In about 5 days, 10.9 million Malaysians will cast their votes on the next government. And there are sayings like, if we could just give the opposition the chance to become government, maybe we could finally see whether they can be a good government or not. I honestly don’t think so. I mean, choosing a government is not like buying a new shirt where if you don’t like them, you could just throw it away of return it to the store. Choosing a government is much like buying a car or buying a house to live in.
I personally don’t mind voting for the opposition but only after they have proven that when and if they become government, they would be an effective government. For example, take one of the opposition party’s manifestos regarding bringing welfare state if they manage to become government. I am all for welfare state because I personally believe that education and healthcare should be free. I believe that there should be an income support scheme for poor people. But, to execute all those programmes, the government needs money. And when asked by reporters on how the opposition would raise such money, their answer was to take from Petronas (Malaysian Oil Company). Now, there are two ways for the government to take money from Petronas, one is through taxation. This way is easy but not that easy because the government can only tax according to the corporation tax rate, which has to be passed through the Parliament. And if approved would be applied across the board (all corporations are affected). To take money means to increase corporation tax and just for the records, Malaysia still has one of the highest corporation taxes in the region (South East Asia). I think I don’t have to go into details on the effect of increasing the tax rate do I?
The second way is through interest-free loan from Petronas to the government. While this seems like a very viable option, one needs to remember that Petronas is an oil exploration company and as you might already know, exploring and searching for oil requires a lot of money. Therefore, there can only be so much of interest-free loan that Petronas can give to the government before it has detrimental effects on the company itself. It might work in a super short term but not in the long run.
I am not endorsing you to vote for any party. This is just an observation on my part as a citizen of the country. Like I said in previous posts, always and always, vote for the person who you think would be able to make a difference in your area. And at the risk of creating a tagline, I just would like to say, vote for the right people for the right reason.
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