Plotting its own downfall

The government is going to great lengths to tar its 'enemies' but the roof may fall on its own head.

The government is trying very hard to sell the implausible story that there is a dastardly plot brewing to stir up trouble in the country. In a report to the people, it named all the culprits which had received foreign funds to finance their schemes to ostensibly topple the prime minister and the government he leads. As usual, the ubiquitous foreign devils are all mixed up in our affair.

Did the government build up a convincing case? Hardly. The tale spun in its official mouthpiece inevitably invites sneering comment and dowright derision. It is unlikely that readers all over the country broke out in cold sweat when they saw the screaming headline. The hullabaloo is yet another feeble, futile attempt to throw mud at any organisation that dares criticise the establishment.

But the case against the so-called enemies of the state is weak. All those who spoke up and stood up are not selling the country to foreign parties. They are fighting for just causes that the government has repeatedly attempted to ignore or bury. Thousands of Malaysians took to the streets to press for clean and fair elections without the prompting of foreign powers. Many news reports critical of the government were published without being influenced by hidden hands. The momentous happenings are all local productions.

The fear that there is a plot to create chaos in the country is a tacit admission that all the unsavoury news about the conduct of public affairs is having an effect on the governing powers. The shocking revelations in the alternative media are just too much for the ruling party to handle. Someone must be fingered and what better way to do it than to cook up a “foreign plot” behind all these developments.

The political helmsmen are skating on thin ice with their crackdown on civil societies and the online media. By pursuing a campaign of mindless intimidation and blind persecution, they are only adding more fuel to fire: seekers after truth are more determined than ever to uncover more muck. The common citizens are more than willing to hit the streets again to highlight injustices and wrongdoings. No bad government can survive a citizens’ wrath.

A cornered animal

The general election will soon arrive and this is one crucial battle that will determine the fate of the ruling class. The incumbent lords must surely be aware that the wind is not blowing in their direction or the tide flowing their way and that the day of reckoning is at hand. It is this frightening prospect that is making them extremely edgy. Like a cornered animal, they have become dangerous. The “foreign plot” tale is one such rabid measure to ensure political survival at any cost.

In the run-up to the biggest electoral clash, it is very likely that the people will be bombarded with many more murky stories of American or Jewish-inspired conspiracies, communist creeps, planted spies, puppet masters. All those civil society groups will come under more intense attacks to “disarm” them and render them useless. The state-controlled media will be used to the hilt to villify and demonise the intended targets. All truth will disappear from the pages of the newspapers. Some prominent figures will probably stand in the dock – for the crime of questioning authority.

But when a government has fallen from grace, no amount of propaganda will save it from electoral retribution. Anything that issues from its mouth will be treated with amusement, at best, and scorn, at worst. The latest government plot to plot the downfall of its “enemies” simply does not carry any weight. It rings hollow. It will backfire. It will only reinforce public distrust of all official versions and accounts. People have been reading the truth elsewhere long ago.

NGOs and online news portals have become the main sources of information on anything to do with abuse of power, corruption, illegal amassing of wealth, shady deals, misuse of taxpayers’ money, police misconduct. More and more people are turning to them because they put little or no faith in the official organs of public opinion. They are in the vanguard of the movement for truth and that is what makes the government quakes. The government is merely fighting a rearguard action.

The corruption of Mahathir:

A few years ago Bangkok Post had published an article with the title as “The corruption of Mahathir by George Soros “ and its good to circulate this once in a while to remind people how the country has been damaged by Dr M, UMNO and his cronies.

George Soros is not only one of the best investors in the world but very well informed too. He has spelt clearly what Malaysians have known all the while. 

Malaysia with all the riches in raw materials should have a stronger currency but what started one for one equivalent with S'pore 30 yrs ago now has lost out to S'pore currency by 2.3 times.

Now Malaysians know why........Soros has explained in very great detail..... Of course one cannot get to read this in the main media in Malaysia .

Taxpayers and voters were made to pay for his visionionary expenses enriching selected vendors along the way all paid by taxpayer or rakyat's money. 


The corruption of Mahathir: 

SOROS' REPLY TO MAHATHIR 

Adapted from Bangkok Post (Not published locally)

I have always said Dr Mahathir is a menace to his own people. Now only you can see the effects of his foolishness when the ringgit has halved its value overnight and your economy goes kaput. Single handedly you have caused hardship to millions of your own people. You have built useless mega projects at tremendous cost to the country.

The telecoms tower in Kuala Lumpur and the highest building in the world show how stupid you are. Not only does it cause massive traffic jam, it has totally no purpose.If you need high ground for telecoms antennae a nearby mountain is there for free.

This tower has no purpose from the ground up to 300 metres. The satelites make this totally unneccesary. A fool and his money are soon parted. The only thing is you are the fool and the money belongs to Malaysians. You make 20% in every project, you have real estate in Japan and billions of shares corruptly acquired.

Your 3 sons are worth 8 billion US$. Where do they get this money? Of course, corruption.

You are known as the Marcos of Malaysia, having enriched yourself to the tune of billions.

You dare to shed crocodile tears during UMNO delegates meeting about the ills of corruption.

Yet you are the most corrupt of all the prime ministers before you. A thief is crying thief and hopes people look the other way. Who dares to say anything when the chief is caught with his hands in the candy jar?

You said wisdom is not the monopoly of the West. So is foolishness. You have more foolishness than most people would believe. Billions are used to build two high rise Petronas buildings that benefit nobody. They now stand tall, a symbol of stupidity and irresponsibility. Instead they just add on to traffic jams. What is this reclamation of 10 islands off Kedah? Totally absurd and stupid. Of course your benefit is 20%. And the bridge across from Malacca to Sumatra across international waters?

Why not build a bridge to the moon? I am sure you still can get your 20%. You called me a Moron. How can a Moron make so much money. By allowing short selling and borrowing millions of shares from your banks we fund managers made millions out of your inexperience and poor regulations.

You lose all Malaysians' money, therefore you are the Moron. Now you know too late and start crying over spilt milk.

In Australia you are known as the recalcitrant ego maniac; in UKthe corrupt bastard because of your stupid purchase of our movie studio and the 290 million ringgit Lotus racing car plant and the shady Pergau dam loans from the UK. They are useless to us and you still want to buy them.

What about buying British reject submarines through your agent, of course. The agent/ broker is designed to make millions out of the Malaysian government..
Your purchase of our battleships is at least 50% more than others are paying. Your purchase of 9 hospitals from UK lock, stock and barrel does not support your local architects or your industry and the British send you obsolete medical equipment. The design is atrocious, one end to the other is half a kilometer and there is no CT-scan, an absolute necessity.

In the UK your face appears in no less than 17 newspapers as a corrupt dictator. In Malaysia you are known as the (IBM) International Big Mouth. In Japan they call you the 'smallest one' (brain size). In Pacific islands, the Santa Claus (giving advice left and right). In south America they call you the parrot (he talks a lot but does not know what it is about). In Manila the living Marcos.

In Malaysia they are spending millions to lure tourists and you talk rubbish scaring every foreigner away. When he is dumb he is doubted a fool, when he opens his mouth it removes all doubt."

While I agree the West does not have the monopoly to wisdom, your actions are not the wisest either. Your EAEC has totally no support even in Asean. Your South-South dialogue meets with the same fate and what is this I hear of the Bridge from Peninsula Malaysia to Sumatra covering 20 miles across International shipping lane?
How crazy can one get? Even the Japanese don't have the money. This world's stupidity seems to be concentrated in one man's mind - yours.

The multimedia super corridor - MSC -. Well in USA its Most Stupid Concept because we Americans, would have thought of it light years before. Even if it makes money, we can copy this concept can't we?

Why do you want to spend your hard-earned money doing questionable projects? It will be like the Bakun project. Abandoned fund wasted and another white elephant. I always say politicians should not be involved in business. Your ministers are also businessmen and almost every official is enriching himself. Look at Rafidah Aziz, selling thousands of Approved Permits (APs) for cars each worth 20-30 thousand Malaysian dollars. Why not your government sell them and make the money? She has acquired millions of shares meant for bumis for free before she agrees to list them.

Look at your Selangor Chief Minister collecting millions for approving high rise buildings from businessman. He is worth a few billions. Unfortunately he was caught with a few million pocket money in Australia. Every Chief minister is awarding useless projects to his cronies then collecting secret pay offs on the side.

The Land Development Boards and the Economic Development Boards are used to bail out any loses suffered by politicians. The profits they keep, the loses they force the Government bodies to absorb. How can your poor ever close the gap when every good deal is snatched by your politicians? How can your country get out of poverty if all the billions of corruption money is taken out of the country?

Look at the Sarawak Chief Minister selling billions worth of timber concessions under the table; selling every piece of state land to businessmen without tender; using his own companies to obtain lucrative government contracts; selling approval signatures for a fee 'you pay I approve'. He has 8 billion US stashed overseas. Thousands of acres of land are given to one or two companies while thousands of poor people still live in cardboard makeshift homes; have no water and shit into the river..

Thousands of acres of land are sold to companies for plantations while the natives do not have even one acre to their name. He is selling sand near the beaches to one company for earth filling and then ask the government to spend millions to protect the coastline when erosion occurs.

He lost 300 million of the Sarawak government money trying to make computer chips. He has built a port in Northern Sarawak town in water so shallow it needs dredging every year. The Prime Minister built highways without tender, your cronies get the deal and the price double. Your Langkawi airport runway was built double the cost by your own company, Ekran.

The Malaysian nation has lost at least 30 billions during your last 10 years of corrupt rule.

One billion lost from the purchase of phantom Skyhawk war planes nobody has ever seen (are they still in the Nevada desert, USA?). 

3 billion lost from the London tin scandal (you thought you could corner the London tin market without knowing the Americans have a stockpile! Stupidity at its best. 

6 billion Perwaja steel mill where nobody even knows where the money goes,

3 billion bank Bumiputra scandal when George Tan bribed all the bank officials to lend him the money.. 

6 billion forex lost by Bank Negara (the fool and his money are soon parted) and 6 billion to build three of the world's tallest buildings (built by Japanese and Koreans and furniture imported from France - not Malaysia) 

and 1 billion lost from purchase of British warships including fees paid to the broker and under the table.. 

Add the 10 billion you stole and 5 billion taken by Ministers.

In the 1997 the World Journalists meeting voted Dr Mahathir the Prime Minister of the Decade. It sounded strange to everybody until it was revealed those who voted against are threatened by IRD officers and with losing their jobs. In New York the United Nations 1997 meeting, the most corrupt Prime Minister of the decade is President Suharto and second Dr Mahathir (Actually Dr Mahathir should take first place but bribed the Indonesians to take honour of Number One.

There are Fifty thousand of your university students not given places in Malaysia but are good enough for places overseas resulting in billions of dollars lost. The British and the Australians are thinking how stupid. Your best students are sent overseas raising their standards while as in most countries the best are kept in local universities and the rejects sent overseas..

A university student in Hong Kong is much more prestigeous than any Australian counterpart. You have been colonised by the British so long you cannot even educate your own people. Look at Hong Kong or Singapore, less than 5% study overseas. All the money saved. Your country could save billions if every student overseas is recalled to a local university, and at the same time raising your own standards.

Your people are still without shoes, without land to farm, without homes, bathing in rivers shitting in holes in the ground, without water and electricity. Your cities are concrete jungles without greenery and open spaces. Your KL is jammed with traffic. Yet you still keep on building high rises. You should come down from the clouds and stop daydreaming and firmly plant your feet in the ground. Your schools are cramped 500 students to an acre and thousands of acres are given free to some politicians who leave them idle. Your parks are being taken by politicians to build shophouses and every cabinet minister is a land-grabbing businessman who builds roads only to their cronies' land.

The Malaysians' Prayer, "Ya Allah, we thank you for your gifts of timber, oil and grain. But then the devil sent us corrupt Mahathir without a Brain and look we are back to square one again. So just take Dr Mahathir back to Hell And we will be alive and well."

In China people have been shot for embezzling one thousand dollars.With 8 billion you have stolen, therefore you would be shot 80 thousand times. Now you are leading an anti-corruption campaign. We all know what you should do. Look yourself in the mirror. You see the crooked you. Then use your left hand and handcuff your right hand. You have put the opposition leader and his son in jail when they said in parliament you are the richest PM in the world. And his colleague Mr Karpal Singh too for 2 years.

So I get a reward or bribe if I now say you are the poorest PM in this world? Your 3 sons are sitting on the board of directors of more than 200 companies. They must have been educated in Harvard school of business and obtained distintions? Or is it "you don't know me, you don't do business in Malaysia" law that applies. Billions of ringgit of Employee's Provident Fund and public Petronas funds are used to bail out your sons who make losses investing in every venture you thought you could make money. 

How unethical and corrupt. Every one of your politicians is sitting on the board of tens of companies making thousands without any effort, lending their VIP names to borrow millions from local banks without collateral.. Now these have become non- performing loans. Now you want more then 20 million Malaysians to sacrifice for the folly of ONE man? Why not the fool resign and admit he wasted and took most of the money. I could teach you how to put your economy on track but first you must apologize to the Malaysian people.

Govt paid half-a-million ringgit more for RIVs?

Sept 11,2012: The Sultan of Johor’s claim that he had bought a Rapid Intervention Vehicles (RIV) some half-a-million ringgit cheaper than the price paid by the Defence ministry has brought back concerns over lack of transparency in military spending.

However, Defense minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi was far from denying the claim when he said the Sultan’s criticism was being taken positively.

Last Saturday, Sultan Ibrahim Ismail who awarded the RIV to the Special Forces Regiment of which he is its Colonel Commandant expressed his disappointment that military equipment was lacking in quality yet purchased at exorbitant prices.

“Do not supply low quality equipment which are priced multiple times higher,” the ruler reportedly said.

Zahid said his ministry would probe into the difference in prices of the RIV bought by the Sultan at RM150,000 and the one sold by the supplier at RM690,000.

“I will scrutinise to see if there are differences in specifications,” he added.

Unusually high prices paid for military equipment had led Pakatan Rakyat to call for the setting up of a Parliament Oversight Committee to review and monitor defence expenditure.

Last year, PR questioned the purchase of six littoral combatant ships (LCS) after the cost ballooned from by 50 percent from RM6 billion to RM9 billion. The Defence ministry was also told to explain the acquisition of 257 armoured personnel vehicles (APVs) costing RM7.55 billion last year.

Abolishing PPSMI is not the answer

We read with interest NST’s Sunday Interview with the deputy prime minister (DPM) “Improving quality in all areas of education” (September 9, 2012) in particular the response given to the question on the teaching and learning of science and mathematics in English (PPSMI).

It appears that the DPM is more afraid that his ministry is seen as flip-flopping on the policy than its impact on our children and their future.

Although PAGE had representatives in most state dialogue sessions there were also even more supporters of the policy who are in favour of it to continue as an option, to be exact 250,000 online.

No doubt English proficiency is important, learning the scientific and mathematical knowledge, in its lingua franca which is English, our second language, should be capitalised on and not discouraged, a basic management strategy.

By abolishing the policy, the DPM is preventing many of our children from learning the knowledge in a language they are most comfortable with, a belief UNESCO has always advocated.

The objective of PPSMI is to learn the knowledge in science and mathematics and not to learn English. The DPM appears to have failed to understand this distinction.

In ignoring PPSMI in the blueprint, the DPM has failed to have a proper science policy in place to arrest the decline in the interest in science. The government has cautioned that of the 28 per cent of students who do proceed to higher education, only 17 per cent of these students pursue the science stream, and falling.

If it is the delivery method which failed the policy, then we must ask why it failed and how it can be corrected and improved upon. The answer is not to abolish it even more so after RM5 billion has been spent.

The government under the Prime Minister (PM) wants to bring the nation forward through 1 Malaysia, science, technology and innovation but the policies of the DPM (specifically the abolition of PPSMI) are pushing the nation backwards in the acquisition of knowledge and in enhancing racial integration which is crucial for our continued success.

* Datin Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim is chairman of PAGE.

Roots & Boots - Made In Malaysia

The days had gone, too long, it seems like yesterday,

This is the land we’re born and where we gonna stay,

The pride is there, we know and it’s always in our hearts,

We gonna stand and fly the flag of nations pride,

The war had gone, and all the heroes had their way,

But if its strikes again, we know we gonna stay,

We gonna stand and fight, we’ll die for this prideland,

We’ll show the foes, we’re great coz we’re the countrymen,

And when you hear the call we know that you’ll be there,

It’s for the stripes, the moon and star,

Coz we all proud, that we were Made In Malaysia...

We had been raised to trust the God and to the King,

We gonna stand our ground, the strength that comes within,

So if you think you got those feeling that is true,

And it’s all for the yellow, the red and white and blue,

We gonna stand (We gonna shout),

This is the land (That we are proud),

Let’s join the line and you’ll know what it’s all about,

So if you think (You feel the same),

Raise all the flags (Of our land),

And feel the pride inside, you know that it is true,

We just don’t care, just who you are,

Just shout it loud,

that you’re were Made In Malaysia...