Amusingly, Perikatan Nasional (PN) MPs taking digs at Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim over his comments on the maha-rich (very rich) in his Budget 2024 speech have made some impact. Anwar responded with a clarification that he wasn’t against the maha-rich but that he wanted to remove the government subsidy given to them.

While the ribbing in Parliament has taken the sting out of the issue, it exposes underlying issues that Anwar has yet to address. He made his intention known but gave no reasons for his decision.

The understanding is that government subsidies to bumiputra businessmen were aimed at giving them the means to increase bumiputra corporate wealth and subsequently increase bumiputra employment in the private sector. That strategy succeeded as bumiputra corporate wealth and employment in the private sector have both increased considerably.

So, what are the implications of wanting to remove the subsidies? Is the prime minister saying that bumiputra corporate wealth and employment have reached an acceptable level and therefore there is no longer any need for further government help to achieve these twin objectives? If that is the rationale for removing the subsidies then that is what the PM must explain.

Perhaps he feels that there are sufficient bumiputra entrepreneurs and they are able to compete on their own and no longer need any help from the government and removing the subsidies is part of his intent to liberalize the private sector. Well, he should say so and explain by giving relevant facts and figures to substantiate his point.

In the absence of a cogent explanation for his decision, it appears as if he made a decision for personal reasons or based on hearsay and demonstrated a lack of understanding of the primary reasons for introducing the subsidies in the first place.

Anwar was a finance minister in the Cabinet of the then Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad under whose leadership strategies were introduced to help bumiputras acquire corporate wealth and increase their employment in the private sector. It is quite surprising that now, as prime minister, Anwar has failed to understand the reasons for the subsidies.

Anwar may feel there has been too much of abuse of these subsidies and he wants to remove the subsidies to cut down on corruption. If there were, he should go for the corrupt. Ironically, some of these maha-rich who were taken to court on corruption charges went off scot-free on his watch and hold significant ministerial posts in his Cabinet but he sees no disconnect between what he says and what happens under his administration.

If the subsidies are removed, would that mean that his government will not help to increase bumiputra corporate wealth and employment in the private sector? If that is his intention, he should make that clear, too, and be prepared to face the storm of opposition for steering away from the affirmative action strategies put in place by his predecessors and risk a further erosion of support for his unity government.

Anwar has announced that private-funded initiatives (PFI) will form the bulk of investments. Who then will be eligible to undertake the PFIs? Those who became rich and maha-rich without subsidies? So, his PFIs will make the rich and especially the maha-rich — who only have the resources to take on a PFI — even richer? Will he then be widening the gap between the rich and the poor or closing it?

Anwar needs to give proper explanations to queries in Parliament based on expert advice, facts, evidence and statistics and refrain from making cavalier statements that only make him look like a spin doctor rather than a prime minister.