Selamat Hari Merdeka, Malaysia! Good news from Malaysia as the country is currently celebrating its 62nd Independence Day.
The celebration of Independence Day, or famously known as Hari Merdeka, is an essential event for Malaysia. Apart from its patriotic moment, this also remarks that Malaysia has successfully survived up to this very day.
Prior to this day, the country also received a good news. Reuters reported that Malaysia’s economic growth rose in the second quarter of 2019.
Accordingly, the third-largest economy in Southeast Asia had 4.5% economic growth previously, while recently it became 4.8%. This was possible thanks to the rapid growth of stronger exports and manufacturing.
Although the country is having a hard time in trade to China as the trade war continues, this does not hinder Malaysia to fare better than what they did in the first quarter.
“Malaysia is a notable exception to the export-led GDP slowdown that most of the Asian and global economies have been suffering currently amid intensified global trade war and a technology downturn,” said Prakash Sakpal, an ING economist.
However, this does not mean that everything is actually improving in Malaysia. Many analysts and activists think that the government still need to work on the issues of inequality in economy, such as in Sabah and Sarawak.
Accordingly, the inequality often leads in further numerous issues.
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Malaysia and Homework
Besides all the good news, the country still has homework to bring equality to its people. A Sarawak activist, Dominique Ng, shared his opinion on this matter to the local news.
There were a plenty of concerns he shared pertaining to the current condition of the country. One of them was pertinent to economic matters.
“I would like to remind the federal government that Sarawak has contributed massively to the Federation of Malaysia with its oil and gas, as well as taxes. And until now, despite promises written in their election manifesto, their promise of 20% royalty in oil and gas, and return of 50% of the taxes collected from us, have yet to be fulfilled,” he said.
Based on his statement, Malaysia still has responsibilities to distribute economy equally to its different states. With that being said, many people opine that the regime of the current government would be able to deal with this problem.
Aside from the above-mentioned economic matters, the activist also brought up a bigger issue. This was related to the “true” Independence Day of Malaysia.
“Tomorrow (Aug 31, 2019), Malaysia is again celebrating the country’s so-called 62nd National Day. Sabah and Sarawak were not part of Federation of Malaysia on Aug 31, 1957. Sept 16, 1963 should be the real National Day of Malaysia because that was the day when Malaysia was formed,” he explained.
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