The Unsettling Case of NEC Chairman

A Kadir Jasin

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WHEN I started penning my column “Other Thots” in the New Sunday Times newspaper back in 1991, I disagreed often with then Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

I often predicated my disagreement with the phrase “with due respect to the Prime Minister” to which he took a slight exception and asked if I could do away with it, which I did.

We now have a new Prime Minister and I have openly promised that I would give him six months before I do a KPI assessment on him because that’s the length of time he has given his ministers and senior civil servants to fulfill their KPI requirements before he assesses them.

But in the mean time, life goes on and things continue to happen. We cannot overlook them just because we’ve given Mohd Najib Abdul Razak six months before being assessed.

So my Kopitiam old timers and I, and the oracle sincerely hope that the Prime Minister will not take offence if I say something about the National Economic Council (NEC).

Really it’s not about “apa lagi Kadir mau?” (what else does Kadir want?). I can’t remember asking anything from the PM except to help in an ongoing project to publish the speeches of Umno Presidents from Datuk Onn Jaafar to Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, which he agreed and I thank him sincerely for it.

Of course I pleaded with him repeatedly over the years not to give up on the NEP objectives of eradicating poverty and the restructuring of society.

When he announced his cabinet, he also announced his intention to establish the National Economic Council (NEC) to be headed by someone with ministerial rank.

People waited anxiously and rightly expected an exceptional and very special person to occupy the post. After all the economy is facing a very serious crisis globally, although initially the Ministry of Finance predicted we are immune and there would be growth.

But as The Star newspaper reported on May 28, the economy contracted by 6.2% for the first three months this year compared to the same period last year. The economists had expected the contraction to be only 3.5%.

Bank Negara Governor Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz said at a media briefing that the financial crisis, which peaked last September and led to a general slowdown in economic activity, had taken longer than expected to be resolved.

She said “the deterioration was greater than expected” and that the exports outlook “remained weak”, adding that the outlook for April to June would depend largely on external factors. However, she expected the second half of the year to see a better economic performance.

Given the negative performance and the less than rosy outlook, we expected the NEC to be formed immediately to come out with suggestions and proposals to overcome the problems faced by the nation and the people.

Unfortunately, for reasons known only to the Prime Minister, it took him something like a month and a half to name just the council’s chairman.

The rest of the team has yet to be named. And he chose the Minister he dropped as the Minister of Economic Planning, Amirsham Abdul Aziz, to head the council.

No malice intended but if he was not suitable to head the EPU and was thus dropped from the Cabinet, how is he now qualified to head NEC?

Amirsham is a nice bloke and a friend but being a public figure he cannot escape scrutiny.

Politically he came out of nowhere when the former PM brought his out of the woodwork after retiring from Maybank and made him a minister.

That rightly gave rise to all sorts of rumours on why Abdullah recruited him. He was in Maybank and did a good job as a diligent conservative banker until just before he retired when Maybank belatedly ventured into Pakistan, Vietnam and Indonesia.

It is public knowledge that all these purchases were overpriced and now Maybank is beginning to suffer huge losses due to the non-performing loans of its overseas banks.

Sadly, while the bank officers may claim that all these deals were done transparently and above board, the ultimate losers are the unit holders of Permodalan Nasional Berhad’s unit trusts.

PNB is the biggest investor in Maybank. And now PNB has to live with these bad overseas investments by Maybank. How did the government and its regulatory agencies like the Finance Ministry, Bank Negara and the Securities Commission approved these purchases?

The question in people’s mind is why chose someone with this kind of track record?

Is there such a dearth of talent amongst our 24 million people that we have to keep recycling the cabinet and the civil service?

Is there nobody better out there whom PM can choose for this very critical job? Don’t we have outstanding economists or scholars for PM to choose from?

Had Amirsham left Maybank with flying colours, we would not have problems placing our faith in him. But now not only that Maybank is bleeding financially it has also lost to Public Bank as the biggest bank in the country.

Then there might be unhealthy rivalry among the economic and financial agencies that the PM is counting to assist him in reviving the economy.

For instance what role will the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) now play?

Let’s look back at 1997/98 financial crisis for some pointers. Dr Mahathir picked Tun Daim Zainuddin to head Natioanl Economic Action Council (NEAC).

As its name suggested, it was an action council. It had to take action because there was a crisis. He put Daim at EPU and made EPU the NEAC secretariat so that the two could work in tandem. There was coordination. Once the NEAC published its action plan, Daim was asked to join Cabinet to act and deliver on the action plan.

Now we have the EPU on the one hand and the NEC on another. Are we not wasting resources in trying to manage this crisis?

I sincerely hope I am wrong, terribly wrong!

People are asking these questions. The impression is the government seems not to be in a hurry to solve the crisis. People are suffering and there is no sign that ministers and top civil servants are is worried.

There is no gesture on part of Cabinet members and top civil servants to reduce their salaries and allowances to show sympathy with the people. When the rakyat are suffering, it would be nice if Ministers, Menteris Besar, Chief Ministers and deputy ministers make some sacrifices.

Back here among the padi farmers to take care of my ailing dad, I hear their cries of pain as their padi crop is destroyed by the parasitic snails and their living standard eaten away by inflation.

Footnote: I thank sincerely the many debaters who offered their prayers and best wishes for my father’s speedy recovery. But he’s an old man. He’s 85 and there’ so much modern medicine can do for him. But thank you nevertheless for your kind thoughts and prayers.