What's your pick of the best ideas from Malaysia's GE15 manifestos?

It doesn't matter which political party good ideas come from, we need to be sensible enough to rise above partisanship and use what's good. — 123rf.com.

The slightly tricky thing about writing on a Wednesday (Nov 16) for a column that will only be published on Sunday (Nov 20) is that things happen in between. Like elections.

Although I obviously don't know the exact results from voting on Saturday (Nov 19) as I write this, the thinking among political analysts (and many ordinary folk) is that none of the coalitions – Barisan Nasional, Pakatan Harapan and Perikatan Nasional – will get enough seats on its own to form a government. Perhaps they may be able to count on the support of MPs from Sabah and Sarawak to make up the numbers, but if not, then two of these coalitions need to band together to form a government.

Which then begs the question, which of the policies and proposals in their various manifestos will be the ones that are actually implemented?

After all, if they can mix and match Cabinet ministers (who in principle should decide how they run their respective ministries), then they should be able to also pick the best parts of their election promises.

Certainly the most interesting proposal for me is Barisan Nasional’s offer to top up the income of households who are currently earning less than RM2,208, the national poverty line. It is probably the most direct way of lifting families out of poverty: Just give them enough money so that they no longer fall below the line.

At face value, this is a very ambitious implementation of Universal Basic Income (UBI), where rather than giving aid through benefits and subsidies, recipients will instead receive cash. It will probably be in lieu of the single one-off payment of up to RM2,500 a year as proposed in Budget 2023 that was tabled earlier this year (and that will have to be re-tabled under the new government); that will presumably be replaced by this monthly allowance.

I’m not certain if any country in the world is implementing UBI in this way. The closest I could find was Iran. In 2010 the government announced they would give around US$40 per person each month – about US$2,300 per year for a family of five – impacting around 90% of the population. In 2011 this amounted to between US$30bil and US$35bil (at today’s exchange rates, that’s between RM136.6bil and RM159.3bil).

Malaysia’s situation is less in terms of numbers. It was reported in 2020 that there were over 400,000 households below the national poverty line income of RM2,208 a month. This implies an upper bound of RM10.6bil per year for the programme, so if you are just topping up the income, it will probably be about half that, or around RM5bil.

Interestingly, this is in the ballpark of the RM7.8bil aid for low-income households and individuals that was proposed in Budget 2023.

There will be issues with implementation, along with that popular argument against UBI, that if you give people money for free, then they will no longer want to work any more. I say, there is a difference between getting enough to live in comfort with caramel macchiatos for breakfast, and being provided a stable platform with the basics necessary to, literally, survive.

The World Bank Malaysian Economic Monitor for 2019 reported that, as of 2018, “nearly 30% of Malaysians felt that they did not have enough money for food, and 23% reported having inadequate money for shelter”. This situation will likely have worsened since the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020.

The families that benefit from the UBI may have some breathing room to find a way of earning an income that can be a little more considered. This in turn will improve productivity and (hopefully) create a sustainable benefit that will mean these families can earn their way out of poverty.

What kind of work should they look for? High-value, high-income work, I suppose. One of the proposal’s in Muda’s manifesto is to basically improve the prospect of Malaysian industries by focusing on high-value, high-multiplier segments.

An example the political party gives is in Electronics and Engineering (E&E), where they note that while Malaysia has a thriving and comprehensive E&E industry, most of it is in the backend work of assembly, testing and packaging. However, the high-value work is in the front-end, which includes wafer fabrication and design.

Muda correctly identifies that efforts to move up the value chain would be hampered by a lack of talent, so then that needs to be addressed first. And then you have the issue that talent needs to be concentrated in the right cities, and workers would need affordable housing for that, leading to another policy consideration.

None of these are new ideas really, but I think Muda’s is the only manifesto that both explicitly states this is crucial for Malaysia’s future, and also recognises that the ecosystem as a whole needs to improve, rather than going with some piecemeal short-term skills training programmes. No programme to improve the livelihoods of people in Malaysians can exist in isolation, and if implemented properly, will go on to benefit other areas – or, to borrow Muda’s phrasing, create a multiplier effect.

Some may be sceptical, wondering if these ideas are worth the paper they’re printed on for the parties concerned (and since most would have just read the electronic copy, not even that). The mantra “manifesto bukan kitab suci (manifestos are not the holy word)” was even proclaimed in Parliament in 2018.

But good ideas are good no matter where they come from. And if the pressure of general elections brings with it new promises and ideas that are actually worth keeping and implementing, then we should hold our politicians to that – no matter who is eventually in power.

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In his fortnightly column, Contradictheory, mathematician-turned-scriptwriter Dzof Azmi explores the theory that logic is the antithesis of emotion but people need both to make sense of life’s vagaries and contradictions. Write to Dzof at [e-mail]. The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.