{"id":1510,"date":"2021-02-15T22:45:32","date_gmt":"2021-02-15T14:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/?p=1510"},"modified":"2021-02-15T22:50:45","modified_gmt":"2021-02-15T14:50:45","slug":"sabotage-cant-silence-calls-for-decentralisation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/2021\/02\/15\/sabotage-cant-silence-calls-for-decentralisation\/","title":{"rendered":"Sabotage can’t silence calls for Decentralisation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Zila Fawzi<\/strong> of WISDOM Foundation<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

WISDOM Foundation condemns in the strongest terms the unprecedented intrusion and\u00a0harassment by 10 cybertroopers who typed in Russian script and shouted in some foreign\u00a0languages hacking into our zoom webinar on fiscal decentralisation at the night of 9\u00a0February.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The attack that occurred during minute-50 happened just after Sri Murniati of Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) finished her presentation in the webinar titled\u00a0\u201cIncome Tax Revenue for States Too: Can Malaysia learn from Indonesia\u201d (accessible\u00a0via this link: https:\/\/web.facebook.com\/myWISDOMF\/videos\/932334834240146\/<\/a>) based\u00a0on her paper jointly sponsored by WISDOM and IDEAS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Indonesia, the central government only takes 80% of income tax revenues, while states\u00a0and regencies (equivalent to Divisions or Municipalities\/Districts in Malaysia get\u00a0respectively 8% and 12%. Regardless of their contribution, 80% of fish royalty are shared\u00a0evenly across all regencies. On top of that, the provinces and regencies are also given\u00a0general and special grants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sri Murniati stresses that decentralisation in Indonesia since the downfall of Suharto has reduced separatist sentiments in provinces like Aceh. Meanwhile, provinces like Papua have reaped the benefit of decentralisation in quality of educaiton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, some quarters deliberately want to tamper Malaysians’ eagerness and curiosity\u00a0to learn about fiscal decentralisation from other countries such as Indonesia, in the hope\u00a0that they can silence calls to move decentralisation in Malaysia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dark force however failed to prevent a conversation moderated by YB Wilfred Madius\u00a0Tangau, our Executive Chairman, featuring YAB Chow Kon Yeow, the Chief Minister of\u00a0Penang Chief Minister, YB Dato\u2019 Teng Chang Khim, EXCO of Selangor State Government\u00a0for Investment, Industry & Commerce and SME, and Tricia Yeoh, CEO of IDEAS. YB Dato\u2019\u00a0Teng represented YAB Dato\u2019 Seri Amirudin who could not join WISDOM\u2019s fourth weekly\u00a0webinar as planned due to some unforeseen circumstance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If anything, the cybertroopers\u2019 attack has only underlined the importance and urgency to\u00a0start a dialogue of reform with leaders of Malayan states on decentralisation beyond\u00a0Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMalaysia needs to be substantially decentralised to be a real federation and that can only\u00a0be done with Sabah, Sarawak and Malayan states working together,\u201d as aptly put by YB\u00a0Madius Tangau in his opening remark.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He called for an Inter-Governmental Committee IGC 2.0 with representatives of the\u00a0Federal Government, Sabah, Sarawak and all the 11 Malayan states to renegotiate Malaysia\u2019s federal arrangement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

YB Madius Tangau reminds Malaysians \u201cnot to mistake and mystify MA63 as perfect.\u00a0MA63 was based on the 1962 report of the Inter-Governmental Committee (IGC),\u00a0consisting of representatives of Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak and the UK.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IGC 2.0 is now needed to produce a MA63 2.0 that would give all states more\u00a0responsibilities, power and resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked after the webinar what he meant by IGC 2.0, Madius explained that, he is\u00a0urging the Prime Minister to initiate the formation of High Level Council to revisit the IGC\u00a0which should involve representatives from the various state government focusing on\u00a0decentralization agenda in the way that the Indonesian government did after the fall of\u00a0Suharto.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is an opportune time to do this since we now have a Minister in the Prime Minister\u00a0Department looking into state rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

YAB Chow warned, limited and restrictive capacity of state governments to raise funds\u00a0through borrowing and issuance of bond will only discourage and prevent long-term\u00a0development plans of states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He cited the case of Penang being denied federal grants and federal guarantee to get\u00a0loans from financial institutions to support the implementation of Penang Transport Master\u00a0Plan (PTMP).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Responding to the presentation by Sri Murniati, YB Teng said, as a federation and better\u00a0developed, Malaysia should have better formulas of revenue-sharing than Indonesia.\u00a0Unfortunately, most of the taxes are taken by Federal, regardless of the State’s\u00a0contribution to the national coffer. For example Selangor accounts for 24% of GDP but\u00a0only has a 2% share of all government expenditure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He further added, \u201cFederalism work smoothly but we have to look at the implementation\u00a0level and acknowledge that the State might know better, especially with respect to public\u00a0health given the COVID-19 crisis,\u201d taking into account the current situation happening in\u00a0Selangor state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tricia Yeoh suggested that a percentage of corporate income tax revenue from selective\u00a0sectors derived from the originating states to be collected by these states may be\u00a0considered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor less-developed and non-industrial states, reliance on natural resources for income is\u00a0greater compared to states like Selangor, Penang and Johor,\u201d she went to warn that such\u00a0dependence on natural resources revenue may lead to environmentally-destructive\u00a0activities like logging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The panelists agreed that Malaysia\u2019s federal system must be examined and renegotiated\u00a0comprehensively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At WISDOM Foundation, we see East-West collaboration as key to success in advancingdecentralisation. We hope Malayan states would speak up more loudly alongside Sabah\u00a0and Sarawak for decentralisation under an upgraded version of MA63.<\/p>\n\n\n\nZila Fawzi
Chief Operation Officer
WISDOM Foundation\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Zila Fawzi of WISDOM Foundation WISDOM Foundation condemns in the strongest terms the unprecedented intrusion and\u00a0harassment by 10 cybertroopers who typed in Russian script and shouted in some foreign\u00a0languages hacking into our zoom webinar on fiscal decentralisation at the night of 9\u00a0February.\u00a0 The attack that occurred during minute-50 happened just after Sri Murniati of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":1512,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[209],"class_list":{"0":"post-1510","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sudut-pendapat","8":"tag-wisdom-foundation"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1510"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1516,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions\/1516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}