Sometimes Malaysiakini readers get offended when I agree with BN ministers or BN individuals with their arguments or logic systems. For them, I appear to be supportive of the government against the opposition, at least in their small mind’s heart. Such readers are actually quite immature.

To me, in any developed community, one of the critical factors of emotional maturity is the fact that two differing proponents of issues can disagree on important considerations, without having to “hate each other”. I once even had to highlight this need to separate issues from personalities right in front of a minister at an official event.

I can therefore only imagine or guess what that would be like, if at this stage of their lives, for both Marina and Dr Mahathir Mohamad to live in the same house and have to carry on a healthy conversation. But, I bet that they actually do. Such a culture can be nurtured within families.

Much of my father’s and my views are equally at variance, given his 93 years of age, and my 60 plus years. He is one complete generation older. Therefore, we do not see eye-to-eye any more on most ideas and ideals, especially in dealing with the “how” of issues and concerns facing this nation.

Please also keep in mind the fact that we need to also bring into the calculus, especially those who are yet another generation younger; our kids, who are called the “iY Generation!” Unlike the Y Generation, they are totally and completely influenced, driven, motivated and informed by the information age and related technologies. Truth of matters is therefore today a multi-faceted reality.

How then can we carry on a 3-G (or three generational) conversation which helps us define and refine our knowledge and understanding of issues and concerns which face the challenge of good governance in Malaysia? We have to learn to agree, and then agree to disagree agreeably.

Hitting the nail on its head

Therefore, I believe that former deputy minister M Kayveas ( down ) has hit the nail on its head when he expounded on the topic of the political imperatives related to good local governance. He has asked the BN and Pakatan governments to “transform local governments” to really begin to benefit their citizens. About 80 percent of ordinary and tax-paying Malaysians today live within local government jurisdictions.  

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His articulation about the demands of good local governance is probably one of the most important outstanding policy agendas. To me, this has been neglected by the current overemphasis on the National Key Result Areas only to their eight priority areas. Local governance needs to become the priority of the joint jurisdiction of both governments.

Way back in 1983, a team at Intan started a productivity measurement programme with one focus explicitly on local governance issues and concerns. They used the Kuantan Local Council as one of their case-studies for the proposed pilot programme of productivity measurement. In fact, the Kuantan Local Authority even emerged and was highlighted as an excellent case-story about how to bring about transformational change at the local government level.

The singular man behind the then-successful agenda was Sharif Shamsuddin, then local council vice-president when Najib Abdul Razak was president, and the then-menteri besar of the state of Pahang.

Why is local governance so important then? Actually it is this arena of life that inflicts both good or bad feelings daily in each of us as modern day residents of any municipality. For example, every morning I try to get in about 40 minutes of brisk walking. I try and do this early, about 6am. I can really only succeed if, apart from my laziness to get up, there is a comfortable and decent walk-able park near enough to my only home and house.

I do not belong to a fitness club and neither do I plan to get into some closed-up air-conditioned room to do static exercises with machines. I deal enough with other machines all day such that I prefer to enjoy the green, clean environment. It is also reported to be good for my eyes to see green in the morning and breathe good clean morning air.

Herein lays the first local government challenge. There are not enough parks and green arenas for tax-paying citizens of any local authority! The city of PJ and the older parts of the city may be an exception.

The priority generally now in local government planning appears to be “bigger and more crowded places and spaces” so that some greedy businessmen makes excessive profits from overdevelopment and over-priced complexes that do not add value to our lived environment. In fact, they create more parking and traffic nightmares.

Servicing the needs of residents

When local authorities realise that it is residents who own and pay the annual taxes to the local government which pays the salaries, it is time that local authorities service their needs and not just that of business interests and land developers.

I am personally shocked that there has not been a fundamental and radical review of “development planning within Selangor (with the exception of slopes development),” especially related to more physical development versus the creation and development of the green environment.

So, frankly I do not care whether it is Pakatan or BN; I do not see a fundamental difference in their mindset or worldviews about these twin notions of “progress and development”.

Progress today to both groups means the ambitious development of commercial, physical complexes, but which are not inviting or even unhealthy for ordinary and simple lifestyles. Premised upon this ideal, Selangor was once declared a “developed state” by the former government! But, why is such physical development and progress promoted when it means diminished quality of lived life for tax-paying residents of a municipality?

Why is it that in the heart of PJ; we need to turn them into a physical, commercial, and concrete complex, as if there are no alternatives or different ways of thinking about these spaces and places?

After all, PKNS or the Selangor State Economic Development Corporation was created by Abdul Razak Hussein to help the citizens of Selangor progress with mainstream development, so that they are not left out of such development. Therefore, one of the popular agendas was to facilitate and support the development of a middle class house-owning democracy, especially for the Malay sections of the population.

There now appears to be an obvious goal displacement today because this same PKNS appears to have made their agenda one of making money for the state. That was not the original intent. In the process also, the “owner-drivers of PKNS” believe that one of their purposes was to help “distribute state and public interest wealth by giving contracts, or tracts of state land, or housing projects, or business opportunities to bumiputeras”.

Also wrong! In fact, some of my colleagues at the then-Implementation Coordination Development Administrative Unit (ICDAU) of the PM’s Department who were originators of the SEDCs can quite easily clarify this.  

The goal of PKNS was to help mainstream bumiputeras but always deploying the business and market models to achieve the same. One cannot therefore give underpriced land or over-priced contracts and hope they learn to undertake business. They, like every businessman, must learn to do business the real business way; without any cronyism or any real preferential treatment. The NEP was only meant to give them a head start, not otherwise.

Therefore, for example, giving a 10 or 20 percent discount for purchasing homes in new localities was part and parcel of the agenda for mixed and multi-ethnic development for purely commercial (and usually by Chinese developers) projects.  

A welfare state with a dependency syndrome

But when PKNS develops a multi-million ringgit housing project, and sells bungalows to bumiputeras for a 10 or 20 percent discount; this is an absolute and unconditional abuse of the original agenda. That is tantamount to evolving and developing a welfare state with a dependency syndrome amongst specified citizenry.

Allow me to raise one issue of importance for local government development.  When the local development plans were originally approved, for each plan there was a requisite development of green lungs and spaces of about 10 percent.

Have these green spaces been gazetted and maintained as such, for posterity? If not, how then can we compensate the loss of total green spaces and places?

More importantly, with the severe increase of density of high-rises, and therefore density of residents in a locality, is the 10 percent figure still relevant, or should there be a greater figure for all new developments, given the understandable attrition of green spaces and places with new needs like MRTs, LRTs and new highways?

Therefore, I fully concur and support Kayveas call for a full review of “performance of local governance” from within the consideration of “full federal accountability”. This will ensure that polices that were crafted at a point in time are not now abused to make the translators rich through default of lack of goal and role clarity.

PKNS needs to revisit the original intentions and agenda of the New Economic Policy (NEP). The NEP was never intended to make bumiputeras rich; it was only intended to give them a kick-start into the real world of competition and business driven by market factors. Is that so difficult to understand?