By: Natalie Shobana Ambrose
theSun, Malaysia (pg 13 )
February 21, 2013
"WE
will help you." "More development projects if we win."
"Your tax rates will be cut". "More jobs". "We will
remove car excise duties and toll concessions".
It sure
feels like we're winning the jackpot during the run-up to the elections. All
promises worthy of great applause during ceramah time but we need to be asking
the question, how will this happen and what does it mean to me?
As the
Republicans in America undergo a party reinvention re-evaluating their
strategies, this is a lesson they are learning about how they could have
campaigned better. Telling people that government spending will be cut needs to
be followed with a detail outline of how it will be done and what that means to
the people. Policies need to be spelled out, not just promised during
campaigns.
Something we
can learn from too as informed voters as the elections draw closer. So how do
these promises relate to us and how do public policies affect us. Is the money
used for subsidies the money of a political party or is it the accumulation of
tax payers' money just dispersed by a political party. Is development our right
or are we at the mercy of political parties?
We need to
be aware of how the sentence finishes, and those making the promises need to
provide us with tangible details.
Not only is
domestic policy important, we need to start questioning our foreign policy; are
we being represented as a mature democracy and whether our foreign policy
matches domestic policies.
Over the
weekend there was a lot of commotion when Australian Senator Nick Xenophon was
deported. It's a prickly subject but worth discussing. As a relatively small
yet strategically placed country, we need to protect our sovereignty yet strike
a balance of being a developed nation. So deporting an Australian senator under
the pretext of being a national threat when we have already been found guilty
of misquoting him last year does not sit well especially when there is a more
prominent security threat in Lahad Datu.
Sadly, when
our ministers say these men claiming to be the Royal Army of the Sultanate of
Sulu occupying a village and have weapons are not considered militia or
terrorists, one has to wonder what our definition of a security threat is.
We have
scarlet-lettered many local activists as security threats yet we are
negotiating with these 100-odd armed men even after their sultan has clearly
said they are staying put and that "there will be no turning back for
us".
Last month,
we had on our own also created quite a stir in Palestine which did not sit too
well with certain fractions. Yet we are recognised for playing an important
role as negotiator in the peace accord which is responsible for the setting up
of Bangsamoro replacing the present autonomous region.
Clearly
there is quite a vast disconnect in how we handle issues. It also seems as if
we are "main tembak" with our
take on foreign policies. At the end of last year, Indonesia's Foreign Minister
Marty Natalegawa expounded on the country's 2013 foreign policy priorities.
Australia also laid out its Asia Century White Paper late last year. So what is
Malaysia's foreign policy outlook for this year in preparation for the Asean
chair in 2015?
These are
also the sentences our political parties should be finishing and these are
policies we as a country should be more interested in. Unfortunately we are not
yet as Asean focused compared to other founding members like Thailand and
Indonesia. Their newspapers report diligently on what Asean is doing and what
the Secretariat is undertaking. We need to start now in highlighting and
aligning our focus to also look at Asean instead of being so inward looking as
we have been since the 2008 elections.
Campaigning
is not just about characters and personalities, policy sentences also need to
be developed. What we need to do is to go through a check list of every claim
and promise made in the build-up to the previous elections, as a predictor of
what we can expect post GE13.
Natalie hopes that as the political flags line our streets,
candidates and political parties work doubly hard to finish their sentences.
Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
