I have been on sabatical leave of sorts for two weeks now, and occasional I cut&paste -- cut&pastry in my funDy DDC!:) thanks to aweOFhelen IpohLang -- some useful nuggets sent by my emailmates. TERIMA kasi'! Manyak manyak:):) Here/hear's one/wan from mGf -- my GOoDfriend -- Stan Koh --
A letter written by a Malaysian
All Malaysians should spend sometime and read this. Petrol money is
not pension contributions unlike that of in Norway. As of 30 September 2009 petrol money's total value in Norway is NOR 2.549 trillion ($455Bn ). And other facts on Norway are:
[2] Holding 0.77 per cent of global equity equity markets.
[3] With 1.25 per cent of European stocks,
[4] It is said to be the largest stock owner in Europe.
[5] Despite the influx of oil money, Norway has not reduced their taxes nor have they introduced subsidies or use the money for white-elephants projects.
They have kept their oil profits for the future generations of Norwegians (be it the total population of Norway is not more than 5m lives).
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO OUR OIL REVENUES?
From various reports (namely from Dr Mahathir himself in one of his articles), we can sum up the total contribution of Petronas to the government in these terms:
Tun Hussein Onn Period : RM 33 Billion
Dr Mahathir Period : RM 165 Billion
Pak Lah’s Period : RM 256 Billion
So an estimated total of RM 456 billion in terms of oil revenue has been received by the Malaysian government from Petronas since Petronas’s inception.
Now, the reason why the commenter above expresses his worry is that to date, the people of Malaysia do not have the faintest idea where the oil money has gone to.
I mean, if I am a Norwegian, and someone asks me where has Norway’s oil money gone to, I can easily answer the oil money is currently residing in Norway’s pension fund.
But, for a Malaysian, that is not an easy question to answer.
As the comment I quoted above shows, we Malaysians has never really seen a single cent of Malaysia’s oil money. In fact, we have to pay through our noses when we fill up our cars at Petronas’s petrol stations.. I mean, for all the oil money Petronas makes, why couldn’t they at least keep the Petronas Station toilets clean. Is that too much to ask?
INDONESIAN EXPERIENCE
I also cited the Indonesian experience with oil money.
During their OPEC heydays, Suharto+family and his cronies were enjoying life like no one knows.
They were drowned in money. A veteran Indonesian oil-worker I know told me that during the heydays, oil was found in INLAND INDONESIA. They do not have to explore oil offshore back then. They found oil within Indonesian land. And all of the money was not spent where it counts i.e. infrastructure, facilities, savings etc.
Suharto+family and his cornies robbed Indonesia’s oil money blind. So during Indon’s heydays, we do not see many highways, bridges, roads etc. Most of the oil money goes to Suharto and his cronies pockets.
In order to keep the people subdued, Suharto subsidized everything i.e. gasoline, food etc. But, even with the subsidies, it didn’t account much to the total oil earning of Indonesia because back then food and gasoline was cheap.
Trouble really starts when the oil money ran dry. The oil drills are digging out air instead of the normal black stuff. So, no more money for subsidies and no more money for their big pockets.
And sure enough 3 years later, Indonesians became more jobless and more hungry than before. The oil money has run out and the country is in a deep hole that they can never climb out of. In the aftermath of Suharto’s fall, there was massive starvation. People were living in abject hardship. The oil money that helped to keep people slightly above starvation is no more.
So, naturally, 50% of the people went below starvation level.
Food became very expensive and their money became devalued so much. The result, close to 1 to 1.5 million girls/women in Indonesia had to turn to prostitution just to stay alive. Suffice to say, Indonesia is a GREAT example of how the oil curse works.
ARE WE TO SUFFER THE SAME FATE?
UMNO and BN are no less of a thief then their Suharto counterparts.
We Malaysians are also being robbed blind by UMNO.
The fact that UMNO having to remove subsidies, introducing the GST, raising taxes here and there shows that OUR OIL MONEY HAS RUN OUT.
THE PARTY IS OVER.
And when the music stops, 99% of Malaysians will find out that all of the oil money has never went their way at all.
It went into the pockets of UMNO PUTRA and their cronies.
Now, when the oil money has ran out, UMNO and BN has decided to come and robbed us blind instead by taking money out of our pockets. They cannot lower their standard of living and the normal income they use to get by robbing our oil money.
They now have to rob us for the loss they are suffering due to dwindling oil revenues.
So, what are we to do now. Our daughters will end up becoming prostitutes just to buy a kilo of rice in the future. God forbids.
No one can accuse me of exaggerating when the real live example is just across the Malacca Straits.
Come over and you can witness for yourself.
The Curse of the Oil in real life.
Norway is more Islamic than Malaysia when it comes to oil money.
But will UMNO Mufti’s ever admit to that?
Tulang Besi
p.s. below is a quote from WIKIPEDIA on the Oil Money controversy in Malaysia.
Happy reading
Oil Revenue Payments to Malaysian Government on July 4, 2009.
Petronas adviser Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad asked what did the government spend with the RM253.6 billion payment from the national oil company over the past six years when his successor Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was prime Minister. He said that Petronas has been paying dividends, taxes, royalties and export duties to the government since 1976, after it was set up as the national custodian for fossil fuels. Petronas began by paying the government RM300 million in 1976, rising to RM2 billion in 1981, when Mahathir assumed office. The total from 1981 to 2003 was RM168.8 billion for the 22 yrs that marked Dr Mahathir's tenure as the country's fourth PM..
Opposition leader Lim Kit Siang urged the BN Govt to open its books on Petronas and give a full accounting of how payments from the national oil company had been spent since its inception. Lim said that previously Mahathir did not raise any issues about the misuse of funds from Petronas, set up in 1976 as the national oil company, to bail out "dubious projects�. He pointed to the infamous incident where RM2 billion was used to bailout Mahathir's son Mirzan Mahathir’s shipping concern Konsortium Perkapalan Bhd (KPB) in 1998 when KPB was floundering in billion-ringgit debts with its share price falling to RM3.78 by February 1998, a fraction of its pre-financial crisis level of over RM17. He claimed that there were other occasions under Dr Mahathir when “Petronas was used as a national piggy bank� such as the RM2.5 billion and RM1 billion bail-outs of Bank Bumiputra in 1986 and 1989, aiding MAS and Proton in their financial struggles as well as to fund mega-projects such as the Petronas Twin Towers and the shifting of the federal administration to Putra Jaya.
Posted by Tulang Besi
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