JANUARY 16 — When MP pay is discussed, regular Malaysians go mental.
Four hundred ringgit to show up at Dewan Rakyat on top of the RM16,000 monthly salary, with RM340 daily allowance to dine in Sydney travelling business class for a study tour.
Reading that already causes folks back home in a mamak to grind their teeth rather than sip their RM2 teh ais.
They risk biting their tongues when told there’s more.
The elaborate package includes a warm clothing allowance. New South Wales gets chilly in July.
Online bashes are unavoidable.
But is it right? To hit out at MPs?
For the rakyat’s disenchantment is grounded in reality.
Before the year ended, Khazanah Research Institute (KRI) — under Khazanah Nasional chaired by the prime minister — announced that 70 per cent of Malaysian households are below middle-class income.
KRI surmised it’s better to re-categorise household income groups to B20 and M50 — the M does not mean middle-incomed.
Only 30 per cent of our households enjoy middle-class life. It’s worse if by individuals, not households.
As poorer people have larger families, it may translate to only 15 per cent of Malaysians termed middle-class. Which also explains the belated Rahmah handouts increase, it’s tough out there for most Malaysians.
Tourists are fooled by the umpteenth city condo erected, unknowing of the PPR real Malaysians hovel in.
Ordinary Malaysians sit in the KLCC park and look at the people inside the restaurants dine, while their children wade in the pool.
Our gigantic Internet penetration rate lauded by the communication ministry enables voters to learn about the opulence around them. How kind.
Which explains why my countrymen get riled up about MP pay. They compare it with their low wages.
A perfectly human thing to do. When a large number of Malaysians make do while reports claim a thriving economy, they’d be naturally crossed.
Except the drawbacks to attacking MP pay are not self-evident.
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In fact, squeezing MP pay works against the rakyat’s interest.
Primarily because MPs possess power and dispossessing them of substantial official income only moves them to extensive unofficial income. In plain language, corruption.
Separate from the fear of graft, let’s reasonably scale it.
For instance, if the pay is akin to that of a senior manager in a SME, fewer Malaysians are likely to complain.
However, the question to be asked is are MPs only mid-executives in typical ongoing concerns?
Probably not.
MPs determine who is prime minister, as the Sheraton Move episode in February 2020 demonstrated only too painfully. To be callous with MPs and call them middle managers is to be callous with the country’s future.
The country is several galaxies away from being characterised as a small medium business.
There is the other thing. It is not easy to be an MP; there are only two hundred odd of them. They need a combination of academic qualifications, life experience, adaptability, public speaking, personality, birthright, wealth or luck.
Maybe zero academics and being born to the right clan and charming. Maybe adaptable to positions or parties and lucky.
Whether overloaded with one facet over another, rarely does a person become an MP based on one facet; it’s always a combination. And for that credit is due.
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is an MP’s son but he had to transform from firebrand youth leader with only Islamic credentials to win moderates.
Former prime minister Najib Razak is a PM’s son but Razak Hussein passed away before his career started and realised his siblings never made it in politics.
Repeat prime minister Mahathir Mohamad’s older children are not in the game and only his fifth child Mukhriz rose and fell in quick succession.
Relying on birthright alone cannot ensure success.
Kelana Jaya MP Loh Gwo Burne — single term — spoke passable Malay, recorded a famous corruption related audio and his family had money. He won a seat.
Batu MP Prabakaran Parameswaran entered a crowded race in 2018 as an independent and benefitted by incumbent Tian Chua’s nomination day disqualification, forcing the party and Tian to pick one of the rest to replace him as the Pakatan flag-bearer. The twenty-two-year-old benefitted.
It takes a bit of clever, even if not intelligence, to hold things together — party support, finances, family ties or CV without a telling blemish — to end up as an MP.
Let’s not remove that achievement from them.
To tie a potent combination together also suggests a ruthless single-mindedness. They may look all timid or lost but an approach to the game — an ever changing one — is always present. Do not underestimate the MP, there is more to them usually.
Volatility involuntarily precipitates their ascension.
In strictly monetary terms, even if every MP gets RM1 million annually on average, that’s RM222 million. The country runs a RM421 billion budget currently.
RM222 million is not even half a per cent of the budget. The damage MPs can do to the country is exponentially more than RM421 billion.
For that reason alone, it is necessary to treat MPs with care for our own sakes.
What’s the point then?
Remember balance, the next time a counter-productive debate about MP pay is launched.
The higher threat is corruption, not their pay. Second, the incendiary nature of national power and the effect all MPs have on it means the eye should be on their actions, and not as much on their benefits. They are anyways not reading your comments, just other angry Malaysians are.
To begin tracking, compare their salaries with others from similar development and economic stages. Are they rewarded more than their peers in Asean?
Second, watch their actions and missteps. When they slip, punish them.
Third, to be constructive, demand for lower barriers for entry. If it is easier for more Malaysians, especially the better qualified, to rise to Dewan Rakyat, fewer of the shoddier personalities are in the house.
The old-fashioned first-past-the-post (FPTP) favours established parties or players to participate. Both proportional or single-vote transfers (preferential) embolden new players with less resources.
Longer campaign periods permit alternate voices to spread further to the grassroots before polling day. Stricter and enforced campaign financing may not be foolproof but demand a modicum of restraint and discipline from older richer players.
But if truth be told, the best thing to do is to expect and demand MPs deliver better value to the people.
Singapore is the prime example. If the country prospers, citizens are disinterested to quibble about legislators’ pay.
This has to be the pivot, not fickle consternations about the difference between minimum wage and MP wage.
Let’s admit that super-achievers earn more and their moral values are immaterial. Society says that about a CEO, why should it say differently about MPs who do more than CEOs?
That’s the real way to force better from MPs, not to groan about their pay but to scream that they deliver more.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
