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I met a liberal once. Even shook hands with it, so far as I can recall. After I’d had a good shower, I tried to figure out what nature of person succumbs to liberal tendencies, to the point where he may first admit them to his parents and later go out to proclaim them to the world. Is this a genetic defect or a product of one’s environment?
My conclusion is that liberalisation and globalisation are ideals that have been championed by starry-eyed left-brained individuals who see them as a way of taking a perfectly good system which work for the benefit of a community and then persuading that community to throw it open to the world so that everyone can have a slice.
The argument for this is that the world will in some way reciprocate and we’ll all be immeasurably better off.
Now, that is, and not in the afterlife or in fairyland.
I strongly believe that if you take the lid off a liberal you are likely to find a range of ulterior motives from a mission to promote the interests of a super-power, to the simple anarchic desire to destroy some element of society.
For a small illustration, think of the Royal Lake Club being urged to open its doors to the general public. Try to imagine who would be pushing the hardest for this and you could well envision a social outcast who had applied for membership six times and failed. Liberalisation opens the doors to the underprivileged and outclassed.
If you look for any recent examples you will see how the social structure of the UK was changed by a liberal immigration policy; how the European Union has been brought to the brink of economic disaster by two of its poorest members.
Yet, liberalisation is still blindly treated as a universal economic panacea. In my view it has yet to prove itself, but its greatest proponents expect you to accept it unquestioningly.
The reason I mention all this, is that there are some Malaysian professions such as the surveying profession currently under heavy pressure to liberalise and globalise. Most Malaysian professional firms have always been owned and run by Malaysian professionals. The “big names” that you see in accounting, valuation and quantity surveying are all in fact locally owned and yet very well managed. Global brands have chosen to affiliate with suitably qualified Malaysians who have taken these firms to great heights so that their senior partners have high standing on the world stage and have frequently been elected to important positions in international committees.
The process of affiliation has enabled these Malaysian professionals to take on board all the best practices of their global affiliates and their clientele can never be heard to complain that the locally assembled model is inferior to its foreign counterpart.
This is a huge success story for Malaysia.
So far so good, but now there is a horde at the gate arguing for admission in the name of liberalisation (local wannabes) and globalisation (foreign wannabes.)
The local horde sees a good thing and wants a piece of it without the troublesome necessity of becoming professionally qualified. The foreign horde may claim to be professional but sadly in many cases their home patch has already been infiltrated by liberals and dumb down diluted and devalued.
If only the act of liberalisation was a matter of sending personal invitations to 500 of the world’s top professionals. But it’s not. Once the gates are open the riff raff will get in. For Malaysia this will be a sad and unnecessary loss when currently we have the upper hand and when affiliation has already brought all the benefits of global brands without giving up equity. Personally I don’t buy the argument that opening our doors in KL will somehow give Malaysian professionals the right to practise in Tokyo.
In the complex game of poker that is international trade negotiations, I sure hope Malaysia won’t blink first.
As they say in Japan, “rots of ruck”.
Chris Boyd is executive chairman of international property consultants CB Richard Ellis (Malaysia)
This article appeared on the Property page, The Edge Financial Daily, January 7, 2011.
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