And yet there is a reluctance to point fingers at the corporate culprits and our unsustainable model of economic growth. We cannot aspire to higher and higher levels of consumption without harming the ecological balance and depriving others of a decent standard of living.

Let’s take a look at the choices that Thailand is coming to grips with. It has put its negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement with the United States on hold. Certainly, we could learn a thing or two about what a “sufficiency economy” is all about from our northern neighbour.

This is an article I wrote for Inter Press Service last September:

The king, who has travelled extensively in remote areas of the country to see firsthand the impact of policies on the poor, is hugely revered in Thailand. His vision of self-sufficiency based on the eradication of greed is rooted in Buddhism and Thai culture. The sight of the king sitting down on the ground, chatting with villagers about their livelihood is familiar among many Thais, winning him many admirers. Guided by a philosophy of economic self-reliance, and emphasising agrarian reform, the king has a famous line: ‘‘pho gin pho yu’’ (literally ‘‘enough to eat, enough to live on’’).

‘‘It is not important to be an economic tiger,” said the king a year after the Thai economy crashed in 1997. “What matters is that we have enough to eat and to live. A self-sufficient economy will provide us just that. It helps us to stand on our own and produce enough for our consumption.” He constantly reminds Thais that while pursuing material security, they should not forget to strive for inner peace of mind through spiritual purification.

Not surprisingly, this ideal of self-sufficiency backed by the royalty and grounded in Buddhist ethics is heady stuff in Thailand. ‘‘It has been a powerful counterweight, at least ideologically, to the big growth, big exports, big corporation and big corruption, CEO-style of Thaksin,’’ observed the social anthropologist. Full article

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