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Final run of an ostrich government

Vidal Yudin Weil

 | January 9, 2013 

I have not contacted any elected representatives for confirmation, so I assume the government had the consent of the state legislative assembly to allow the minimum wage policy to be enforced in Sabah.

The ostrich is a big bird that couldn’t fly, but it can surely run like there is no tomorrow – especially when it is being pursued by a big and hungry cat looking for a meal.

What it is actually famous for, however, is its over-sized confidence in burying its head in the sand even when the rest of its body is dangerously displayed in full view of the drooling predator when it can no longer outrun the hunter.

The ostrich, with a brain the size of its eye, assumes that just because it couldn’t see the marauder, then the marauder for sure must also be blind.

In the African wilderness, this is known as ostrich mentality and is commonly used in political psychology to describe a symptomatic mental sub-condition of the more destructive psychiatric contagion called Denial Syndrome affecting all delusional politicians.

Like the ostrich, our government pretended not to see the fiscal cliffs, and expect the Sabah people to believe it and walk on straight over. Does it really think the Sabah people are still living in caves with limited perspective?

The best show is coming this year

Beginning the first day of 2013, the government started to implement the minimum wage rule throughout Sabah compelling employers of all sectors to pay their employees a basic salary of RM800 per month (RM900 in Peninsular).

Any real economist worth his salt will tell you the following:

No prudent government will involve itself in business and compete with its citizens for a share of the economic cake;

No responsible government will interfere in the running and costing of the businesses of its citizens.

These are vital principles our government does not seem to know, but it will on the contrary find this out the hard way, however.

The private sectors are profit-driven and wages are determined by market forces, the government had no business interfering in it; just like the civil service, the salary scales are regulated based on different comparables e.g. service-oriented and prevalent government liquidity totally independent of the influence of the private sectors.

Woe is unto the Sabah people for their government is totally ignorant of the difference of fundamentals between the two sectors and wrongly interfering in the financial management of businesses.

Unless the government has a statutory duty to assist retrenched employees in reciprocal monthly welfare payments to the tune of RM800, it has no moral authority to compel employers to pay a monthly basic salary of even RM100 let alone RM800.

In other words, the government is not helping businesses but it forces bosses to pay their employees a minimum of RM800; to comply with the ruling, when employers right-sized their work force; who is supposed to care for those workers who are now given the boot? If it is not the government, who else?

Once this minimum wage policy is carried out, the detrimental effects are not simply reversible.

Ordinary business owners will raise their prices and pass down the additional costs to the consumers; the smart ones will reduce the quality and quantity of their merchandise or service but keep to the usual pricing; the wise ones will start to lay off staff in order to cut costs; and the shrewd ones will exercise all three options simultaneously.

In a simple example: instead of paying RM800 each to 5 employees (RM4,000), it is now more feasible to pay RM1,200 each to just 3 employees (RM3,600) to do the work of 5 employees.

Many jobless citizens will lose their houses, rented or otherwise; vital food supplies will be in distress mode, children’s education will be affected, and the emotional impact is the greatest; for these people who have lost their jobs, they only have one month’s compensation pay to fend for their families. For those with no savings, their morale will be badly affected.

This devastating economic effect on the Sabah people will sour up whatever little confidence left they still had in the BN government. The relationship between government and right-thinking citizens will be more strained now than it was before.

Make or break for BN?

In the above hypothesis, the boss will save RM400 every month, but two persons become unemployed overnight; in primary school statistics, the boss gained 10% but 40% of the work force was retrenched.

In developed countries where the indices of their stock exchanges are in the region of a few thousand points, a hike of 5% in a day will make thousands of people become multi-millionaires, while a plunge of just 2 to 3% alone will find streets littered with bodies of bankrupt speculators leaping from high rise buildings like those in Hong Kong.

In Sabah where the population is just over three million, a 10% swing to the opposition can make BN candidates lose let alone 40%.

It is anyone’s wonder whether the government was properly advised before embarking on this treacherous route. Did the researchers and consultants in IDS, SEPU, and SEDIA do their jobs?

These people are supposed to be the brains behind the state government; either they didn’t bother at all to look after the interests of the people and the state or their degrees are not even worth the papers printed thereon.

One thing for sure is going to happen: the full magnitude of this irresponsible minimum wage policy peddled by the government purportedly for the benefit of the working class will backfire and cripple not only businesses which are already besieged with high operating costs and low turnovers, but also the working classes itself when bosses start retrenching workers to cut down overheads; and this disaster will sink home within two months.

Our government has undeniably lost its integrity; instead of being the people’s ally, it is now their greatest adversary.

When redundancy starts to kick in, the final countdown will crank up and destruction will run on autopilot; it will be the final straw that will break the axle, the government’s show is effectively over.

Like a good house, it takes a lot of money, planning, time, and hard work to construct; but to destroy and demolish, an excavator can probably do it in just a few hours. Analogically: Sabah is the house and the minimum wage policy is the excavator, guess who is operating the excavator?

Will history and folklore tell the future generations of Sabah people that it only took RM800 to bring down the mighty and repulsive Barisan Nasional state government in the year 2013?

Looking at the sheer volume of condemnation hurled from cyber space, this government is undoubtedly under siege from the people; how much longer can the walls of this hyper weak administration withstand the ever-increasing frustration of the citizens? Will it crumble before its constitutional mandate expires in April this year?

Unlike the siege on the city of Troy in Homer’s Iliad where Achilles vanquished Hector the greatest Trojan prince and shouted mockingly at the grieving King Priam in front of his fortress: “Is there no one else?”, I personally suspect there really was never anyone in our government in the first place (pun intended).

As with anything trendy nowadays, will the climax of this program be concluded in a dance by the government – not Gangnam style but more likely to be Kanak Sai (Hokkien for being hit by shit)…?

This will definitely be the greatest show in Sabah of all times.

The writer is an ex-member of Sabah’s faded travel industry; loves food and speed, speaks to all sides of the political divide, and blogs at http://legalandprudent.blogspot.com giving no quarters.