TLDR: This Government is prioritising culture-war issues, when class-war issues are more prevalent than ever before.
A couple of days ago, many outlets like FMT and Bernama broke the news that the Deputy Religious Affairs Minister, Marhamah Rosli, urged the public to use the term "deviant culture" or "budaya songsang" instead of "LGBT" to refer to sexual minorities who do not follow the heterosexual lifestyle. While this may be justified by the Prime Minister's Office and conservatives across the country as a way to reinforce existing religious and cultural norms, there are far more important issues at hand that our beloved country faces. In a time where "downside risks remain" for Malaysia's economy from the outside world, the privatisation of our healthcare system is slowly being implemented, the persistence of a low-wage economic structure and the over-reliance on public-private partnerships which socialises long-term risks while guarenteeing private returns, this government is more interested in distracting the Malaysian public with semantics that appease the cultural conservatives than ensuring a strong welfare state for all to benefit - regardless of socioeconomic status. In this article, I will highlight the fundamentals of cabinet solidarity [and what this means for the MADANI Government], and the current issues at hand that we are facing.
Cabinet Solidarity
Article 43(3) of the Constitution of Malaysia states that "The Cabinet shall be collectively responsible to Parliament", which imposes the idea of cabinet solidarity. Cabinet Solidarity is the convention that all ministers publicly support the statements and actions of a particular minister, even if they personally disagree with them. While not being part of the Cabinet, by convention, Deputy Ministers are also bound to the idea of Cabinet Solidarity. However, should a Cabinet Minister be so emboldened in their belief that this is wrong on any level to the point where they cannot publicly support it, they are expected to resign from the Cabinet. Therefore, by constitutional convention, the entirety of the MADANI Government is complicit in this statement.
While it may be politically convenient for ministers to support these statements publicly, one must consider the possibility of this being a great distraction for the working class. Collective solidarity means that the Cabinet cannot claim unity only on "moral" or "cultural" issues, while pleading constraint when confronted with the economic plight of our time. When questions are raised on economic redistribution, they are met with answers of "fiscal constraints", but when culture-war rhetoric is met with immediate and unanimous "banzai" calls, we are forced to confront the reality that this is not about necessity, but this is about a lack of political will.
Current Issues at Hand
If collective responsibility means anything, it must also be applied to the economic and labour policies that have been implemented and pursued by this Government - the economic model pursued is one that increasingly relies on privatisation, public-private partnerships and market mechanisms in sectors once thought of as the backbone of state provision and the baseline for welfare in this country.
First off, healthcare. I did a previous article on the privatisation of public healthcare entitled: "Opinion: Healthcare is a Right, Not a Commodity!" However, there are more comments that I would like to highlight about this initiative led by the Anwar-led Government, through Health Minister, Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad. Known as the "RESET Strategy", the website that details all these plans, stated that this strategy is to bring about a change, and I quote, "Toward More Accessible Private Healthcare" - which already is not a good start. There are five main components of the RESET Strategy: Rakan KKM, the National Health Fund, Base MHIT, Electronic Medical Records and Diagnosis-Related Groups. To write this out in detail would make this article longer than it already should be; however, there are very potent criticisms of this strategy, chief among which would be the Rakan KKM angle. The Rakan KKM scheme sets up specialist clinics within public hospitals whereby paying patients can see the specialist of their choosing for only 70-80% of private prices - great for the richer members of society [25% of patients] who can afford to pay for these services at cheaper prices but terrible for everyone else [75% of patients] as this turns public healthcare which is supposed to be a universal public service into a private one, as they run the risk of increasing their already long waiting times.
Secondly, Malaysia still has a very potent low-wage economic structure. In the most current data from the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) for Formal Sector Employee Wages Statistics - in the Third Quarter 2025, it paints a damning outlook. Despite raising the minimum wage to RM1700/month in February 2025, 28.5% of formal sector workers earned below RM2000/month, and the median wage clocked in at RM2864/month, which shows that Malaysia's labour market remains structurally low-wage. A low-wage labour market is not just a distributional issue but also a question of low levels of economic democracy participation in the workforce. It means that workers cannot refuse bad jobs, despite their only adhering to the bare minimum safety requirements, a virtually non-existent space for labour unions to argue for better working conditions, as well as the over-reliance on targeted aid. In this environment, we can safely assume that dual systems will be more and more prominent in today's society: private for the rich, and public for the rest. Without structurally raising wages, Malaysia cannot sustainably finance or politically consolidate a universal welfare state. In addition, the RM100 MySara, which is supposedly to alleviate the material conditions for the working class, is actually deeply rooted in neoliberal thought, as neoliberal economist Milton Friedman did advocate for cash transfers via a negative income tax as a means to replace the welfare state, which is the antithesis of creating a more equitable society for all to live. With the recent increase in regressive taxation like SST and other indirect taxes, it is another punch in the gut for the working class, who cannot feasibly stomach more inflicted punches from the Government.
Last, but not least, the public-private partnership question, which itself has a whole host of issues. For starters, one of the main issues with the public-private partnerships that Malaysia undertakes is its lack of transparency. Malaysia's public-private partnerships are often awarded without competitive bidding, which paves the way for conflict of interest issues or worse, cronyism. For a Government that wants to be transparent, the MADANI Government is not making a good account of itself. The second issue would be one of a more ideological argument, and it goes like this: Why should public tax funds go towards funding private gains while the state absorbs any potential socialised losses? Public-private partnership commitments already pre-commit future public expenditure, constraining allocative choices due to the Government bearing, in the World Bank's words, "most of the risk involved and faces potentially large fiscal costs". Due to this, there is a fiscal illusion - the misconception that the Government has more money than it really has, due to pre-committed funds going to these partnerships, which can harm fiscal sustainability. Public money must generate socially good products and services, not private rent. In fact, it would not be far-fetched to say that through the commodification of public goods, initiatives like the toll roads in the Klang Valley force taxpayers to pay twice for the same service - once through taxes and the other through user fees - which is a predatory price scheme.
Closing Remarks
With all these issues at hand, why is the Government not interested in addressing any of these concerns, but rather focuses on culture wars which seek to distract all of us, citizens of this country, from the very real socioeconomic issues that we are facing? It was never a fight between social liberalism or social conservatism - it was always a fight between the top and bottom. This government is filled with the elites that use cultural issues that divide us - for political gain, rather than unite us for a common cause. Eventually, if we are not careful, we might fall prey to the rise of the far-right, which is already happening, not just domestically but across the world. Remember, you cannot outflank the right on cultural issues. Still, you can always fight back with a hopeful vision for an equitable economy - the literal metric for improvement of living standards.
Timothy (timothytanyeantim@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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