Desiderata's sojourn to quiet time away from POLITICS is rudely interrupted by the MAN of the HOUR who can NOT be ignored. Former PM TUN DR MAHATHIR MOHAMAD, was in his element again yesterday, in his capacity of Adviser to the national car maker, PROTON. And any social minded Blogger cannot escape his overpowering dominance of the NEWS in this morning’s media coverage, mainly page 1 highlights in all the mainstream papers.
Witness NST July 6, 2005 with headlines:
PROTON’S SAGA
Dr M to the defence …
• ON TENGKU MAHALEEL (CEO, Proton)
• ON APPROVED PERMITS
• ON THE UNDERDECLARATION
To Desiderata, the issues raised by the good doctor, who ruled the Malaysian landscape for 22 years before handing the reins of government to Pak Lah about 1-1/2 years ago, are matters of national importance and can make or break Pak Lah’s grip on the Barisan Nasional-led government if he did not handle the burgeoning issues properly and effectively.
First, let’s look at Dr Mahathir’s elaboration on the key points:
• (1) I think Tengku Mahaleel is duty-bound to protect Proton…. What has been said against Proton (criticisms and negative views) undermines Proton’s Proton’s credibility and therefore, its sales. A good CEO must defend his company.”
• (2) Of the 67,000 approved permits (APs) issued last year, only 12,600 were given to 82 companies while 20 companies received 54,400. There seems to be some irregularity here. Why is there a small number of companies getting such a big number of APs? This is not the spirit of nurturing Bumiputera entrepreneurship whereby the APs should benefit a big number of people rather than a few.
• (3) I asked the minister (not named, but clearly referred to Rafidah Aziz, the International Trade and Industry Minister) to check on the under-declaration of South Korean cars several times from the time I was PM and as recently as three months ago. However, the minister didn’t make any attempt to investigate and the cars continued to be imported below the cost of raw materials.
The former PM was right in (1) as it’s indeed the duty of any head of organization, corporate or government or civic and social, to defend his/her entity in its best interests. However, when the oversighting body of PROTON (in this case, the Government) draws up a policy that runs counter to the CEO’s views, it leads to a crossroads of whether the CEO would have to go, or the Government would entertain a review of the said policy. This is the dilemma facing Tengku Mahaleel Ariff.
On (2), I had indeed voiced support in a few of my writings here that the publishing of the PA holders is the RIGHT THING TO DO, in line with Pak Lah’s professed commitment to transparency and good governance, and open and responsbible government. (This is elaborated later.)
On (3), the government should study if there is a prima facie case against the said Minister for “insubordination” … Can even Tun Mahathir himself initiate “retrospective” action against his former Cabinet minister for going against Cabinet decision and direction? These are important issues that Pak Lah’s administration has to confront. Meanwhile, the said Minister should be asked to “stand down” – on suspension?
From here onwards, I wish to draw the relevance of certain points in Desiderata’s series of essays ruminating on Paul Krugman’s original column on LOSING OUR COUNTRY… in The New York Times of June 10, 2005. (Desiderata ran the series in 4 parts from June 29-July 2, 2005, with the Final Part contributed by Guest Blogger SABRINA TAN), with the following contextual extracts:
* In the 1960's America was a place in which very few people were extremely wealthy, many blue-collar workers earned wages that placed them comfortably in the middle class, and working families could expect steadily rising living standards and a reasonable degree of economic security.
** Working families have seen little if any progress over the past 30 years. Adjusted for inflation, the income of the median family doubled between 1947 and 1973. But it rose only 22 percent from 1973 to 2003, and much of that gain was the result of wives' entering the paid labor force or working longer hours, not rising wages.
*** But the wealthy have done very well indeed. Since 1973 the average income of the top 1 percent of Americans has doubled, and the income of the top 0.1 percent has tripled.
Indded, Dr Mahathor’s revelation that the APs had been “inequitably” distributed has always been a common “abuse” of the government’s programmes, e.g. in distribution of Bumniputera shares in listed companies, in allocation of taxi permits, in allocation of scholarships (an annual recurrent issue!).
I recall there was a case highlighted again in the media of allocations of special share issues (of listed company/-ies) involving a Minister’s relative. The relative-applicant's initial allocation was sent back for “review” by the Minister for a bigger quantum —- in the region of million of shares. There was a clear case of “conflict of interests” situation, yet the case was finally "dismissed”!
My contention is: for instance in allocating one million shares to ONE INDIVIDUAL compared with breaking the allocation into 100 lots of 10,000 shares to benefit less well-to-do beneficiaries like hawkers, farmers and small businesspeople. I’d rather
see 1,000 Bumiputera less well-off being assisted to a higher standard of living than to create another Bumiputera millionaire, or helping a millionaire to become a multi-millionaire. That’s my humble understanding of “equitable” distribution of wealth, or maybe my dear educated Minister of International Trade and Industry, or other Cabinet colleagues, beg to differ?
Aren't the Government's policies such as concentrating the APs in the hands of selected corporates (presumably well-connected and already have arrived in life...) going to widen the gap between have and have-not Malaysians? Isn't this a recipe for instability and disaster in the long term? Hello, Malaysia, are our leaders, always preacing racial harmony and propspering thy neighbours -- are you lisening?
Malaysians have seen policies which were formulated in the 1960s and 1970s and targeted with honourable objectives such as bridging the gap between the have's and havenot's and also to disengage the identification of specific jobs and professions and functional occupations for daily livehood with certain ethnic groups.
These policies which were initially planned to last 20 years --assuming the objectives would have been largely achieved within that time span -- were extended for a decade or two, and are now in danger of being enshrined forever to the majority of Malaysians's dismay and foreboding. We as a nation are no more ennobled by their objectives; the leaders have deviated and have embarked on a journey on waste and greed -- leading, not guiding, this nation on the road to suicide, riding on political greed and expediency.
I find that the government's continued walk down this path with many policies based on ethnicity, not for the common good, tending to divide rather than heading towards the social objective of equalising society based on needs -- this is the beginning of a journey that will lose us our country. Everywhere we turn, we witness this greed, immense greed, that's frightening, that drives our politics, our daily lives.
The disbursement of scholarships has seen three to four decades of abuse in inequities and injustices committed against the common citizenry, who it must be stressed, are all "equal" taxpayers before the law, and therefore have a right to expectations that the government which collects their taxes to use the monies fairly and equitably. But we all know that performers were victims to the system, which is vulnerable to seeing students with inferior results but with the "right" political and corporate connections get the major portion of the scholarships allocations.Yes, even ministers' children feel their children have priority to such scholarships, when their "needs" rank very low compared with the performing kampung or village lad/lass, don't you think so? If a "needs" basd system has been put in place from the very beginning, Malaysia would have begun its nation-building process much, much earlier.
Yes, the country has succeeded in building up a sizeable middle class that crosses ethnic lines, which is to be deemed as good and desirable. In Krugman's vocabulary, which I totally agree, as he stated:"The fact is that working families aren't sharing in the economy's growth, and face growing economic insecurity. And there's good reason to believe that a society in which most people can reasonably be considered middle class is a better society - and more likely to be a functioning democracy - than one in which there are great extremes of wealth and poverty."
Would Pak Lah proceed to act aggressively on the “big fish” – both in government, and in the corporate sector -- in his fight against corruption and show his government is really committed to transparency and good governance? For example, Dr Mahathir’s repeated appeals that the government publish the lists of approved permits (AP) holders (with his son identified by International Trade and Industry Minister Rafidah Aziz as one such holder...) have been rebuffed. I support the good doctor's calls not because it came from a former nation's CEO, but that IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO -- all in line with Pak Lah's professed commitment to good governance.
Or maybe the lists, when made public, would show that certain individuals have been given immensely large allocations of the APs. Is it true that a certain long-serving Minister’s relative was/is a substantial beneficiary of the AP system? Pak Lah, come clean on this if you have nothing to hide!
Yes, this brings to mind the issue of doing business with not KNOWHOW, but KNOW-WHO. Yes, it's CONNECTIONS, CONNECTIONS, CONNECTIONS! YoungSabrina, writing from a university campus in New Zealand, says it very well —- let us recap from the 4th part of LOSING OUR COUNTRY…?:
"First of all when I looked at the phrase “Our country”, the question that comes into my mind was, do we actually have the right to call Malaysia ‘OUR country’?
In OUR country, everyone gets to enjoy the rights and everyone gets a share of the benefits. The definition of OUR in Collin’s Compact Australian Dictionary is: of, belonging to, association with. Now can someone tell me, in Malaysia, does the belonging word fit in for everyone? We swear that we will be with Malaysia through her ups and downs, not by whose connection is closer to whose connection.
Personally I feel that I don’t think I am able to call Malaysia OUR country, when clearly there isn’t a sense of ‘OURness’ in the things that we do.
I know of a fellow countryman here who is under scholarship to do a postgraduate degree in the humanities, and yet this person is STILL under scholarship. Both the student's parents are highly educated professionals, have a great house in KL, hired an Indonesian help. This is the deserving? I don’t think so.
What about the deserving who are slogging their time and labour away in the fields? In the sea? What about their children? Are they sitting in the same mode of transport as these people? Do they even get a chance to sit on the aeroplane?
What then, is the missing link between these ‘deserving’ and the ‘undeserving’? THE CONNECTION.
And the worse thing is when serving under the government, one is not rewarded because of our ability. Our labour and enthusiasm is not recognised. Why? It’s all because of “The Connection”. Would you still care? Would you even bother? "
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