Another day, another holiday – but what did we gain?

Malaysians recently enjoyed a public holiday on our National Day. Many also enjoyed the week-long school holidays while some got a hattrick of celebrations – an extra day for Selangor residents for the state topping the medals table at the recent Sukma inter-state games. It's a pretty good deal for many, including state politicians who got to give out the good news to Selangor's residents at no cost to themselves because it's the employers who foot the bill. As a retiree I didn't get to enjoy an extra day's holiday nor did I get holiday pay for working on the day. But at least I'm not an employer who has to foot the extra costs or deal with the disruptions caused by it. Declaring a casual public holiday is a misguided attempt to buy goodwill from the rakyat. Either elections must be around the corner, or it's become a reflex action for an ad hoc public holiday to be created. The economy doesn't benefit from this: costs go up and benefits are reduced to society at large. But you cannot argue about giving workers additional respite from their days at the office or factories. We have laws that require us to observe public holidays, of which we have a lot, scheduled and ad hoc, plus personal paid vacations, with most companies providing more than what is stipulated. I guess if somebody very important passes away, or we achieve something truly epic – we win the World Cup! – then perhaps a public holiday is deserving. But lets examine the reason public holidays are declared in the first place. They are meant to allow us to observe such holidays appropriately – perhaps by celebrating, marching in the street, holding celebrations, visiting families and friends or fulfilling cultural or religious obligations. If you stay at home and don't celebrate the event, then why are you deserving of a paid day off? I can tell you if Malaysia wins the World Cup I'll be running myself ragged for perhaps days in an orgy of celebrations, and I certainly would welcome the public holiday. But I remember a state declared an ad hoc holiday in three consecutive years purely because it made it to the final of the Malaysia Cup football competition. Not won it, just made it to the final, which it managed to lose each time. I remember the business disruptions, and especially the withering looks from my foreign bosses and colleagues signalling – what kind of rubbish is this? I had no good answer then, and certainly none now either. Disruptions didn't just happen to businesses; they happen to normal people too. Most government and business services are closed with hardly any notice. Think about the disruptions to our everyday life in our dealings with the courts or passport offices or many other government as well as commercial services. Feeling entitled But the biggest problem is this: the state or national leaders also know we gain nothing from these public holidays. People are not grateful just for an extra day off. They won't work harder when they get back to their workplace, and neither would they change their voting preferences. We do it because somehow we as the rakyat feel entitled to such perks, and the leaders who declare these holidays feel they are expected to do it, or else they'd be judged negatively if they didn't oblige with this 'generosity'. Entitlement is becoming a huge problem in Malaysia. We have many things started by the government in good faith, whether affirmative action programmes or economic subsidies for some of the costs of living. Over time, however, these 'privileges' have become 'rights', even if none of them have ever been voted in parliament into laws and statues. When you feel entitled, you feel any questions on your entitlements are wrong or disrespectful or political, or all of them. Logic and justifications go out of the window, and emotions and outrage come into play. This being Malaysia, race and religion often get into the noise and make everything complicated and nasty. I doubt if the political leaders debate the merits or otherwise on such ad hoc holidays. Most are smart enough to know that the negative impacts outweigh the positive, but somehow feel they're under pressure to give the rakyat their 'entitlement'. In the end it's a lose-lose for everybody. Many rakyat get something they haven't earned, which just motivates them to expect even more unearned goodies. The economic drivers have to absorb the disruptions, and of course pass the negative impacts of higher costs or lower profits back to the population. We may probably have gone too far down the road for any brave political leaders to say enough with this nonsense. That's a shame, because we certainly don't need to add to our growing lists of entitlements. We have more than enough already. The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.