Mirror mirror on the wall, where will Malaysia be heading to?

2 days ago, I posted the  global competitiveness rankings done by World Economic Forum. Malaysia was ranked ’24’, down from ’21’ a year ago, and ’17’ 2 years back.

Today I am going to post the rankings of the ‘Ease of doing busniess’ 2010. This is compiled by World bank yearly to reflect the ease of doing business including starting business in a country. The higher the ranking, the more pro-business is the regulatory process in the country…

You dont have to be economic genius to know that Malaysia’s ranking in this is slipping downwards too. Last year, we were ranked NO 21, and this year 23.

 I am posting the top 30 rankings here. For the full list, you can go here and for the comparison between 2009 and 2010, you can view here.

 

Economy	Ease of Doing Business Rank	Starting a Business
Singapore	1	4
New Zealand	2	1
Hong Kong, China	3	18
United States	4	8
United Kingdom	5	16
Denmark	6	28
Ireland	7	9
Canada	8	2
Australia	9	3
Norway	10	35
Georgia	11	5
Thailand	12	55
Saudi Arabia	13	13
Iceland	14	33
Japan	15	91
Finland	16	30
Mauritius	17	10
Sweden	18	43
Korea, Rep.	19	53
Bahrain	20	63
Switzerland	21	71
Belgium	22	31
Malaysia	23	88
Estonia	24	37
Germany	25	84
Lithuania	26	99
Latvia	27	51
Austria	28	122
Israel	29	34

 

Remember a fewyears ago, I wrote an article will Malaysia be marginalised, in which I quoted the FDI rakings of Malaysia:

(data from UNCTAD)

FDI flow to Malaysia slipped from NO 4 in 1990 to NO 62 in 2005.

Apart from economic rankings, look at football. The FiFa latest rankings (2nd September) showed that Malaysia is now ranked 152…view here. We are in page 4 out of 5 pages of rankings, and very soon, we may be in page 5.

What pathetic performance is that, you may ask… Indeed it is pathetic.. It is almost hopeless..

Our economy was 4 times that of SOuth Korea in the 60s, and was almost on par in the early 80s, but now SOuth Korea’s economy is now 4 times ours.

While MU medical school was considered par with University of Singapore when I was a medical student in the latter in the 70s, MU was no longer listed in the top 100 while University of Singapore (now known as National Unisversity of SIngapore is ranked NO. 30. View here

The trend is clear that in EVERY ASPECT, we are losing our standings, and the decline starts in the eighties, when we started shouting “Malaysia Boleh”. 

Those of us who went through life in the 60s and 70s when Malaysia was really ‘Boleh”, would recall nostaligically that Malaysia regularly beat South Korea at Merdeka Tournament in Soccer.. Malaysian students were often the top students in overseas prestige universities and colleges. Look what we have to day, even scholarship holders and top SPM 16As students were repeating.(view here)

While politicians in the past travel by buses and trains to KL to attend the annual meetings of their parties, often putting up 3  to a room in a budget hotel, nowadays, they travel by limousines or planes (first class) to come here, and stay in 5 star hotels…

It can be seen that there is in fact an inverse proportional relations between politicians’ bolehness and the country’s:  while politicians become “boleh’ and ‘rich’ beyond imaginations, the country has beocme more and more ‘ tak boleh”, slipping down in everything.

Corruption is of course the number one culprit. When politicians become corrupted, they tend to use thier ill gained money to cover the mouths of and gain support from  thier supporters , cronies and subordinates, and this in turn lead to massive abuse of power, which subsequently lead to declining standard of governance, and compromising the judicairy.

COrruption also leads to an end to meritocracy. When there is corruption, the best company would not win a contract; the winner would be the one that is willing to use money to cover their incompetency..

Loss of meritocracy in turn leads to loss of excellence, and slowly but surely, the decline is seen in all fields, as reflected in the various rankings above.

We can try to arrest all these declines by tackling corruption, and nothing is better to show our resolve in this than going to the very bottom of the PKFZ issue.

I would therefore call upon the government to set up a Royal Commission of Inquiry to investigate thoroughly into the PKFZ fiasco, rather than just setting up  a special task force. A RCI would show the people that the govenrment is serious in tackling corrupt practices, and would be able to go to the very bottom of the ills that is making our country  sick and uncompetitive.