Ceding power to local communities

IMAGINE that you live in a remote part of Sarawak. You live a simple life in an area which lacks many of the basic amenities of life. The road leading to your longhouse is a dirt track ridden with potholes and turns to mud whenever it rains. You rely on the river that passes by your longhouse for water, and a noisy diesel generator in the evening for electricity.

You are frustrated by the lack of basic utilities that Malaysians elsewhere take for granted.

Given finite resources, what should the government spend money on first? A tarred road? Piped water? A hydroelectric dam project? How should we spend our money, and who should be the ones to decide?

Basic economics dictates that we should first spend our money on the project that would bring the greatest utility per ringgit to those who might benefit from it.

Naturally, those closest to the ground – the longhouse inhabitants, for example – would be best placed to know which project is most needed and would truly benefit them.

Of course, some decisions by their nature must be taken at a higher level: a district council may be able to plan and build a local road, but only state or federal authorities can properly plan and build a trunk road or an interstate highway.

This, in a nutshell, is the principle of “subsidiarity” – that decisions should be taken at the lowest possible level consistent with effective decision-making.

Despite being a federation of 13 states, each with its own state government, Malaysia is an incredibly centralised country. The budget of all 13 states amounts, by some estimates, to only 7% of the federal budget.

Over 62 years of Barisan Nasional rule, many matters previously handled by local authorities, such as buses, fire services, sewerage and even garbage collection and public cleansing, have in most states moved from local to federal control.

In addition, federal infrastructure spending has been heavily concentrated in and around the federal capital in the Klang Valley, to the detriment of more remote regions such as in Kelantan or Sabah and Sarawak.

This concentration of financial resources often leads to wasteful and inefficient allocation of resources.

For instance, during the previous administration, a huge sum of federal money was allocated to local authorities to erect metal railings to protect pedestrians on walkways from snatch thieves. This ignored the fact that in many parts of the country, there are insufficient pedestrian walkways, or even no walkways to begin with.

In Penang, some of this money ended up being used, perversely, to erect metal railings around open drains instead of covering the drains with disabled-friendly walkways.

Overcentralised decision-making also means that the government tends to adopt one-size-fits-all policies that ultimately fit and please nobody.

The Teaching Of Science and Maths in English and Upholding Bahasa Malaysia and Strengthening English Language policies are such examples. The previous administration initially imposed a nationwide policy of requiring Mathematics and Science to be taught in English, without regard to the local availability of English-speaking teachers or the wishes of local parents.

The policies went too far for many rural parents who wanted their children to be taught in the vernacular language but not far enough for others, who wanted the option to have more or all of the syllabus taught in English.

Education policy is just one of the areas that Parliament could easily devolve to state governments, and even to individual schools or districts while enforcing minimum standards at the federal level.

Decisions pertaining to the colour of school shoes can surely be made by headmasters or parent-teacher associations (PTAs) rather than the federal Education Minister.

It is no secret that many ministers are struggling to get to grips with their ministries. Devolution of decision-making would allow federal ministers to focus their limited time and energy on issues that really matter at the national level. This would also encourage innovation in policy-making, with state and local authorities competing and learning from one another’s policy ideas and experiments rather than the whole country being forced to follow the same “one-sizefits-none” blueprint.

Decentralisation would also encourage local citizens to participate in local decision-making, for instance, by attending town hall and PTA meetings, or by standing for election to residents associations and local councils, thereby enhancing participation in our democracy.

As the great 19th-century French historian and political scientist Tocqueville wrote, “Local assemblies of citizens constitute the strength of free nations. Town meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people’s reach, they teach men how to use and how to enjoy it.”

Around the world, local democracy encourages independents and serving or retired professionals not tied to national political parties, such as lawyers, architects and engineers, to get involved in local government.

This would be a welcome step up from the present crop of “thirdclass” political appointees – party members who are not competent enough or senior enough to stand for parliamentary or state seats – who are currently tasked with our local governance.

Decentralising and giving local communities control over the matters that affect their daily lives is also one way to de-escalate the controversies of language, race and religion that plague our politics.

States like Kelantan and cities like Petaling Jaya, for example, are culturally and demographically more homogeneous than the nation as a whole, and are therefore far more able to make decisions on based on local consensus.

Policies that give rise to controversy in Peninsular Malaysia may be totally noncontroversial in Sabah or Sarawak.

Giving power to local communities allows citizens to have the policies they want without arousing national controversies of racial and religious identity.

Moves towards decentralisation have previously been supported by Pakatan Harapan leaders, such as the current Finance Minister, who, as Chief Minister of Penang, bridled at the tight reins of the federal government in Putrajaya and passed a local government elections enactment that was later struck down by the Federal Court.

Yet, there is little sign that the Pakatan government is committed to local democracy or the kind of regulatory and fiscal decentralisation that has allowed even unitary states such as China and Indonesia to transform their people’s lives through growth and innovation.

Old habits die hard, and giving away power is not something that politicians tend to do voluntarily.

But the Pakatan government must understand that they will fail to deliver on the people’s aspirations if they allow Malaysia to continue to be suffocated by over-centralisation.

In order to address the breadand-butter issues that affect voters’ lives, they must abandon the old “one-size-fits-none” approach, and give state and local governments the freedom to come up with local solutions to fix problems in accordance with local needs and aspirations.

Just as important, state and local governments must have access to sources of funding such as sales and income taxes that will rise with economic growth, rather than being forced to chop down forests and to reclaim islands from the sea in order to invest in badly-needed infrastructure.

It is then, and only then, that our Malaysia Baharu has any hope of living up to its full economic promise and potential.

ANDREW YONG Penang