Where does MUDA get its funding? We ask Syed Saddiq

Surprise, people; it’s election season again. And you know what that means: parties are out campaigning to get a slice of those juicy parliamentary seats.

However, this time round there’s a new challenger in the game: Parti MUDA. And we were lucky enough to sit down for a chat with their leader, former Youth and Sports Minister and Muar MP Syed Saddiq, who shared with us his ideas to, in his own words:

“… disrupt Malaysian politics and future-proof Malaysia.” – Syed Saddiq

But for starters, we were really curious as to how Parti MUDA even found the money to campaign for elections, since it takes a LOT of money to do so. And the answer we got was quite surprising, to say the least…

 

MUDA’s most unexpected funders were… UMNO members

Yes, believe it or not, some of MUDA’s staunchest critics, whom Saddiq told us actually campaigned against him in the last election, ended up donating funds to MUDA:

“A lot of them are like ‘yeah, I’m from UMNO, but I think it’s about time for us to invest in younger leaders’. They still believe in the party (UMNO), but at the same time they don’t believe in the leadership.” – Syed Saddiq

Elaborating on this, Saddiq told us that although UMNO’s leaders may be rich, a lot of their grassroots members aren’t so well off. But despite playing for a different team, Saddiq had no qualms extending a helping hand to UMNO members in need during the floods in 2021:

“I don’t care which party you’re from, if you come from an underprivileged family that requires help, you deserve that help… In Muar, I treat all of them like family… I never once went to them and said ‘I’ll only give you help if you support me’. Never once.” – Syed Saddiq

Overall, MUDA is actually fairly transparent with the sources of their funding, having showed all their books after critics accused them of getting support from a handful of billionaires after they managed to raise RM3 million during last year’s monsoon; in fact, their metadata showed more than 55,000 donors, who each donated an average of RM50-100 per person. 

These donations came mostly from their fundraising events, although wealthier individuals tend to donate in forms other than cash:

“Obviously there were bigger tickets and smaller tickets. Even wealthy individuals, if they want to help out, a lot help out in kind: they give out food baskets, they sponsor heavy machinery when we wanted to do the cleaning of houses, taking away of the rubble.” – Syed Saddiq

With that being said, Malaysia still has no laws on political funding, which is why MUDA is strongly advocating for a Political Funding Act, which is currently in the works in Parliament.

Anyway, funding aside, Saddiq wanted to focus more on his planned policies following the elections, the first of which is:

 

Overhauling the education system, especially for tertiary students

Being a former teacher himself, Saddiq is most passionate about revamping Malaysian education, starting with how we spend on education:

“Our education spending (of our GDP per capita) is 17%. Singapore is 12%, Japan is 7%. We spend a good RM60-70 billion a year on education.” – Syed Saddiq

But despite our high education spending, according to Saddiq, PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) rankings show that the average 15 year-old Malaysian has the same level of understanding and comprehension as a 12 year-old Singaporean.

On the issue of spending, Saddiq argues that too much is spent on unnecessary subjects (*cough cough* MPU) and activities especially at the tertiary level, which means students have to spend a total of 5-7 years (including Pre-U) to complete their tertiary education:

“71% of SPM-leavers choose to work gig jobs rather than furthering their studies. So why study for 6 years, waste so much time, get paid so little, and have student debt behind you?” – Syed Saddiq

Because contrary to what many may believe, the biggest problem in Malaysia according to Saddiq, is not unemployment, but underemployment; i.e. working in jobs that do not make use of your skillset. To use Saddiq’s example:

“If you have a degree, but you have been driving Grab for the past 12 months, you are considered to be underemployed.” – Syed Saddiq

He did propose solutions for these problems, such as cutting study time for uni students and pushing more students towards TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training), among other things. However, we don’t have enough room to include all the details, so we might do so in a future piece comparing manifestos of the parties running in GE15.

But yeah, in short: less study time, reducing the digital divide in schools (subsidized laptops/tablets), and providing more opportunities and a more dignified working standard for low-to-middle income earners, especially in the gig sector.

On that note, these suggestions come at a time of great uncertainty, considering the fact that analysts are pointing to a bleak economic outlook in 2023. Because of this…

 

He believes the next government should be more careful with its spending

Like it or not, things aren’t looking good for 2023, and Malaysians are buckling up for a rough ride. However, Saddiq believes the government’s decision to allow Malaysians to withdraw their EPF savings in the past may come back to haunt us when 2023 comes:

“That decision then, will hurt us next year. Every country will have its own recession cycle, but when you have savings it’s something to fall back on. Now, majority of Malaysians don’t. I think that’s very, very worrying.” – Syed Saddiq

To remedy this, Saddiq says the government will have to be more judicious in spending, introduce more targeted subsidies, and attract more foreign investment in order to earn back the lost trust that they need to increase current taxes, or apply new ones to soften the incoming blow in 2023:

“When the rakyat know that you can spend RM85 million on a cybertrooper agency, like JASA/J-Kom, when you can spend RM38 million on upgrading the Prime Minister’s house, when you can have the most bloated cabinet in potentially the history of the world; all these things make the people lose confidence.” – Syed Saddiq

He was keen to stress that he was not advocating to do away with subsidies by any means, but to make the subsidies more direct. What he means is that every sen must be conserved, and accounted for. For example, said Saddiq, if the government reduces petrol subsidies by 10 sen, giving them, say, RM400 million in their pocket, then that RM400 million should immediately be redirected to public transportation investment and cushioning the blow for the lower income group.

In closing, Saddiq urged Malaysians to…

 

Go out and vote, regardless of which party

Politicking aside, Saddiq says it’s important for Malaysians to just get out and vote, because doing so will be a statement that voters are not to be taken lightly. He believes that the lack of competition in Malaysian politics has made certain parties complacent, and wants to ensure that Malaysians no longer need to pick the lesser of two evils, but the best of the best to govern them:

“Let the voters decide. The voters are mature enough to know who’s better, on the matter of policy, principles, values. Because if not, we’ll only have one or two parties which would be complacent, unwilling to change. And then Malaysia will forever go through that complacent cycle.” – Syed Saddiq

He also had a message for those who believe that their votes would not matter: elections are not about winning just one election, but it’s a build-up to something that will happen years and years in the future. What that something is, is to be decided now, and that’s why Saddiq wants Malaysians to vote:

“You can choose to stay away from politics, but politics will never stay away from you. And the reason I’m sending this message to the youth of Malaysia, is because this is a country which we will inherit together… So my message is this: if we love our country, if we want our country to head in a direction which we believe in, we want to craft our country, then vote. Because that vote is our weapon, ammunition, nuclear weapon, to change Malaysia. So it’s our last weapon in shaping the Malaysia which we want.” – Syed Saddiq

Bonus: We tried to troll Saddiq, a lifelong Man United fan, by asking him to put on rival Liverpool’s jersey, but he wasn’t having any of it! Hey, at least the man’s loyal to his football team.