It was fun watching the Aussie elections. I think my favourite comment, however, came afterwards, when the business community expressed their concern that the Rudd government would keep its electoral promises. The premise being that promises are merely for getting elected, when the election starts, the real business of ruling begins.
After all, Rudd and his friends have got five years before they need to defend themselves at the polls. It's a long time between now and then, and if they break their promises, what can the electorate do? Very, very little. As Howard showed, repeatedly.
In Malaysia, we've refined this process. Rather than having the Government make promises that they won't keep, our politicians, at least publicly, seem to not bother making them. The headline of the manifesto for BN, 'Security, Peace, Prosperity' says it all to me.
Let's take security. Why is security a problem? Or is this a crime issue? Ah, and well, we've seen the BN track record there... After all, has crime or has crime not grown under this, and the last, regime? Have they shown their ability to tackle it? And yet, they want us to elect them on their track record...
Peace? Are we about to be invaded? Are there troops poised on the border? If not, why is peace a problem?Whoops, silly me. We're talking about INTERNAL conflict. One again has to wonder why this hasn't been addressed sufficiently over the last 50 years.
Prosperity. Hm. For who? We've seen, as the manifesto says, 6.3% in 2007. Doesn't mention decreasing income gaps (maybe cos they aren't decreasing), but forgetting that, obviously minor, point, how much of this has been eaten away in inflation? Whoops, I"m obviously getting old. Inflation isn't a problem! The price of ordinary goods may be going up, but inflation isn't. I can't help wondering what the 'basket of goods' used to calculate this inflation index is - the percentage of imported goods, that would help to keep the official inflation rate down, while reflecting the fact that cost of living, for those living on imported goods, isn't rising. While for those who shop in non-air-conditioned markets, prices keep going up.
There are, of course, some specific promises in this 5plus MegaByte document (along with all those memory-heavy pix that mean that on your average Streamyx connection, you're probably still waiting for it to download). Eradication of hardcore poverty, for example... which is easy. You just keep the definitions static, and wait till inflation (or hunger) eradicate poverty. There are figures given about the decrease in hard-core poverty - which look great, until you look more closely. Last time I looked closely, the decreasing percentage of hard-core poor masked a *rise* in the absolute numbers, covered by the increasing size of the population.
So we have promises. What we don't have is:
a. Information. BN can tell us all it has done, but without freedom of information and the power to look into the public archives, we have to rely on them to tell them the truth of their achievements.
b. A free media. We don't have people who can ask the hard questions for us, and then publish them, or better yet broadcast them. Until then, we can't trust figures, either numerical or biological.
c. Freedom to discuss. The ISA sees to that.
d. Freedom to learn. UUCA.
e. Freedom to vote - which follows from the others.
So, again, I wouldn't bother. I hate being the party pooper - but without the first, the last isn't going to happen. ANd given how our electoral system basically guarantees a BN victory - all voting achieves is to strengthen the status quo, to allow BN to say, 'we have a mandate'. Make your vote mean something. Bin it.
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