Pakatan Harapan should develop its policy framework
And the people had made their choice on 9 May 2018 to kick out the then corrupt Barisan Nasional (BN) government and installed PH in place to reform and govern our nation with new policies, institutional reforms, combat corruption and to correct the wrongs in the judiciary system as well as civil service which has been killing our nation’s reputation for years.
In aftermath of PH’s takeover of the federal seat, what has been discovered were our nation’s coffers had lost billions of ringgit as the result of swindling, mismanagement and corruptions by the leaders of the previous ruling coalition. Much has gone missing, unrecoverable and as the result of the nation’s debts which is at the highest ever, trillions of ringgit, our nation’s currency devaluation continues which had indeed caused some inflation to affect the livelihood of many Malaysians.
Now let us look back at the manifesto of PH which was laid out to gain our people’s support last year. An election manifesto is merely list of plans that PH intend to carry out should they were to be in power. The contents of the manifesto were great and it gave a tremendous impact to our people to inspired the change and finally they made it happened on 9 May 2018 last year.
Upon taking the governing seat, PH found that with the nation’s coffer almost empty, it was impossible to carry out most their plans immediately as stated in their electoral manifesto because those funds are simply insufficient to kick start the many kinds of reforms and changes.
And this had indeed caused some resentment among the population who voted for PH to replaced BN. Many people became disappointed because “promises” were not fulfilled after PH became the government. Yes, there are many constraints due to the large amount of debts left over by the previous BN coalition who ruled our nation for 61 years.
To add more pain into the people’s disappointment, BN leaders started attacking the PH government by alleging that the new administration had broken all its promises made in its electoral manifesto. The political ploy by BN leaders has indeed put PH into an awkward position because it has already become a “reality” that PH cannot fulfil its pledge made in the electoral manifesto entirely.
Majority of our people are merely ordinary citizens, from daily wage-earners, middle-class people, small time businesses right down to the low-income groups who does not look at politics and socio-economic matters deeply because many do not understand well on the situation.
And this is how BN leaders get to exploit the people’s disappointment so easily because the majority of the people themselves are lacking in socio-political and socio-economic awareness.
Come up with policy framework
To counter BN’s exploitation of the people’s disappointment, PH leaders should come up with a policy framework if they are not able to fulfil what they had undertook via its electoral manifesto in the last general elections.
People get disappointed easily when “promises” made in electoral manifesto are not met, people got upset when these “promises” were taken off, not implemented, postponed or cancelled. People will just simply say, is PH trustworthy? Are they just like BN or so on.
And this does not reflect well on PH who had just rule this nation. If there were any state or local elections held recently, PH will sure to lose their bets to BN or any other political parties. And they had just lost one of their previously won state seat in a by-election.
This is because PH did not have a policy framework where its plans should be unleashed to inform the people of the timeframe of their implementations and reforms which are pending and need more time before it could kick start.
For example, PH had promised to establish the IPCMC as an effective oversight body of the police force and in the end the home minister said they need more time to study the impact and to get feedbacks from stakeholders before the IPCMC could be established.
In this case, there are no timeframe given, instead it reflects that the government is lacking in its will to push for the establishment of the IPCMC. As the result of this, people got upset as such implementation was not immediately carried out and the reasons given were unclear.
The other cases are the abolishment of Sedition Act, Fake News Act, SOSMA, proposed amendments to some unjust sections under the Criminal Procedure Codes, PPPA and other Acts which are unjust to the people as well as parliamentary and judiciary reforms.
Many people are still unaware that the Dewan Negara (senate) is still preside by a BN leader and majority of its senators are from BN which make it impossible to repeal some laws immediately. Not until the tenure of these BN senators expires, only then those unjust laws could be repealed or amended and the entire parliamentary and judiciary system can be reformed without being stopped by these BN senators.
Therefore, a policy framework should be established to inform the people that PH need a reasonable timeframe to carry out these reforms and changes due to all those political constraints. Even the federal constitution cannot be amended as of today because PH lacks the two-thirds majority to do so.
The people are now watching and complaining that this new government’s reforms are too slow and has not been effective in getting rid of the old habits, power abuse, mismanagement, low productivity and ineffective policies.
Sabotage in small scales are still taking place within the government machinery, partly because some diehard BN supporters within the civil service are still trying to undermine the efforts by the PH government, leaking information to BN leaders and so on.
PH need to move very quickly in disposing off all these negative elements from the civil service in order to get on with their reforms as soon as possible, to ensure that this government machinery clearly inform the people and keep the population up-to-date on their policy framework.
