BN Fixed Deposit in Sarawak

Why rural S’wakians keep voting ‘feudal’ Taib

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:02

By Joseph Tawie

KUCHING: Chief Minister Taib Mahmud runs a ‘repressive’ government, one that is 'worse than the communist', says a local activist. Yet the rural people of Sarawak continue to vote him in. Why is that?
“It’s  because the government has perfected the method of making the people feel helpless. The government has created a situation where they (natives) are dependent. In everything they (natives) need, they can always depend on the government to provide,” said John Brian.

To further weaken the native network and strengthen his political hold over them, Taib has deviously pursued a divide and rule policy.

His latest is a new policy which splits the Dayak natives into ethnic groups – Iban, Bidayuh, Kayan, Kenyah, Penan, Kelabit and Lun Bawang.
An amendment to the Sarawak Interpretation Ordinance 2004, tabled and passed by the state assembly, has declassified the word 'Dayak'.
The term ‘Dayak' is now banned in all official government communication.

The move, said Brian, paves the way for Taib to pit one community against the other, keep them repressed and ensure his continued rule.

Sense of helplessness

According to him, years of  false indoctrination and purposeful exploitation of the native ignorance had contributed to a prevailing 'sense of helplessness’ in the rural areas.

He said not many in the rural and interior areas are educated and this works well for the government .

“The government has been lying and cheating the people by telling them how great their achievements are and how the country has progressed. When you are not educated, its easy to believe them.

“But if you go to the rural areas, nothing has changed: there are no roads, no clean water; and electricity. Healthcare is very poor and the mortality rate remains the highest in the country,” he said.

There are some economic activities provided for by the government via its Minor Rural Projects (MRP), but Brian notes in his blog DayakBaru that the MRP is a ‘miserable’ handout that will not contribute to the economic progress of the rural people.

“I'm still mulling on what type of government is this when it is prepared to see its people getting poorer and poorer by the day.

“To me this is a repressive government which is worse than the communist government,” he added.
FMT

Aspan Alias on NEP Bastardized

I have been watching from the sideline on the heavy issue on Nazir Razak who believes that the NEP was ‘bastardized’ for the advantage of a few privileged. I am saddened that everyone is talking on issue which is non-existence. NEP was totally disbanded in 1990 20 years after it was launched.

We are witnessing a vicious quarrel between Ibrahim Ali (PERKASA) and Nazir and the quarrel between Chua Soi Lek and Ibrahim Ali. If everyone reads and follows their articulations on the issue debated one will be totally confused as the NEP does not exist any longer.

I am not sure what Nazir was trying to say, but if he was saying that the NEP was bastardized during the tail end of its existence, than there are some relevance and logic to his comment. Since mid-1984 until the end of NEP in 1990, the policy was ruthlessly bastardized.

Let us recollect from the start of the NEP until it was disbanded by Dr Mahathir in 1990. In practice Mahathir was quite allergic to the NEP and he called on the Malays and that Bumis to throw away their ‘tongkat’.

NEP was well thought policy where it benefited everyone directly or indirectly. NEP had spelt a clear intention of its formulation and the intention was only one; that was National Unity.

This holistic intention was agreeable by all races when Tun Razak was able to convince every race in this country that National Unity was the only way to ensure the nation’s security and the people’s well being be taken care of, and live in togetherness in civil and harmonious nation.

To achieve this ultimate (National Unity) the nation had to go through an affirmative action, that was via the following;

Firstly was to eradicate poverty irrespective of races. This was the main agenda actually. Tun Razak and friends believed that poverty can ruin a nation. The Malays were poor, the Indian were trapped in a poor living environment in the estates and rubber plantations while there were also poor Chinese in the sub urban areas even though the nation’s economy was controlled by them.

In reality the economic ownership of the Chinese was less than 25 percent during that period. The main chunk of the economy was in the hands of the foreigners. So there was nothing racial about the policy.

Tun Razak or anyone would believe that if most of the people were poor than that could be a very serious political destabilizing factor that could lead the country into political anarchy and the 13 May incidence was the living example where economic disparity could cause chaos.

Secondly in order to achieve the National Unity the country and the government had to reduce the income disparity between the haves and the have not’s and the diparity between the incomes of the urban and the rural population. The rural people were too far behind in income and opportunities and the government felt that this issue must be addressed holistically without affecting any other race or quarter.

In order to reduce the disparity of incomes the government wanted to do away with recognizing races by their economic functions. We didn’t want to recognize Malay as farmers in the padi fields and small holders. We wanted to do away recognizing the Indians as plantation or as workers of gigantic estates that were mostly owned by foreigners, like Harrison and Crossfields, Sime Darby, Guthries, London Tin (now MMC), Tradewinds and many others.

That was why Tun Razak instructed Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah to bring back all these companies back to Malaysia from their head quarters in London. All these companies were finally brought back to the nation and to implement the exercise it needed a person with nationalistic sensitivity and had a strong political will.

The last of the big corporation that was brought back was Guthries and that happened on Monday the 7th of September 1981 after a lengthy and tedious preparation years before that date.

The brief narration above needed to be actualized and the government were very serious of uplifting the wealth of the Bumiputra to the 30 percent equity by 1990 without taking away the ones owned by the other races.

Hence within the sphere of NEP they holistic goals where the Bumiputra were given the target of 30 percent wealth and equity holdings, the Non Bumi was given the target of 40 percent and the rest for the foreigners who were looking at this country as the potential centre of economic vibrancy.

As the NEP was to increase the Malay capitalization and equity, it was agreed that the Bumiputra should not take away the portions that were already owned by other races. The formula to the plan was to enlarge the nation economic cake. So the 30 percent allocated for the Bumis were through the enlarged cake of the nation’s economy.

Everyone was happy to implement the policy. As far as I remember every economic development project both the Bumi and Non Bumi worked things out in a very cordial and cooperative atmosphere.

The non Malays were most of the time enjoying the early fruits of any social engineering projects. For example the Felda, then Called LKTP (lembaga Kemajuan Tanah Persekutuan) which was then busy opening up lands for plantations in the scheme made the Non Bumi the first group to enjoy clearing the land and the supply of fertilizers and other needs of the scheme.

The Bumi had the land the non Bumi had earlier enjoyed the clearing jobs that were worth in hundreds of million of ringgit. Everybody was happy and the busiest department in co-coordinating all NEP projects was the Implementation and Co-Ordination Unit of the PM Department (ICU).

Those days everything was transparent and could visually saw the focus of the implementers were at the peak without thinking of making personal gain and greed.

The Non Malays respected both the Malay politicians and the government implementers as they witnessed the most outstanding episode of nation building was implemented with pride by everybody.

Even the Non Bumi were happy to assist the Bumi to prosper together with them as they accept the fact that prosperous Bumi will make them more enjoyable undertaking businesses in the vibrant economy.

In short the real economic impetus for the country was the NEP. BUMI and Non Bumi enjoyed living in the most cordial as far as history can reminisce.

Bumiputra’s stake in commerce and Industry and the equity ownership increased tremendously from 2.7 in 1970 to 18.2 in 1984.

But when the change of guard in the Ministry of Finance happened in June 1984 anything surrounding the NEP was slowly neglected. Daim made many changes that was detrimental to NEP.

From then on we saw leaders in power were also interested to become rich themselves. From then on the leaders in power were competing with the ordinary Malay businessmen and that was the time when the Bumi special rights shifted to a very small and exclusive members who surrounded the PM and our great Daim.

The Bumi special rights which were meant for Malay and other indigenous were transferred to names like Vincent Tan, YTL, Halim Saat and many other names that were familiar to everyone in the country.

All these new Malay Bumiputra exclusive cronies were actually the Bumis, not for people like you and me anymore.

This was the period when the whole NEP was ill treated and pitilessly bastardized and I agree with Nazir Razak at this point.

To be continued……………..

Aspan Alias on NEP Bastardized 2

I am continuing what I was writing yesterday about the issue of bastardizing the NEP that was raised by Nazir Razak the brother–in-law of Rosmah Mansor. Nazir sounded very thankful being the product of the NEP and that policy made him where he is today.

Resulting from Nazir’s strong statement Ibrahim Ali of PERKASA reacted muscularly against Nazir and called Nazir as inexperience and Ibrahim was just short of saying ‘you shut up’ to Nazir.

I appreciate Ibrahim for speaking on the Malay gallery and that is fine with me and everybody. The Malay issues that PERKASA is resting its laurel on are fitting to some extent. The Malays are certainly in need of a ‘shoulder’ to lean on as the party which is supposed to care for them is flirting around with others leaving their members without lead and pointer. Hence the NGO Ibrahim is leading becomes an expedient premise for the disgruntled UMNO members and Malays to get associated with.

PERKASA has been overt and explicitly doing the tetchy job for what the Malays is at today. Ibrahim has been wailing and has been putting the government leadership on trial for negating from the original role of observing the Malay rights and protecting other races as provided by the Federal Constitutions.

I must say it loudly that in effect what Nazir has said concurs with the struggles of PERKASA. Both are not happy with the Malay’s progress. The difference between these two personalities is the position or angle they look the issue from.

Nazir was talking about the contributory factors that made the NEP a failure and he chose to blame the successors to the NEP inventors for bastardizing the well thought policy. Ibrahim on the other hand is looking from the angle of ill fated Malays who have been the victim of bastardizing the NEP done by the successors of NEP founder.

Ibrahim is no more young and if he cares to recollect history which is still recent, he must remember how the prostituting the NEP started and he must also admit that what he (Ibrahim) is complaining today is the result of dismantling the NEP which Nazir has rightly said.

The introduction of direct negotiations on the gigantic fast tract projects was the killer for the NEP. Development projects with the tune of big billions destroyed the basic fabric of the NEP. Bumiputra was not able to participate as the recipients of those projects were already predetermined and more often than not, the same faces within the cronies secured the jobs.

Let us be reminded that the ‘Unit Penyertaan Bumiputra’ which was set up in every bank and government department was unceremoniously set aside and not many people remember it any more.

The government went on with express project and was very proud of GDP growth of almost double digit so on and so forth. The late Tun Dr Ismail told the last General Assembly he attended in 1972 that we were able to grow with double digit growth but the slowing down of the growth was for national purpose; that Bumiputra was not yet ready and if the economic development growth was too fast it might leave the Malays and other indigenous far behind. Hence that would bring political instability. BUT that caution was not remembered and appreciated. Our leaders wanted what they wanted to do very quickly.

Hence the marginal growth of Malay and Bumiputra equity holding was so insignificant. A day before Dr Mahathir stepped down from power he mentioned the official figure of Malay equity as at 2002 as 19 percent.

It simply means that during the period of 1984 until 2002 there was only an increase of 0.8 percent Bumiputra equity. For this I don’t know what to say about Daim Zainuddin who took the mantle of the nation’s economy. BUT he was and still is appreciated by the exclusive cronies who were able to secure project by billion of ringgit then.

1990s were the period when all the special ‘Bumiputras’ with big names were flying in personal executive jets, some of them even had 2 jets, one of which to be used to fly PM, DPM and Senior Ministers and exclusive heads of GLCs and related personality within the corridors of power.

The spirit of NEP was swiftly forgotten. Our corporate guys within PM and Daim’s circle were spending the ill gotten money more than the expenses of the CEOs of world’s big corporation like Toyota, Honda and other gigantic names in the world class corporations.

BUT of late we don’t see the jets anymore. I am told that all those were repossessed and many are back to flying commercial flights. If that is true, then what a close friend of mine said has been proven right. “Owning a jet is only two-time happiness; one is when we get the delivery and the other is when we are able to sell it”. So that is the reason why we only see Dr Mahathir who flies in and out of the nation in a white Global Express.

The operative Malay businessmen were slowly thinning in numbers as almost big opportunities were taken away by the ‘special bumiputras’ who worked hand-in--glove with the powerful power house for negotiated tenders where prices and costs of the development projects were determined by a ‘cartel like’ apparatus. They were not worried because the forgiving ralyat and in particular the Malays continued on supporting them.

They took the Malays and others as donkeys with one responsibility, i.e just support them. They would be telling the people, we have Putrajaya, we have KLCC, we have the tallest flagpole in the world so on and on.

So Nazir is very close to telling the truth but may be he is the wrong person to talk about the issue. He is certainly together with some others who enjoyed being within the corridors of power right from his infant age until now.

I never had the opportunity like Nazir has, as my father was a policeman, not the PM of this nation. Like many others I have no capacity to be a social climber.

Malaysian Honoured by Queen

Malaysian lawyer honoured by Queen Elizabeth

• News

 2010-08-18 12:39

MELBOURNE, Wednesday 18 August 2010 (Bernama) -- When Malaysian lawyer Lim Chuen Ren arrived here in 1988, he was surprised to see that the Asian community, especially the Chinese, did not have much financial resources and it was expensive to buy Asian produce.
"Australia was in recession and the issue of Asian immigration raised its head," said Lim, 61, who has a successful law firm in the central business district, here.
"It was also when John Howard (later to become prime minister) waded into the debate against Asian immigration. And you got the usual 'Asian go home' graffiti and other insults," he told Bernama.
Compelled to tackle the problem, Perak-born Lim helped to establish the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Victoria, and became its founding secretary.
He then ran the Chinese Entrepreneurs Programme aimed at promoting the growth and business acumen of new Chinese businesses by matching them with experienced entrepreneurs, while at the same time providing mentoring and leadership.
"Those days, we had to speak up for the Asian community and help (members of) the Asian community, who were usually not conversant in English, deal with these issues," he said.
"We organised meetings with the government, and the Australian authorities were very keen to resolve and assist the community."
Lim has also been active in promoting trade between Malaysia and Australia through the Malaysian External Trade Development Corporation (Matrade) and the Malaysian Industrial Development Authority (Mida).
In June this year, Queen Elizabeth of Britain honoured Lim with the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to business, and to the Chinese community of Victoria.
Lim, who studied at St Anthony's School in Teluk Intan and, later law at the University of Singapore, was one of the earliest lawyers to promote mediation to the Bar Council of Malaysia.
"I introduced mediation to Catherine Eu, who was then the chief executive of the Bar Council of Malaysia," he said.
Lim continues to provide community mediation. (By NEVILLE D'CRUZ/Bernama)

MySinchew 2010.08.18

Sakmongkol on Superbumis

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 3^rd 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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Posted by sakmongkol AK47