— The Malaysian Insider
Sep 13, 2011

SEPT 13 — Presumably, if you keep on message all the time, you must hope that fiction turns into fact. Let’s take the issue of the six per cent service tax on users of prepaid mobile services.

It was introduced by this government (included somewhere in the last budget by the Finance Minister) and yet Malaysians have had to go through this painful sandiwara by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak (who urged the telcos to reconsider passing on the tax to consumers), Information Minister Datuk Seri Rais Yatim, who was keen to paint the telcos as the bad guys, and now DPM Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

The country’s number two, like his Cabinet and Umno colleagues, is keen to show that the government is compassionate and mindful of the pain felt by the rakyat. He, like his friends, speaks as if it was some third party who suddenly imposed this tax out of thin air and the BN fairy came along, waved a wand and took away the pain of the rakyat.

Fact is that it was this administration that imposed the tax on the telcos and the telcos passed it on to the consumers as they are because their agreements (again agreed to by the BN government) allow them to do so. It is ridiculous to say that they are making too much money and make it seem that they are alien bodies because two of the major telcos are owned substantially by the government through Khazanah Nasional Berhad!

Fact also is that this idea of passing on the six per cent to consumers did not happen overnight. Much like the Astro price hike, it was discussed and brought to the attention of the authorities but obviously some people were sleeping on the job.

Or maybe the notion of a drama is better and it comes across like the government is “prihatin” or concerned when it moves speedily and prevents something from happening at the eleventh hour.

It is obvious that the government is in election mode and does not want any type of price increase to upset workers. Fair enough, that is the prerogative of the government.

But to carry on as if the telcos were the crooks and the government the knight in shining armour in this whole episode is just plain dishonest.

It facilitated the tax and now is pretending as if it just found out about it. It knew about the intention of the telcos to pass it since a daily highlighted it in May and feigned ignorance when it actually happened.

Will the government act the same when it widens the Goods and Services Tax (GST) to other sectors? After all, it did that for Astro this year and no amount of noise could get the government to review the tax. Will it only listen when it affects more people like the prepaid mobile phone service which currently has some 27 million users?

But Malaysians are used to this drama. The government is always good. The others are bad. It’s a tired, clichéd script but it works.