Wednesday, 18 August 2010
Our Superbumis
Last year I wrote about Malaysia's super 30. I was inspired by the Indian educator, Anand Kumar. He selected 30 students from the underclass of Indian society and teaches and trains them to get into the Indian Institute of Technology, which some people say is better than MIT. Last year I also wrote instead of bringing Shahrukh Khan over to Malaysia, let's bring more of Anand KUmars here.
The Malaysian super 30 are those who champion that Bumis must get 30% of whatever they can think of. I was saying, the target of the 30 percenters is nothing but self aggrandizement for the selected few.
Now, in addition to the super 30, we have our own super 40, the super bumis. Almost 30 of them are non Malays. These are the superbumis.
Chua Soi Lek is asking the government to open up the GLCs, the Oil and Gas Industry- open up everything in the name of competition, transparency so that we will put the economy on high gear. Very ingenious I say. But Soi Lek can't ask these to be opened without also willing to open up Chinese dominated business enclaves and fiefdoms.
So here goes. Why doesn't he call for the opening up of Public Bank to see whether the composition of Bumis there is right? Public Bank in its early days used EPF money too. If there are Bumis there, please publish their names so that we can see whether they are the privileged bumis? Open up Hong Leong, Open up Berjaya Corporation, Open up Sunway, Open up Yeoh Teong Lay, open up the various Chinese Hongs for us to see whether they are practicing 1 Malaysia. open up Tanjung and the various companies owned by Ananda. See whether they, having leveraged on the NEP were also implementing it.
Then we shall ask what Soi Lek wants opened so that we can disembowel them alongside those in the preceding paragraph.
In Malaysia we have had our own Anand Kumars of a different kind. These were our political leaders wanting to jump start Malay control of the economy by conferring on them the green lane to economic riches. By giving them monopolies, licenses and special arrangements to acquire shares in listed companies. These are the leaders, my fellow Malays- who bastardised our NEP.
The efforts continue today. Our political leaders entrusted in re-arranging the wealth owning structure in the country are helping themselves first and the people second. Once up theer, you draw up all those various hurdles in the forms of this and that regulations, rulings etc, to prevent ordinary bumis from participating in the economic game.
When the NEP was launched, the sources of wealth owned by foreigners were brought back into the hands of government entities. You had London Tin, Guthrie Corporation, Harrisons and Crossfield, Sime Darby and countless others. You didn't see any individuals assigned and parked there to help themselves do you? these were put in the hands of Malaysians through government owned entities.
Those were the early days of the NEP before it was bastardized. It wasn't the NEP any more. We had a new economic model then. It was known by people as the Ali-Baba Economic Model. This model goes right up the upper echelons of leadership. The royalties and the each top leader have their own Baba fence to bring in money for them. for the Malays, they have a special case of economic model- the Putera-Bumi model. Putera first, Bumi later. Not even second. Much much later.
In 1976, Nazir was a primary school student and I remembered a photograph of him and cousin Haris Hussein on in class at VI. Today of course he is the CEO of CIMB, a sad reminder of once deceased BBMB. BBMB was essentially an ATM for the political leaders who bastardized the NEP.
I am not going to respond to A Voice's take on what I wrote. He got it wrong. I am one of the earliest to dispute the suitability of NEM being incubated by a few foreign experts who don't know local conditions. I have said before that maybe the PM asked the wrong question- he asked how can I make my economy grow into a high income economy? Give me a model- forget the collateral damage. So he got the standard recipe of the free market economy in the raw. He can still have a free market economy if he asked the right questions. But because he surrounds himself with people who also think like him and not a team with a diversity of opinions, the right question weren't asked.
When I met Ibrahim Ali – I asked him how confident was he in seeing his resolutions taken up seriously by the PM? how sure was he that his resolutions handed over to Najib amidst much fanfare are not given to one of Najib's numerous PAs and then relegated to the backrooms of the PM's office? The resolutions were probably spat on. He wasn't sure. He is like the person who thinks posting a letter means the intended recipient has actual information and his job is completed. Not time to open the budu bottle yet abe hem.
He said he was and I said how could you monitor it? He didn't know. So I am asking his people again- would they be confident the resolutions they passed will be implemented knowing that the PM has spent more than RM 60 million to draw up a new economic plan and had numerous labs on this and that carried out?
The MCA Chinese Economic Congress( not the Malaysian Chinese mind you) is more successful because it reaffirms what the PM wants. Whether that is good is another matter. Whether it is agreeable to Perkasa members is another thing. But I thought the Perkasa Members were peeing in their pants in jubilation after getting assurances from the PM at their congress? Why don't they now openly criticize the PM now that he is actually saying the NEPish policies are finished? What the MCA Chinese Economic Congress is saying are more in sync with PM' thinking. It is successful in those terms. Catching the attention of the PM. The PM must be thinking, with this support albeit from a Chinese Economic Congress he is onto something correct. That's how the PM functions- he just needs to hear some reassuring voices fortifying his discomfiture.
Before I talk about Chua Soi Lek, let me talk about Nazir first.
Nazir himself is a product of this bastardized version of NEP- some residual of the NEP that says affirmative action must include giving ownership to someone close to the political leadership or someone who is seen with an inherent status( such as being the son of a PM, Minister etc). on his own merits, I don't think Nazir would have made it to the top. What happened was he had the situation made for him and people like him. He comes from an eco system where the wealth distribution machinery depends on wide discretionary powers of decision makers. That is why he is now the 3rd highest paid CEO earning around RM 14 million a year. Yes sir, go salivate or drown in your drool.
If I were to give a simpler definition of a bastardized NEP it is just playing favorites. A person holding ultimate power has the unbridled discretionary power to appoint anyone to wealth creating sources. Capability is second. More important is to gain access and be counted of in the leaders inner circle. This is the old story of ascriptive norms- people are identified as worthy of anything by virtue of his inherited status and bloodline.
The superbumis- Indian and Chinese businessmen recognize this- as long there isn't a system to tweak the wealth distribution system but instead its working depended on the discretionary powers of people in power, they knew they can profit from it. All they need to do is to get into the 'knickers' of decision makers and they can manipulate the outcome. Yeoh Teong Lay was just another of those numerous Chinese contractors under the YTL senior who was given a head start by DR Mahathir. Ananda Krishna began business as an oil trader selling basically PETRONAS Crude Oil. He made tons of money selling what belongs to PETRONAS. He then went on and on. And he doesn't want to share the wealth. That's why he turned private many of his companies that were public.
I wrote about our own efforts of creating the super 30. Bumiputeras holding 30% of equity in business organizations notably the listed companies and those companies wanting to be listed. So selected Malays were given shares either free or 100% financed in listed companies. The PM once stated that the value of shares given to Malays from 1970 was RM 54 billion. The figure is now RM 2 billion which means that Malays who got the shares cashed out early. Put simply, these are the saboteurs of the NEP. I have suggested that the names of all these who sold out be published and never to be given any economic concessions forever. The government has of course declined. Probably they didn't even read the article.
Besides our own super 30 consisting of the puteras in the Bumiputera, the sons of UMNO leaders, the cronies of leaders, the well heeled and well connected, the fixers, we have also created another economic caste- the superbumis. You can actually buy yourself a bumi status and acquire the paraphernalia that confer you a status better than real toiling bumis. You get showered with titles of tan sri,dato seri, buy youself a datukship and have all the kampong folks grovel at your feet. 
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