SEPT 8 — In his National Day Rally speech, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong hinted that the elected president system in Singapore might be revised because ethnic minority candidates need to have a chance at the position.
I do not wish to go into the internal politics behind this statement, nor do I want to assume Singaporeans will automatically reject a minority candidate.
But this idea that competition should be regulated, or even eliminated (through some form of affirmative action), even at the highest political position in a country (nominally, at least) deserves deeper thinking for us Malaysians with our long history and penchant for affirmative action.
Discussing competition and affirmative action side-by-side is important because affirmative action essentially implies the regulation, reduction, or removal of competition for certain members or groups in society.
This is often done under reasons and logics that presumes inherent disadvantages or weaknesses, whether structural or historical (hopefully, not genetic as some eugenics supporters like to claim), of those protected by affirmative action.
While the matter seems straightforward enough, in reality, many complications arise when the state attempts to regulate competition.
The extreme example would be the tragic collapse of Communist states that showed us a totalitarian approach in managing competition is a costly and fragile endeavour.
Thriving China today has its “Communist” stripes questioned because it has embraced competition (at least to a certain degree) intra- and internationally and is widely accepted as being quite capable of doing so.
However, in many cases, affirmative action is twisted to become a tool of competition where people instrumentalise it to exclude or eliminate their competitors.
One recent example is the case where the Sarawak government is accused by the Sarawak division of the Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC) of raising the issue of nativism (also a form of affirmative action) only to protect “senior and connected Sarawakians and their firms”, while longstanding issues concerning local low-wage workers, such as the influx of immigrants that put them out of employment, remains neglected.
While affirmative action is implemented under the New Economic Policy (NEP) with the noble intention to eventually increase the competitiveness of certain groups, the result is that there is a prevailing mindset that saw people harking back to identity politics so that they can appeal for affirmative action to shirk fair competition with others.
Why protect the strong?
When those not belonging to the class or grouping that deserves assistance still leverage on affirmative action for competitive advantage; we need to ask ourselves, where do we allow competition as a society?
Should we eliminate or reduce competition for positions where candidates of competition are highly qualified to compete in the first place?
And more importantly, should we assume a skewed playing field at the top will have no larger consequences, especially towards the vulnerable?
For example, a position of leadership, be it bureaucratic or corporate, is a point of high impact, especially in a trickling down sense.
Poor management of a company would have cost thousands of people their badly needed rice-bowls, as seen in the case of Malaysia Airlines where a restructuring is now inevitable after the company recorded losses in the billions throughout the years.
But we all know in the case of Malaysia, not only are leadership positions in the government or government linked companies (GLCs) selected based on racial considerations, many were political appointees that need not prove his/her worth through meritocratic competition.
And the 1997 Financial Crisis has shown that handpicked winners to the top usually do not fare well.
Similarly, when a millionaire or billionaire is given housing discount, the discount obtained, which will be huge considering the houses they buy are expensive, will cause housing price inflation as developers try to dissipate the extra costs incurred to all classes of house buyers.
In both cases, we see that affirmative action at the top disproportionately disadvantages the lower classes.
And it makes no sense why a candidate for a chief executive officer (CEO)’s position, who most likely comes from a clique of a six-figure salary earners and probably can endure months of joblessness, is protected but not the layperson who can’t even survive one month if he loses his job due to the CEO’s mishaps.
However, governments that fund the success of a crony capitalist class often also have to pay for their failures.
Bailouts have to be given because the ramifications of not doing so would be transfered to the poor.
But if bailouts require welfare cuts on the poor to sustain, the force of public anger, as seen in the rise of ultra-right wing politics in America and Europe, will not be an easy force to reckon with.
Anyhow, such warped outcomes defeat the purpose of having affirmative action in the first place since it is about the protection of the weak, not the strong.
Affirmative action in plural societies
Granted, having a plural society like ours with entrenched racialised socio-economic gaps — be it real or imagined — makes changing this scenario where the benefits of affirmative action are allocated to a "competitive" class, a particularly challenging task.
As members of society want tangible results of socio-economic advancement, someone “of their own” helming top positions is the best report card that can be shown by governments, regardless of the opportunity costs involved. Obstacles faced by Khazanah in appointing a non-Malaysian CEO for MAS last year speaks to the issue clearly.
To be sure, some mechanisms to moderate competition are good. A kid from a marginalised community who needs to compete with another from a privileged, well-connected background for university admission should be given some competitive advantage (within certain parameters, of course) because comparatively, the obstacle towards admission is higher for him/her, not to mention the stakes of failing to gain admission even higher.
Also, affirmative action is needed especially when it concerns resources of limited or non-renewable nature because a “free-for-all” competitive environment would only perpetuate accumulation by the well-endowed.
We have already seen this in the case of land, where premium property development pushes communities that cannot afford them to the urban margins; further entrenching the socio-economic marginalisation suffered by these less-advantaged communities. In this case, affirmative action in spatial planning should be something worth our thoughts.
Yet sadly, little of our discourse about affirmative action today pays attention to protecting the actual weaker members of society. It is more about racialism, chauvinism, and nativist pride.
Worse, there is a naiveté that fails to realise that affirmative action at the wrong places only benefits the wrong people at a massive cost to the most deserving ones.
A rethinking of affirmative action is not a call for it to be completely done away with.
But to rethink how priorities of aid and competition can be rearranged so that society benefits from a solid safety net, as well as the creative destruction created by competitive dynamics that is the key to many technological and intellectual advancements.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.
