Minimum EPF contribution by employees to be
reduced by 4% from 11% to 7%, with effect from Apr 1 to Dec 31, 2020.
This will potentially unlock up to RM10 billion worth of private
consumption. Malaysian workers have the option to opt out from the
scheme and maintain their contribution rate
KUALA LUMPUR: Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad had on Thursday unveiled the RM20bil stimulus package to offset the fallout from the Covid-19 coronavirus.
Below are the highlights:
Based on three strategies: counter Covid-19 impact, boost people-based growth, encourage quality investments
• Bank Simpanan Nasional provides RM200mil micro credit at 4% interest rate
• MAHB to cut rental for tenants, landing charges and parking fees at airports
• Postponement of income tax monthly payment for tourism-related companies
• Bank Negara provides RM2bil guaranteed financial aid for SMES at 3.75% interest rate
• All banks required to reduce monetary burden in the form of postponement of payments or rescheduling of loans
• Temporary six months discount of as much as 15% for electricity bills for hotels, tourism agencies, airlines, and shopping centres
• Hotels to get service tax breaks from next month to august
• Economic growth for 2020 expected to be between 3.2% and 4.2%
• Minimum EPF contribution by employees to be reduced from 11% to 7%, with effect from april 1 to dec 31. This could unlock up to RM10bil worth of private consumption. Malaysian contributors have the choice to opt out from the scheme and maintain their contribution rate
• A payment of RM200 to all bantuan Sara Hidup (BSH) recipients scheduled for May will be brought forward to March. an additional RM100 will be paid into the bank accounts of all BSH recipients in May. Subsequently, an additional rM50 will be channelled in the form of e-tunai
• As a result of the stimulus package, fiscal deficit estimated to increase to 3.4% of GDP from targeted 3.2%
• Grants of RM1,000 to RM10,000 for entrepreneurs to promote the sale of their products on e-commerce platforms
• Securities Commission and bursa Malaysia will waive listing fees for one year, for companies seeking listing on Leading entrepreneur accelerator Platform (LEAP) or Access, Certainty, Efficiency (ACE) markets, as well as companies with market capitalisation of less than RM500mil seeking listing on the main market
• Import duty and sales tax exemption on importation or local purchase of machinery and equipment used in port operations for three years commencing april 1
• Enough source of money for now, no issuance of bonds needed
• Stimulus package to be funded by RM2 trillion savings from bank Negara, Tabung Haji, EPF
• Bureaucratic procedures will be expedited to disburse stimulus
Tourism boost: The government will provide a discount on electricity
bills to hotels, travel agencies, airlines, shopping malls, convention
and exhibition centres. — Bernama
The euphoria among Malaysians following the May 2018 polls has now turned to despair and disgust after the political machinations that are afoot. On March 7, 2016, I warned the “Save Malaysia” campaign that putting Mahathir as the head of the supposedly “Reform Movement” was bare-faced opportunism.
Some have said it was like putting the fox in the hen house! The erstwhile “progressives” scoffed at my “idealism” using trite clichés including: “there are no permanent enemies in politics…”
While those in the Anwar Ibrahim/DAP camp are licking their wounds, what is transpiring now borders on extreme opportunism that former “progressives” could be part of a coalition with Umno and led by the same Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who I pointed out in 2016 had not shown a shred of remorse for his authoritarian rule from 1981 to 2003.
After the record of the last two years of PH government, such politicians will be laughed out of hand if they even try to pretend to have a reform agenda.
I warned in 2016 that Mahathir’s main objective was to get rid of Najib and to ensure that his own economic and political agenda was implemented. This he has successfully done and will pursue even more firmly now he can dispense with all the pretence of reform promises made in GE14.
Opportunism in its crudest form can be seen when politicians target an individual (namely, Najib Razak) rather than the political regime and political economic system that oppresses, divides and exploits the people. As is now revealed to all, Mahathir’s “Save Malaysia” campaign in GE14 was mainly aimed at expelling Najib while maintaining the same racist and exploitative rule.
Azmin and his crew can make all the politically correct noises about “Reformasi” but they have lost credibility through the last two years of bickering and Azmin Ali’s sex video file is now in the hands of Machiavelli, who now has him by the metaphorical balls.
Both factions in PKR have failed to show the people what they are fighting about and they have not even pretended to champion any concrete reforms except to pay lip service to “Reformasi”. That is why the people have had enough of their interminable bickering.
PH was already morphing into BN 2.0
As events have unfolded, PH has become more and more like BN 2.0 especially with the assimilation of Umno into PPBM. Even Anwar was considering accepting the former BN minister Salleh Said Keruak into his party.
The most revealing and distressing initiative of all was the so-called “Malay Dignity Congress” with its racist resolutions and which the prime minister patronised and the continuation of the New Economic Policy in the new “Shared Prosperity Vision”.
And as this short rule has ambled along, it has failed to meet manifesto promises and voter expectations in numerous ways. We have witnessed a number of the flip flops over the PH promise to abolish toxic institutions and laws, such as the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (Sosma) and other detention-without-trial laws in the country.
Nor do their promises focus on the most urgent and comprehensive reforms that civil society has long argued are of high priority. On top of all that, we have seen a disturbing trend of autocratic decision making and policies symptomatic of the old Mahathir 1.0 era.
Malaysian politics now means never having to keep election promises
While the PH manifesto prohibits the PM from also taking on the Finance portfolio, Mahathir has in the first 100 days succeeded in taking over the choicest companies, namely Khazanah, PNB and Petronas under his Prime Minister’s Office. It is the return to the old Mahathirist autocracy.
Was the Cabinet consulted on the decision to start Proton 2, privatise Khazanah, Malaysia Incorporated and the revival of the failed F1 circuit?
The appointments of Mahathir and economic affairs minister Mohd Azmin Ali to the board of Khazanah Nasional Berhad also go against the PH manifesto promise of keeping politicians out of publicly-funded investments since it leads to poor accountability.
Only by insisting that boards be comprised of professionals and on rigorous parliamentary checks and balances for bodies such as Khazanah can we ensure a high level of transparency and accountability.
The excuse of the government debt to delay local government elections, which have been suspended in our country since 1965 is not acceptable. It is a simple matter of abolishing a provision under the Local Government Act 1976 and reviving the Local Government Election Act in order to introduce local government elections.
It is equally absurd to tell Malaysian Independent Chinese Secondary School graduates that their Unified Examination Certificate (UEC) certificate can only be recognised in five years’ time. This is a serious breach of promise in the PH GE14 manifesto since more than 80% of Chinese voters voted for PH because of this promised reform.
Time to build a progressive Third Force
Reforms that do not challenge the neoliberal economic policies that were set in fast motion by Mahathir in the early Eighties are not serious reforms. Income disparities will continue to widen while the environment, indigenous and working people will continue to bear the burden of so-called development.
Najib merely made more extreme the structures created by Mahathir to entrench the powers of the Executive, emasculate the democratic institutions and provide the means for private enrichment of the elite in this country.
Racist and racial discriminatory policies were also entrenched by Mahathir in the early 1980s and further manipulated by Najib.
In hindsight, perhaps we had to go through the betrayal of the last two years of PH rule, the arrogant disregard for the promised reforms and the interminable bickering between the parties in the PH coalition. If we had not gone through this process, the people would not have experienced the opportunism and hollow reforms mouthed by these politicians all these years.
More than ten years ago, I raised the urgent need for a Third Force in Malaysian politics when it was clear that the PH “profits before people” and race/religion agenda was no different from that of BN’s. I said that we needed a Third Force if we are not to be disappointed with the return to BN rule in GE15 again. I was wrong – Mahathir didn’t need another general election, did he?
It is time for all who have hoped for real reforms in Malaysia to build a “Third Progressive Force” for a truly just, democratic and sustainable future that BN and PH have failed to provide. In the light of the worst treachery in Malaysian politics we have yet seen, professed progressive politicians should leave both coalitions to help build the progressive Third Force.
And if there are enough “good men and women” among them, they might actually succeed in scuppering Machiavelli’s plan by denying him the number he needs for a majority in the House … but that is just wishful thinking.
PUTRAJAYA: Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has returned to his office at Perdana Putra amidst the political storm raging over the last two days.
The vehicle ferrying him was seen approaching the protocol gate here at 9.29am on Tuesday (Feb 25).
This comes a day after the 94-year-old Dr Mahathir resigned as Prime Minister, when the Yang di-Pertuan Agong accepted his resignation.
However, the King has consented for Dr Mahathir to continue running the country as interim Prime Minister until a new premier has been appointed and a new Cabinet formed.
Dr Mahathir is the only one from the Pakatan Harapan administration who is left after the Yang di-Pertuan Agong cancelled the appointments of all Cabinet members.
Aside from ministers, the duties of other members the administration including the deputy prime minister, deputy ministers and political secretaries ceased, effective Feb 24.
It is learnt that ministers have packed their belongings and left with them on Monday (Feb 24) night, following the announcement that the King had accepted Dr Mahathir's resignation.
Regardless of who Malaysian prime minister will be, he
will have vision and goals for economic development, which China,
especially through its BRI, can offer. It is expected that Malaysia's
next state leader will cooperate with China. And the same can be said of
other Southeast Asian nations.
It takes all kinds to dominate in a world obsessed with economic might and political power.
AS a young boy growing up in the 1960s, I watched many Western movies and TV shows about cowboys and Red Indians, and as expected of a naïve and ignorant kid, I cheered for the “good” guys – the cowboys.
And because they were portrayed as such, the Red Indians were the “bad” guys to me. They were the savage lot, while the Caucasian men were the civilised group trying to help them. And routinely, the Red Indians would be defeated.
As I reached my teenage years and read more about the West, I realised that my supposed heroes were the ones who robbed these natives of their land, violated treaties and consigned the Red Indians to living on reservations.
The most famous Red Indian, Geronimo, the head of the Chiricahua Apaches, and his men were arrested and despatched to Florida as prisoners of war. Some of them were even discarded at crocodile-infested swamps.
Fast forward to contemporary Hollywood movies – the modern-day bad guys are always the Russians, Albanians and Arabs.
They are usually portrayed as one of brutal spies, criminals, human traffickers, drug dealers and terrorists, and in more lurid plots, all the above.
In The Equalizer, Denzel Washington, who plays a former intelligence agency man latterly driving a cab, goes after sadistic Russian gangsters and predictably, decides to kill all of them – in equally brutal ways.
In the John Wick movie series, Keanu Reeves also goes ballistic going after some Russians.
For some reason, all these ex-operatives are reclusive, divorced or widowed, still connected to their agencies, and as always, their loved ones get harmed (mostly killed) by the Russians, which invariably leads them to needing to settle the score.
Albanians hit the big time after the 2008 movie, Taken, which starred Liam Neeson, who plays Bryan Mills, another retired CIA operative whose teenage daughter and friend get kidnapped by human traffickers (Albanians) while holidaying in France.
In Taken 2, the 2012 sequel, the film follows the family to Istanbul, only to be kidnapped yet again, along with his former wife, by the father of one of the men he killed while saving his daughter two years previously.
It wasn’t just the Albanians who suffered from bad press as until today, my wife still refuses to go to Istanbul – as a result of the movie.
Fortunately for me, I have been to Albania. It’s a beautiful country with good people, and nothing like what the movies depict.
In the case of Arabs, we are accustomed to seeing them portrayed in poor light. They were womanising oil sheikhs at one time and are now mostly barbaric terrorists. Scenes with them are stereotypically sound tracked to the call of the Azan.
Mexicans, typically, are drug dealers. Likewise, Colombians, Cubans and Venezuelans. Well, in the movies, at least.
The hip hop loving African Americans in the United States, with their bling and bad attitude, are a dangerous lot. And thanks to their racist slurs, smaller Asians like us avoid antagonising them.
The latest bad guys are the Chinese. However, Hollywood isn’t quite ready to cast them as the standard stereotype because they are explicitly aware of mainlanders having plenty of clout.
Experts predict that by 2020, China will be the world’s largest cinema market, with box office revenue expected to leap from US$9.9 billion (RM41bil) in 2018 to US$15.5 billion (RM65bil) by 2023, according to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). In the first quarter of 2018, China surpassed the US in box office revenue for the first time.
It has been reported that China is presently Hollywood’s biggest foreign market, and according to projections by PwC, this year, the Chinese box office will likely rake in US$11.05 billion (RM46bil) compared to ticket sales in the US, which is expected to amount to US$2.11 billion (RM8.8bil).
So, unlike with other nationalities, Hollywood won’t mess around with the Chinese anytime soon.
Failed Hollywood movies, like The Terminator: Dark Fate, which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, were rescued by the box offices in China.
Hollywood understands the power of money well. In fact, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight wasn’t even submitted for Chinese approval because of a dubious Chinese businessman character in the 2008 Batman movie. But in the Western media, whether in the US, Europe or Australia, China is being painted negatively, in a blatantly concerted way.
Everything from Huawei, to face recognition and to Xinjiang, and now Coronavirus, China has been the bogeyman.
The elephant-in-the-room theory is that the US wants a “freed Tibet” because it’s angling to build an air base that can send jets into China within minutes.
Adding to the spin doctoring, rioters and vandals in Hong Kong are relentlessly referred to as pro-democracy protestors to burn in the minds of the audience that they are the good guys.
HK policemen are painted as brutal when, ironically, tougher tactics are applied elsewhere, including by the American police.
The US is disturbed by the South China Sea, although it’s thousands of miles away and isn’t even a claimant. It’s strange when you think it has military bases in the Philippines and the vicinity.
The disdain for China even turned comical at some point. When a group of Vietnamese were found dead in a UK truck last year, newsfeeds initially revealed they were Chinese.
As the media scrambled for answers, one reporter, who was pressed for an answer, told his live audience that they could possibly be Chinese who fled to the UK because of their protests over the Xinjiang issue.
The underlining reason is simple – the Western media no longer wants to report about China in a balanced way, resenting its growth to become an economic power in just 30 years as it sits behind the US as the second largest economy in the world.
The narrative is the same: China should be feared and doubted, while Chinese scholars in the US ought to be treated as spies. And advanced technology better than that in American products be branded spying devices.
Hostility towards China has intensified and with the outbreak of Covid-19, there is no silver lining, what with spins of resenting Chinese president Xi Jinping, concealing figures of casualties, cover up, poor food preparation and filthy eating habits. And there’s also the racist perception that Chinese people are to be avoided and cooked up stories of uprising against Xi Jinping.
Of course, there’s also the twisted religious angle – that the Chinese are being punished, either for their eating habits, or again, the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang.
The war against China is being waged in various fronts because it is deemed to have threatened the international order dominated by the US and its allies.
It doesn’t matter if the US is led by Donald Trump or a Democrat president, which could be worse, because the end game against China will simply be the same.
The Coronavirus epidemic has damaged the image of the Chinese. Their invincibility and ascent have taken a knock, so Xi Jinping must prove that China can beat this killer virus soon.
It’s a bad time for China nationals still travelling, but then again, even ethnic Chinese elsewhere are affected.
The average American believes everything they watch on CNN or Fox TV. No one should be surprised since only 45% of Americans – or 41.8 million – have been overseas. That’s an improvement, being 9% more than in 2018.
There is a far bigger picture here, one rooted in the concept of master and servant.
Not too long ago, China was a far-away mysterious country where cheap toys, low grade garments and fireworks came from. In the last couple of decades, the most populous country learnt technology well from the west, like how Japan did in the 1980s.
Today, the republic is on the cusp of achieving world domination. And that’s not a point lost on any superior or inferior nation.
Beijing: Universities from the Chinese mainland have secured seven of the top 10 positions in the Times Higher Education’s Emerging Economies University Rankings 2020 for the third straight year.
Tsinghua University maintained its position at the top in the listing of institutions from emerging economies.
Peking University was in second place for the second year running.
Zhejiang University and the University of Science and Technology of China remain in third and fourth place, while Shanghai Jiao Tong University climbed from eighth to sixth. Fudan University was listed in seventh place, while Nanjing University was ninth.
Other institutions in the top 10 include Moscow State University (fifth), National Taiwan University (eighth), and The University of Cape Town (10th).
Phil Baty, chief knowledge officer at Times Higher Education, said: “China’s success in our Emerging Economies University Rankings reflects its rapid rise on the world higher education stage. With the Double First Class Initiative driving improvements across participant universities, we expect it to continue to establish itself as a major global player in providing world-class higher education over the coming years.”
The Double First-Class Initiative refers to fostering “world-class universities” and “world-class discipline”. — China Daily/ANN
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The euphoria among Malaysians following the May 2018 polls has now turned to despair and disgust after the political machinations that a...
