demokrasi terpimpin

Soe Hok Gie, karakter dari filem Gie, lakonan Nicholas Saputra ada mengutarakan konsep demokrasi terpimpin, di mana filem itu menyerlahkan Gie, seorang demonstran, sebagai lancang mengkritik ideologi politik ini yang pertama kalinya diperkenalkan oleh bapak Presiden Sukarno. Menurutnya demokrasi terpimpin adalah sebagai topeng untuk menindas golongan bawahan, iaitu berdasarkan elemen autocracy di dalam konsep tersebut. Pada amatannya, sistem ini telah menggagalkan masyarakat, di mana rakyat hidup semakin melarat dengan kenaikan harga barang dan juga bahan api. Perlu diingat zaman Soe Hok Gie ini merupakan zaman parti komunis berleluasa di Indonesia.

He was famously quoted to say this about his teacher who failed him,  “Guru model begituan, yang tidak tahan dikritik boleh masuk keranjang sampah. Guru bukan dewa dan selalu benar. Dan murid bukan kerbau”.

I can resonate this statement with a number of situations. Especially where teachers who think they are right all the time and leave no room for constructive arguments/discussions. I can’t recall how many times I was shunned by the teachers for voicing out, disagreeing and at times even just by asking questions. But more on this in a separate post.

Berbalik kepada konsep demokrasi terpimpin. Coming across this concept has brought my memories back to this one time in Bali in September 2014 where I had the chance to befriend a local Balinese surfer. I asked him about the local projects being developed in Jakarta, including the MRT line. Told him that it’s good that Indonesians will soon be able to commute using rapid trains. His short reply was, korupsi semua itu.

Not that his opinion is profoundly mattered, knowing him, doubt that he reads or understands economic needs and nature of a country. But still, its interesting that he thinks of every development projects in Jakarta is corrupted.

Which brings to my next point, nationalism. Where art thou?

Mahasiswa yang terdahulu, baik dari negara Indonesia mahupun Malaysia, berjuang atas semangat nasionalisme, iaitu sayangkan negara. Masyarakat ketika itu sering berfikiran kritis dan radikal. Tindak tanduk perjuangan sering berlandaskan semangat cintakan negara, yang well at that time Indonesia and Malaysia were infested with communism.

Bagi aku kita perlu punya rasa takut, yakni takut akan hilangnya nilai perjuangan untuk mengangkat masyarakat dan negara kepada keadaan yang lebih baik. Apa yang aku elakkan ialah manusia sekeliling yang berfikiran jumud, for them are lazy dan selalu mengikut sahaja.

Masalahnya sekarang rakyat semakin kritis, sering mempersoalkan dan mengutuk tindak tanduk kerajaan / pemimpin. Namun atas dasar apa? Patriotisme atau sebaliknya? Jika dilihat apa sahaja tindakan kerajaan akan dikritik sepenuhnya oleh rakyat yang pada pengamatan aku tidak faham / malas untuk memahami dasar-dasar, terutamanya dasar ekonomi negara.

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Early 2016 Market Update

The time has finally come for certain countries to adopt negative interest rate policy, moving further from zero interest rate policy. Japan has on 29 Jan announced a surprise deposit rate cut to negative, resulting in a benchmark rate of -0.1%. Initially this policy serves as an effort to weaken the yen in order to stimulate an investment shift to other asset classes. The JGB yields have fallen, which was expected as a result from the cut. However instead of weakening the yen, the currency rallied against USD, citing an impact from global slowdown and weak growth in China. BoJ still persistence in further cutting the interest rates as long as it is necessary to achieve an inflation target of 2%.

For central banks in the Eu and Japan, after years of ultra low and even negative rates as of now, its still unclear whether further easing is actually helpful to the economy.

China on the other hand, has eliminated quotas for foreign institutional investors in a bid to encourage local currency bond buying. This is considered as part of major deregulation process by the chinese government. At about USD 6 trillion, China bond market is the third largest in the world, but foreign investors only hold about 2% of the market. Opening of the bond market is also aligned with the PBoC’s effort to encourage Chinese companies to finance themselves in the local corporate bond market, where in turns to be less relying on China shadow banking system.

Besides that, PBoC has cut its reserve requirement by 50bps as to support growth. Malaysia’s central bank has also cut the statutory reserve requirement of 50bps to 3.5%, in an effort to stimulate liquidity in the market.

Rating downgrades for several countries, particularly Brazil, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi and Kazakhstan. Major reason cited by the rating agencies, among others, is the concern over the impact of extended low oil prices on the countries’ finances. Other than that, several commodity-related issuances also faced rating downgrades, particularly due to reason of high gearing level and also deteriorating cash flow debt protection level by the issuers.

From this, we predict for a sub trend global growth as our base case, low global GDP and inflation level, further slowdown in China and weak commodity prices. We havent seen the bottom of crude oil price yet. With the Iranian sanction being lifted-off, oil could depreciate further as supply increases.