Independence Day is fast approaching and the authorities are preparing for celebrations that will be punctuated by marches, flag-waving crowds and speeches by dignitaries.

No doubt about it, attaining self-rule on 31st August 1957 was a great step forward for Malaya.

A significant event. But, are we able to exercise that right to self-rule?

We now live under the tyranny of the richest 500 corporations of the world and the 5,000 or so billionaires who own them.

We put off programs that will benefit the ordinary people of our country – like a better wage – because we are afraid that will lead the global chains to invest in Thailand or Vietnam instead of us.

So, we ask our people to bear with economic hardships – household debt has reached critical levels in our B40 and M40 – so as to not rock the boat and drive away foreign direct investments (FDI).

Government revenue as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has shrunk from about 30% in the 1980s to the current 15% of GDP. Why? Because we have brought down our corporate taxes from 40% of profits to its current 24%.

We are in a race to the bottom with our ASEAN neighbours because we believe that a more “friendly” corporate tax structure will bring in FDI.

Vietnam and Thailand are at about 20% of corporate profits. Singapore is even lower.

If the government had a higher revenue, it could implement many policies to benefit the B40 and the M40 such as strengthening our public health care system that is bursting at its seams, initiating an old age pension scheme, instituting subsidised public transport in all our cities and providing free tertiary education to the younger generation instead of saddling them with crippling debt at an early age.

But we can’t, because we have to keep corporate taxes down so as to appear investor-friendly.

The sad truth is that Malaysia has had a budgetary deficit for the past 25 years – so we keep issuing new bonds to pay back the old, on top of the new bonds we need to meet current deficits.

The total debt now stands at more than a trillion ringgit – that’s RM1,000 billion – and the government will be issuing about RM190 billion of bonds this year. Half of it will be to cover previously issued bonds that are maturing this year.

In addition, the one trillion debt requires debt servicing of RM46 billion per year. This huge debt is a real dampener to any intention within the government to expand social protection for the people.

After a bit of flag-waving on 31 August, we should start discussing long-term strategies to regain control of our economy and ensure that our people get a fairer share of the wealth they are producing.

Are you aware that the average minimum wage in the United States is US$12 per hour? Based on an 8-hour day and 26 working days a month, that comes to RM11,481.60 (at an exchange rate of RM4.60 to the dollar). This is 7.65 times more than Malaysia’s current minimum wage.

This is hugely significant because in the global capitalist system, production is for those with money – buying power.

In our globalised system, production is geared much more towards the affluent population of the “developed” countries than for the millions of working people in the “Third World”.

That is the reality of the “market” – producers will produce goods for those who can afford to buy them.

Tough luck to those with low incomes. Nothing personal – it’s the law of the market!  

So, 67 years post-Independence, we have an economy that produces raw materials and components that the largest global chains want, but receives a fraction of what those goods and services will cost if produced in the West.

Our working people receive, on a per capita basis, one-seventh of what the working people of the developed countries receive.

How different is this from the times when the great British East India Company reigned? Yes, the gunboats are not so evident now. But they do not need gunboats in this era.

Our ruling elites do the job for them, eagerly signing “free trade” agreements that undermine our economic sovereignty and further tie the hands of the government.

And much of the wealth produced by the labour of the peoples of the Third World continues to be siphoned away by an exploitative economic system. And we ecstatically wave flags and shout “Merdeka”?

69 years ago, there was an epochal gathering of Third World leaders – Nasser, Nehru, Nkrumah, Chou En Lai, Tito, Soekarno and others – in Bandung, Indonesia. Their vision was to attain independence so that the former colonies could become the masters of their own destinies and use the wealth they produce to uplift their people.

That grand vision didn’t materialise. Coups instigated by the Western powers (Nkrumah in Ghana and Soekarno in Indonesia) was one important reason. But more important was the fact that the Third World did not have the capital nor the technological know-how at that time to develop an autonomous manufacturing base.

The real tragedy is that although we have the capital and sufficient numbers of scientists and technologically competent people to actualise the vision of Bandung 1955 now, our current leaders have completely lost the plot and shamelessly crow about their success in enticing FDI into the country.

Submission to the whims of the Forbes 500 companies and their billionaire owners is their “winning” strategy!

This is precisely why thinking Malaysians should pause and ask ourselves – are we truly independent? Are we able to utilise the wealth of this country to benefit the rakyat?

If the answer is “no”, then, after a bit of flag-waving on 31 August, we should start discussing long-term strategies to regain control of our economy and ensure that our people get a fairer share of the wealth they are producing.

(Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj served as Member of Parliament for Sungai Siput from 2008 to 2018. A respiratory physician who was awarded a gold medal for community service, he is also a secretariat member of the Coalition Against Health Care Privatisation and Chairperson of the Socialist Party of Malaysia.)