Don't hold people to ransom over RM362b debt'

Don't hold people to ransom over RM362b debt'

http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/fmt-english/politics/sabah-and-sarawak/6274-dont-hold-people-ransom-over-rm362b-debt

WED, 02 JUN 2010 11:56

By Queville To

TAWAU: A Sabah MP has charged that bad governance and widespread corruption in the country are the cause of the massive RM362 billion debt the country has accumulated over the years.

“It is wrong to give the perception that the accumulated debt of RM362 billion is due mainly to the subsidies given to the people," Tawau MP Chua Soon Bui said.

She said the arguments by federal leaders for ending the subsidies were just a desperate measure to cover up for “their past recklessness in managing the country's resources”.

The government contends that its subsidy programme costs it RM74 billion annually.

Chua said by declaring that the country would go bankrupt if government aid is continued, the government is pinning the blame on the subsidy programme and holding the people to ransom.

Chua said the government should be transparent on how the nation had built up the huge debt.

“The people should be given the right perspective and the truth on how the RM362 billion debt was accumulated.

"For the past 10 years, auditing on government's wastage, misuse, and leakages of public funds is long overdue. The people deserved to know the truth.”

Chua was responding to a statement by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Idris Jala that Malaysia must cut its growing debt by 2019 or risk bankruptcy.

Grandiose and questionable undertakings

Chua, who is also a vice-president of Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP), said that serious efforts should be made to identify and eliminate all the weaknesses and loopholes that lead to wastage and leakages of the taxpayers' money.

She pointed out that grandiose and questionable undertakings like the Perwaja steel project, Bakun Dam hydropower project, Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ), purchase of dubious military hardware and infrastructure projects like the Sapulut-Kalabakan road project in Tawau were just a few instances of government's wastage and extravagance.

Chua also said that while the Auditor-General's annual reports have identified various irregularities in government spending, little has been done to rectify them.

As such, she added, it is rather pathetic of the government to harp on the need to cut subsidies.

Chua also dismissed the government's bid to gather feedback from the public on the proposed subsidy cuts to save RM103 billion as a ploy.

She said government has not bothered to get public feedback on other bona fide issues such as the planned increase in levy on foreign workers, the proposed construction of the controversial coal-power plant in Lahad Datu, Sabah, and the hastily withdrawn increase in penalties for traffic offences.

Rampant smuggling

Chua said it was disheartening to know that the authorities are still unable to stamp out the rampant smuggling of subsidised goods through Sandakan and Tawau to neighbouring countries.

She said the smuggling of subsidised essential consumer goods like fuel, rice, cooking oil, sugar and flour represented an extra loss to the government because it defeated the government’s objective of helping the poor and those from the low-income bracket.

Chua added that the government needs to "thoroughly review the proposed 10th Malaysia Plan and remove all those unnecessary mega-projects and implement only basic infrastructure projects such as power and water supply".

We pay for Umno's poor performance?

http://www1.malaysiakini.com/letters/133320

We pay for Umno's poor performance?

Dennis Madden
Jun 1, 10
5:06pm

Wah, wah, wah. So Umno is crying tears of blood and claiming that the country will be bankrupt in nine years unless subsidies are removed. But let's look at the real picture, the picture that Malaysians generally ignore because of their 'I'm doing alright/tidak apah' attitudes.

It's not hard to make out a case that the Umno government has actively pursued a policy of keeping Malaysians poor and uneducated. No matter whatever the claim to the contrary.

This is just another case of facts versus opinions. In fact, it's quite clear to any objective observer that Umno has failed to manage this country for the last 50 plus years, but Malaysians are so immune to bad government that it no longer troubles them

The existence of subsidies is part of the 'keep them poor and dependent' approach. In most other countries the fallacy of subsidies is quite clear and advanced economies have been getting rid of them for the last 30 years. It's an undeniable fact that subsidies never achieve the goals that are attributed to them.

Looking further afield: the education system here is at best mediocre and everyone has a tale to tell of how truly awful the Malaysian system is. Work place conditions are like something out of the Dark Ages with workers overworked, underpaid and working in abysmally bad working conditions.

That is for the Malaysians who actually do some work as most of the real work is done by immigrant workers and their conditions are even worse.

The institutions that make for a civilised country have been raped by the Umno government - the courts, the constitution, the rights of its citizens and the list goes on. The only institution that flourishes is religion and that's because there is an underhand motive in the government/religion partnership.

Everyone will decry corruption except those benefiting from it and we all know where they spend their working time.

But probably the worst aspect of Malaysian mismanagement is the absolute waste that is associated with everything that the government touches. Nothing is planned well, nothing is done well, projects are inflated in price and deflated in value, no project is ever fully finished, workmanship is third rate and maintenance is non-existent. This is a country of failed projects.

There is no long-term government planning in this country and short-term planning is mostly irrational. Malaysia's Vision 20:20 has come to mean 20 years behind the rest of the world and running at a 20 percent efficiency rate.

And with that history of poor performance, the Umno government now wants to further burden the public (without increasing their salaries) so that they can continue to mismanage as they have in the past.

There are two reasons for this situation and in reality both are the same. Decisions are made on an ad-hoc basis of irrational thinking more related to power and the cunning way that Umno seeks and maintains power. The second reason is that religion thrives in an environment of poverty and ignorance.

Scorpene scandal: French police raid DCN

French financial police have searched the offices of naval arms manufacturer DCNS and industrial group Thales in connection with a probe into the sale of submarines to Malaysia, a judicial source said today.

Documents were seized in the operation, which was carried out last week, the source added.

Thales declined to comment on the matter.

DCNS told AFP it "neither confirms nor denies this information."

"A judicial investigation is under way and we can make no comment."

The Paris prosecutor's office in March opened an investigation into the 2002 sale following a complaint lodged last year by the Malaysian human rights group Suaram.

The group alleges that Armaris, a subsidiary of Thales and the DCN, as the DCNS was formerly known, paid a commission of 114 million euros (140 million dollars) to the Malaysian company Perimekar, linked to people close to now Prime Minister Najib Razak.

'Illegal' commissions

Najib in 2002 was defence minister and was responsible for negotiating the contract.

Since 2000, the payment of commissions on contracts linked to foreign leaders amounts to corruption under French law.

The DCN in 2002 joined Thales and Spanish naval construction group Navantia in a contract to sell Malaysia three submarines for around one billion euros.

A spokesman for the Malaysian prime minister's office in late April insisted there was "no case" to answer.

He mantained that the deal had been free of graft and that Perimekar had not improperly benefited from it.

- AFP

Previous reports

Arms sales - the French connection

KL may be forced to disclose sub deal details

French lawyer fears no threats in Scorpene probe

Altantuya link to sub deal will be made public

MACC urged to probe Scorpene scandal

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Shooting themselves in the foot

Dean Johns
Jun 2, 10
11:18am

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the killings by Israeli marine commandos aboard a vessel in the flotilla attempting to break the blockade on the Gaza strip, they've inflicted yet another ugly wound on Israel's reputation.

Just as the recent torpedoing of a South Korean patrol boat will doubtless prove one more nail in the coffin of Kim Jong-Il's deadly North Korean regime.
And the bloody suppression of the Red Shirts demonstrations (left) in Bangkok is likely to be the death of Thailand's current military-backed government.

All of these latest atrocities are just small-calibre stuff, however, compared with the one that blew a gaping hole in the credibility of the big shots who run the People's Republic of China, the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989.

Though the worldwide outrage over Tiananmen Square unfortunately didn't prove fatal to the Chinese Communist Party, it has certainly haunted this corrupt and murderous regime down the years, and to judge by the shroud of official secrecy surrounding it, is still a running sore and a source of shame and embarrassment.

But there's no sign of shame or embarrassment from the regime we observers of the Malaysian scene all know best, and that has such a talent for shooting itself in the foot as to make most other accident-prone governments look like amateurs.

Shoo or shoot

As so many commentators on Malaysia's critics of Israel's activities have observed, former Prime Minister Mahathir (below) memorably greeted the arrival of refugees from the Vietnam War with the order to "shoot them".

Later he claimed that what he'd actually said was "shoo them". But in any case, apparently undaunted, he went on to shoot himself and Malaysia in the foot over and over again, by shooing honest judges out of office, critics off to Kamunting and his former deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, off to jail.

He also shooed massive amounts of money out of the nation's treasury and into the pockets of his colleagues and cronies.

And ever since the country finally got shot of him as its misleader, he's been shooting his mouth off at any and every target he finds fair game, from his hapless successor Abdullah Badawi to Zionists and the 'warmongers of the West'.

Shooting from the lip

As notorious a gunslinger as Mahathir was and is, however, current Prime Minister Najib Razak has apparently set his sights on out-shooting him.

Since his days as defence minister and deputy to Badawi, he's been demonstrating his marksmanship if not statesmanship by presiding over a veritable massacre ranging from the murder and C4 dismemberment of the Mongolian interpreter, Altantuya Shaariibuu, to a steady stream of deaths in police 'shootouts' and custody.

And he's proving himself every bit as adept as shooting from the hip - or lip - as Mahathir ever was, and even more prone, if possible, to shoot himself and Malaysia in the foot.

Fabricating a concept as false as '1Malaysia', for example, which turned out to be the work of Apco Worldwide, a propaganda and lobbying organisation run by the old master's favourite victims, Jews, from a country whose existence Malaysia refuses to recognise, Israel.

Then compounding the lie of '1Malaysia' by sponsoring the racist Malay ultra pressure group, Perkasa, and declaring that he would never abandon BN's socially corrupt, ineffectual and socially divisive New Economic Policy despite clearly stated claims that his so-called "New Economic Model" would treat the disadvantaged of all races equally.

Najib (right) also claimed in his New Economic Model that he was setting his sights on combating corruption, then shot straight out onto the campaign trail offering bribes to voters in by-elections, or what have come to be justly known as buy-elections.

And now he's hard at work pretending to give Malaysia's finances a shot in the arm, and wrong-footing himself in the process.

First having one of his top economic advisers, Idris Jala, declare that if the government continued subsidising fuel, power and staple food items at current levels it would be bankrupt by 2019, then coming out himself to declare that Malaysia is on track to achieve Mahathir's long-touted development target of 'Wawasan 2020'.

But to judge by the hundreds of comments I've seen on the news sites, Najib's shot at reducing or eliminating public subsidies hasn't exactly hit the bullseye. In fact it's seen as total bull, serving only to remind the rakyat of the RM100 billion or so that was misspent, squandered or stolen during the Mahathir era, and the cost of still continuing corruption.

In other words, Idris Jala's warning that "we don't want to end up as another Greece" has only reminded a great many Malaysians that they're no longer prepared to subsidise Barisan Nasional's greasing of its own and its cronies palms through corrupt projects like the Bakun Dam and the Port Klang Free Zone, non-transparent awarding of licences like APs and the gambling franchises, and commission-riddled arms and other purchases.

Anwar targeted again

Nor, from what I see, is the populace too happy about the BN's government's latest shot at assassinating the character and killing the political career of Anwar Ibrahim (below) with a second charge of sodomy.

As every commentator with a grain of good sense or integrity seems to agree, this second trial is shaping to be every bit as dodgy and outright unjust as the first.

For a start, in a flagrant denial of due process, the judge has denied Anwar's defence team access to both the witness report and the list of prosecution witnesses, and the alleged 'victim' had meetings with senior police and then Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak that absolutely reek of high-level collusion.

But however many weapons BN has at its disposal, from an armed and dangerous police force and the sinister forces of Rela to a bloated and beholden civil service, a compliant judiciary, captive electoral commission and craven mainstream media - it seems increasingly outnumbered if not outgunned.

And we can only hope that, along with the Netanyahu administration in Israel, the Kim Il-Jong regime in North Korea, the current Thai government, the Communist overlords of China and all their ilk around the world, BN will eventually shoot itself in the foot enough times for its self-inflicted wounds to turn fatal.

DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he mentors creative writing groups. Already published in Kuala Lumpur is a third book of his columns for Malaysiakini, following earlier collections 'Mad about Malaysia' and 'Even Madder about Malaysia'.

http://www1.malaysiakini.com/columns/133382

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