There I said it. If you watched it last night then do drop a note and tell me what you thought. Will update with youtube links once they are up.
Briefly, LGE opened with a flurry of accusations, touching on 5-6 “land scandals”. As the night went on though they focused on one particular scandal, the “40 million loss” related to the awarding of land to a private quarry contractor.
Koh managed to defend himself very well imo. His points were:
- The root cause of the confusion was a slipup made in the land dept 40 years ago.
- He had not met with the government privately to discuss the issue as they were constantly “going public” with new claims of “land scams”
- The “40 million” figure was merely the court amount. The contractor is apparently willing to settle for 1.5 mil.
- He had not fired the individual involved, as he had ordered investigations not once but twice against him but there was no concrete proof that there was criminal intent involved. The new government had not fired the official either.
- He had not gone public as the case was in court and he would be committing subjudice.
LGE made glaring errors in the debate:
- During the cross, Koh pointed out that the contractor was willing to settle for 1.5 mil; presumably the new Govt knew this as well. He asked why the 40 mil figure was constantly bandied about when the case was still being contested in court. LGE didn’t answer the question but did some pandering instead.
- Koh pointed out that the new govt had earlier accused of having come into an empty office with the state documents missing, but in fact while the office of the CM itself was free of documents, they could all - “thousands and thousands of them” - be easily found in the private archives on the same floor. LGE didn’t respond directly to this.
LGE did a lot of pandering to the crowd, which I thought was a waste of time. It made him look as if he were running for reelection. The constant tirades against the old govt instead of focusing on the topic at hand made Koh’s points seem more valid.
Koh on the other hand only focused on the 40 mil issue. Although he handily rebutted LGE’s accusations on that issue and definitely came out looking good, I would have liked to hear about PGCC.
For my part, the debate did a lot to convince me that the current govt is going down the wrong path in constantly going after the old administration. I remember after Koh’s gentlemanly concession in March, they were initially planning to consult him on governing the state. Gerakan was once an opposition party, and recent events hint that some within the party are dissatisfied with BN. I’d try to build bridges, not burn them.
[update]Lim Guan Eng also made an extremely bold statement during the debate: that his government would eradicate hardcore poverty in Penang within one year. That’ll definitely come back to bite him if he doesn’t deliver.
On March 1, 2008, then Cabinet Minister Rafidah Aziz said this about PAS’ calls for a debate with Abdullah Badawi on their election manifestos:
Rafidah also said that it was unnecessary to accede to a PAS suggestion for the party to have an open debate with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak because it was irrelevant in terms of the culture of Malaysian society.
“The BN track record is there for us to scrutinise and appreciate. We do not emulate the American style of open debate,” she said.
The right way would be to debate with the people themselves, and discuss the issues with a view to resolving them immediately.
“We debate with the villagers. We debate with the urban folk. That’s our way. Debating here means holding ceramah (talk), discussions and question-and-answer sessions on local issues,” she said.
Things have changed indeed! Shabery Cheek, the current Information Minister, agreed to debate Anwar himself over the rising oil prices, and the papers reported this:
Information Minister Datuk Ahmad Shabery Cheek today expressed the hope that debates between two sides with differing views would become a culture in Malaysian politics.
“These (debates) have yet to be institutionalised in our political system and last night was the beginning,” he said in reference to the debate on the fuel price increase between him and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) advisor Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
Hari Ini Bentuk Kerajaan, Esok Turun Harga Minyak
I actually missed the hour-long live telecast (because of you Marv :< ), but I wasn’t too worried because I knew it would be on Malaysiakini and Youtube :). And sure enough it was. I’ve just watched it and here’s my blow-by-blow. Spoilers, obviously, so you might want to go watch it yourself if you haven’t already. The Youtube vid above is the first of eight parts. I also ripped the audio out and made an mp3 of the debate (right click, save as; 23MB ).
Let me state here though that I am NOT a diehard Anwar fan, in fact I’m quite the skeptic when it comes to him. It’ll take a bit before I’ll be 100% convinced he’s changed his spots. So bear this in mind (oh did I just spoil it for you??).
Opening statement
Anwar started off with the main points he would reiterate throughout, starting with his proposal to reduce oil prices by 50 sen, which would cost the govt RM 5 bil. He criticized the lopsided contracts given to IPPs, and stated that if TNB reduced its power reserve from 40% to 20%, RM2 bil would be saved. He points out that corruption and “leakage” contributed to the situation; bailouts of Perwaja amounted to RM 13 billion.
Shabery’s starts off strongly with a statement that a 5bil estimate was outdated, oil prices have risen so high that we would now need 50 bil to finance that reduction.
He then follows up with a personal attack (first of many) on Anwar, reminding him that he led protest against price increases during the Yom Kippur War in the 70s, and accusing him of being a “populist”.
Round Two
The moderator then invited comments from both speakers on this statement: Given that Petronas only owns a 40% share of the local fuel market, a govt subsidy affects foreign conglomerates like Shell and Exxon-Mobil as well.
Shabery replied first by stating subsidies needed to be pulled back so the govt could spend on the people. He attemped to rebut Anwar’s claim of wastage by pointed out that even developed countries like Norway and Finland had raised prices. (This led to applause from his supporters, but I couldn’t see the connection).
Anwar then addressed Shabery’s personal attacks by going for the high road, stating wryly that this was not a debate about “Anwar and Shabery” and he wouldn’t, for example, bring up Shabery’s previous involvement in Semangat 64. He then jumped on Shabery’s weak rebuttal, saying that Norway’s GDP was 10 times Malaysia’s (wow, preparation!), and said there was no basis for a straight comparison. He took the chance again to point out the hardships of the poor (stressing that the majority of the poor were Bumis) and that the increase showed the govt was out of touch. He said that when money was given to industries and projects, it was called “incentives” or “bailouts”, but when given to the people it was negatively called “subsidies”.
Panelist questions (first round)
A representative from each side then posed a question to the opposing.
Shabery’s rep quoted figures stating that local oil operations represented only a small portion of Petronas’ profits, and got a carried away into a speech accusing Anwar of being like a child who was using his dead father’s inheritance to distribute, so that he could be popular.
Anwar answered that Petronas was only in the top 100 oil companies, but it was in the top ten based on profits. He said that he would not touch Petronas’ profits directly, but took issue with the profits that was given by Petronas to the govt.
Anwar’s representative then posed his question. He stated the govt had claimed the RM4 bil saved from the 2006 fuel hike would be used to improve public transport, but only RM 900 mil had actually been spent.
Shabery sarcastically said that if he were in the opposition, “bagi free pun boleh“, but oil prices had doubled. He then went off on a tangent reiterating that other oil producing countries had high inflation, and brought in the govt’s ability to offset the food crisis (Huh?).
It was quite obvious though that Shabery had failed to respond to the query on public transport.
Panelist questions (second round)
This time the reps asked their own side questions.
Anwar was asked about his efforts to establish a Tabung Warisan ala Norway. He briefly touched on it but then devoted the remaning time to rebut Shabery’s statement on inflation, saying there was no logic in pointing out that low oil prices led to inflation, since it didn’t follow that high oil prices would lead to less inflation.
Shabery’s rep again went off into his own speech, but was basically “asking” why Anwar had not focused instead on decreasing tax, or inflation, but chose oil prices instead.
Shabery chose to go back to Anwar’s earlier speech, but amazingly decided to wave off Anwar’s statement about only taking from Petronas’ profits (Anwar had said Petronas was among the top 10 oil earners). He said our oil would soon run out, and made time to praise Mahathir for his handling of Petronas.
Cross-examination
The next round, Anwar reiterated that his main points were the sudden spike in fuel price and the wastage of funds, and why the govt, after having promised not to raise prices before the election, had now raised prices and manipulated the media against reporting opposition points accurately.
Shabery pointedly refused to address the question directly, repeating instead that oil prices were a global phenomenon. He tried another ad hominem attack, accusing Anwar of having brokered unreasonable deals with IPPs in the first place, and brought up the old “Anwar wanted to sell us to IMF” argument from 1997.
Shabery then asked Anwar what would be done when the country runs out of oil in 2015.
Anwar parried the attack by reminding us that the 2015 estimation is only based on Petronas not finding any more oil fields by then, and that it had once been predicted that Malaysia would run out of oil by 2005. He praised Petronas for its resourcefulness. He rebutted Shabery’s personal attack by announcing that he had, in fact, actively opposed the terms of IPP agreements along with the former TNB chairman, who resigned over the issue, and this would be backed up in the records (oo burn!). He said he would debate the 1997 crisis in any forum in the future. He then takes advantage of the recent announcement by Petronas that an additional RM 6 bil would be given to the government - saying that if a billion of that were to be given to the public it would benefit them greatly.
Conclusion
The time given for this round was short: 90 seconds each. Anwar quickly summed up his points again. Shabery continues making personal attacks, painting Anwar as a rebel, and saying that Anwar had once praised Mahathir to the heavens.
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What I think
It was sadly obvious that Shabery simply wasn’t in the same league as Anwar. DSAI was persuasive yet affable and hit the right tone at the right times, and had ready answers for nearly everything Shabery threw at him.
Shabery came across as confrontational, mocking and sarcastic. The brunt of his argument comprised personal attacks which may have entertained supporters in the elections, but were conspicuously vacuous in a debate setting. He didn’t have answers to key questions.
This is not to say that Anwar was 100% right - it is true that he had been using the fuel hike to his advantage even before it took effect, knowing that it was inevitable. But he whipped Shabery good in the debate, and while people are comfortingly saying everyone came out winners, the debate was a big step forward, etc; I don’t think there will be another debate featuring DSAI soon. It’s pretty obvious why the government is scared stiff of him.
