I have just returned from a Roundtable on Foreign Relations in Federal Countries: The Case of Malaysia at the USM, Penang today.
The roundtable is sponsored by the Forum of Federations, Ottawa Canada and the Centre of International Studies, School of Social Sciences, USM.
The main theme is to explore the role of the constituent or state governments in international affairs constitutionally and politically.
I observed that under our Federalism, due to constitutional provisions and political control, State government has only minimum role not only in foreign affairs but also economic planning and other affairs of the State. While our Constitution provides for Federal legislations and regulatory mechanism, it is felt that the Federal government is found to be less sensitive to State problems.
A participant remarked that with so little power, we might as well do away with the State Government in our Federal system. More and more powers of the State Government have been taken away by Federal government. Opposition party will find it so untenable to convince the people that they are able to rule the State without the support of the Federal government.
State governments today are left with very few rights, in land matters and religious affairs. Even then, there are Federal legislations which grant substantial power to the Federal government, for example The Land Acquisition Act and the standardization of Islamic laws.
This is an important area in our political system and much more attention need to be given to ensure the people rights in State matters are not further eroded.
Another observation worthy of our concern is that Penang failed to emerge as the regional hub of global ICT industry because the State has so little power to do so. Almost everything comes under the purview of the Federal ministries.
Dear YB,
I do not know who is that participant and I speak from experience here.
I once worked for a foreign company that set up a factory in N Sembilan. MITI has approved our application for Pioneer Status and Foreign Investment Committee has approved the foreign money coming in. The fire department has ok our factory builidng as well.
However, the Majlis Daerah did not issue a lesen kilang or whatever the name was. I went to see the Ketua but was told to wait while lower rank officers came and told me that I did not have a licence to run the factory.
Doing away some layer of bureacracy is good. It is also better not to have inconsistencies on finer points between states.
I think the more important issue regarding developing ICT or whatever other industry is:
1) other countries are cheaper than us - Vietnam and China
2) China has a bigger market
3) government offcials here delaying things and infuriating people that have choices - remember that Indian businessman who revealed that he turned down to invest in Malaysia
We have the following advantages that can be exploited to maintain our competitive edge but we are gradually losing them…
1) stable political and social conditions-sorry, recent events regarding political and religious issues get me worried about future trend
2) good command of English…but we have deteriorated so badly over the last 2 decades
3) brain drain of the best local workers - now that’s a can of worms - do we have a practice to attract them back as well as nurture and retain our best brains? I don’t think so.
4) good infrastructure - excessive construction cost of highway (the Gerbang Perdana thing), raising electricity tariffs seems to suggest the cost of such infrastructure is getting higher….
Comment by lee wee tak — Tuesday, 20-06-2006 @ 13: 59.24