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Parliament will be guilty of gross dereliction of duty and abdication of responsibility if it adjourns next week after a five-week meeting without a focussed and comprehensive debate on the double whammy hitting the Malaysia economy - the Iraq war and the SARS epidemic Media Statement by Lim Kit Siang (Petaling Jaya,  Saturday): Last Sunday, Acting Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced that all ministries had been directed to study the effects of the US-led invasion of Iraq on their respective agencies and the relevant sectors so that action could be taken to minimise its impact on the country to ensure that the government was always one step ahead in dealing with possible effects on the local economy. He said that a decision would be taken on the economic effects of the Iraq war at the next Cabinet meeting the following Wednesday. The Cabinet meeting concerned has come and gone, but there is still no word about the government's response and plan to the Iraq war. This is a matter of grave concern to Malaysians as the government has not only failed to be "always one step ahead in dealing with possible effects on the local economy" but is many steps behind. As the US-led war against Iraq had been many months in-the-making, it took no one by surprise, and in fact, the first 2003 multi-billion ringgit economic stimulus package which had been completed more than two months ago had been held back precisely because of the impending Iraq war. It is most surprising that 17 days after the Iraq war, there is still no sign of the multi-billion ringgit economic stimulus package, which shows that the government is not one step ahead but is many steps behind in dealing with possible effects on the local economy. Malaysia has now been hit by a double whammy, the Iraq war and the global Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic. Although the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research (Mier) executive director Dr. Mohamed Ariff said three days ago that the Iraq war may have a more damaging impact on the regional economy than the SARS virus, a leading US investment bank, Morgan Stanley, has become the first leading international bank to predict that SARS could trigger a global downturn and tip the world economy into recession, and lowered world growth forecasts because of the rapid spread of SARS. Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley chief economist, said: "SARS may well be the tipping point for a global economy that has already been hit by the twin shocks of war and geopolitical uncertainty. Unfortunately, the SARS effect is concentrated in Asia - long the fastest growing economy in the world and the one area that had basically been keeping the world economy afloat." Morgan Stanley said it was reducing its forecast for global gross domestic product (GDP) this year to 2.4 per cent, from 2.5 per cent previously. Because there is little chance of every region of the world economy contracting simultaneously, analysts typically regard any global growth figure of below 2.5 per cent as representing recession. In contrast, Bank Negara has gone against international forecasts in its official growth figures for 2003 two weeks ago, which was officially endorsed by the Deputy Finance Minister in Parliament a few days ago, that Malaysia's economic growth this year would be 4.5% (as compared to the original estimate of 6 - 6.5% in the 2003 Budget last September) based on "modest expansion" of global economic growth of 3.1% in 2003! In actual fact, in the two weeks since the release of the 2002 Bank Negara report, economists have been further slashing their economic growth forecasts in the face of the longer-than-expected Iraq war and the SARS epidemic, downgrading Malaysia's growth projections to as low as 3 per cent for this year. The post-Iraq economic stimulus package is estimated to be as high as RM5 billion, much higher than the two previous economic stimulus packages in 2001, one for RM3 billion and the second for RM4.3 billion. Parliament will be guilty of gross dereliction of duty and abdication of responsibility if it adjourns next week after a five-week meeting without a focussed and comprehensive debate on the double whammy hitting the Malaysia economy - the Iraq war and the SARS epidemic - and allows the RM5 billion post-Iraq economic stimulus package to be presented outside Parliament without parliamentary debate, scrutiny and accountability. The ease with which the government was able to get the single biggest supplementary estimate in parliamentary history, a walloping RM22.1 billion, approved by Parliament this week without adequate time for MPs to hold the government to strict policy, performance and financial accountability - with MPs given 10 minutes each to approve billions of ringgit of supplementary allocations during the committee stage debate - is a blot on the record of the present Parliament. To avoid another blot for the present Parliament, parliamentary backbenchers represented by the Backbenchers' Club and the Parliamentary Opposition Leader should jointly meet the Acting Leader of the House, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to schedule a focused and comprehensive debate on the post-Iraq and post-SARS economy and the RM5 billion economic stimulus package. (5/4/2003) * Lim Kit Siang, DAP National Chairman