KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 3 — As far as think tanks in Malaysia go, Institut Rakyat is the new kid on the block since it only just started in March of this year.
But it has big ambitions. Right off the bat, they are setting themselves apart from other think tanks by using a centre-left ideology to promote social justice.
So what does that mean? “Most think tanks in Malaysia are libertarian. We’re more centre-left,” Institut Rakyat executive director Azrul Azwar Ahmad Tajudin told The Malay Mail Online in an exclusive interview together with his colleague, Yin Shao Loong, recently.
“We support a welfare system, but also an entrepreneur-driven market,” Yin added.
Azrul and Yin, the Institut Rakyat research director, pointed out that think tanks like the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) are libertarian as they promote free markets and very minimal government intervention.
“We’re not that dogmatic. We’re pragmatic,” said Yin.
Institut Rakyat’s main focus for now is on socio-economic issues, finance and politics. The PKR think tank, which maintains its independence by not getting funds from the opposition party, recently completed the huge task of creating Pakatan Rakyat’s (PR) Alternative Budget 2014 — a budget that proposed options to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) that they said would affect the poor more than the rich.
Interestingly, Institut Rakyat is staffed by young people. There are just three of them, who are all aged below 40: Azrul, Yin, and assistant research director Ginie Lim, plus an intern.
Azrul used to be the chief economist at Bank Islam and Yin served as a policy advisor to the Selangor government on environmental, tourism and consumer matters. Lim, on the other hand, has a Master’s degree in poverty and development.
“We’d like to get people from East Malaysia. We want to be national, not too peninsula-based,” said Yin.
When asked how Institut Rakyat can be viewed as an objective think tank despite being linked to PKR, Azrul and Yin point out that they do not receive a single sen from the party.
“Even if our recommendations don’t reflect the views of the party, we can still come up with it,” said Azrul.
“For example, Azrul is in favour of the GST, but under very particular conditions. We’re quite happy to take a more nuanced approach,” Yin added.
The inspiration behind Institut Rakyat was to help PKR in the “competition for policies” to make the multi-racial party a viable alternative to Barisan Nasional (BN) in governing the country, Azrul said.
Part of the think tank’s centre-left approach involves addressing poverty, as well as inequalities resulting from pro-Bumiputera affirmative action policies that PR says are abused by the well-connected Malay elite.
“We need to come up with a policy that addresses the needs-based system,” said Azrul.
“We’ll write more about poverty and come up with a better way of targeting poverty. We’re looking at poverty in particular states, for example Sabah,” said Yin, noting that the Borneo state has the highest incidence of poverty in Malaysia.
Azrul pointed out that Institut Rakyat had proposed increasing the poverty line income to RM1,500 for peninsula Malaysia, RM1,800 for Sabah and Labuan, and RM1,650 for Sarawak, as written in PR’s Alternative Budget 2014.
Azrul and Yin said that Institut Rakyat is also planning to write policy papers on electoral reforms, but stressed that the think tank would analyse the issue deeper and go beyond the reforms proposed by non-governmental organisations like Bersih.
“What should be the best electoral system in Malaysia — first-past-the-post? Or can we inject an element of proportional representation?” said Azrul.
Yin, on the other hand, noted that backbenchers in Malaysia played a smaller role than those in other Parliamentary democracies, and said that the roles of Parliamentary select committees and bipartisan committees also needed to be scrutinised further.
Malaysia uses the first-past-the-post voting system, where the candidate with the most votes, is elected. In proportional representation, however, the number of seats won by a party is proportionate to the number of votes received.
Critics have attributed BN’s hold on power, despite losing the popular vote in Election 2013, to gerrymandering, noting the large disparity in constituency sizes, such as Kapar that has over 144,000 voters, nine times larger than Putrajaya that has close to 16,000 voters.
“What do you do with constituencies that are quite disproportionate?” Yin questioned.
“Do you break up a constituency into three or four constituencies?” Azrul said.
It looks like Institut Rakyat aims to take a big picture view of issues, to come up with more inclusive suggestions and policies.
While it is early days yet, the think tank is already adding an informed alternative to the mix of ideas circulating in the country.
