Who’s getting the other 111 oilfields?

Writing a self-report card is 'stupid' and the least Najib could have done is assemble a team of sycophantic academics and political activists who will pretend to discuss his various plans.

COMMENT

When we were schoolgoing children, did we write our own report cards? We never did unless we were really naughty boys and girls who went to parties, played truant, smoked cigarettes and marijuana.

Then, after we didn’t do the exams well enough even to pass, fearing scolding and beltings from our parents, we forged report cards and gave As to most of our subjects.

That’s what Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak did when he reported to the nation about his ETP and GTP.

He has more to hide rather than to report by making a self-report card. Isn’t that stupid?

He could have at least assembled a team of sycophantic academics and political activists who will pretend to discuss some serious intellectual subject in a staged forum and assess his ETP, GTP and the various plans that he has in store to jump-start the economy again.

Well, he didn’t. But then that’s how Umno leaders are.

Umno leaders always have this game plan – come out with big-sounding terms to jump-start the economy – they think people will buy.

How does having grandiose terms increase the productive capacity of the nation? How do we produce goods and services to sell to the world or to service the world to bring in additional income?

Marginal oilfields

Let’s look at one of the core pillars of the ETP (Economic Transformation Programme) – the oil and gas industry.

Idris Jala (Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department) came up with some statements saying we can’t rely on these extractive industries because oil and gas are depleting resources.

Well, that we already know, bro.

But the oil and gas industry contributes only about 20% to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Manufacturing is a bigger contributor. The oil and gas industry can be exploited further.

I find this statement contradicting the esteemed positioning of the O&G industry in the ETP scheme of things.

It’s also strange given the fact that out of the 113 marginal oilfields, only two were given out to Mokhzani Mahathir’s and Sharil Shamsuddin’s companies.

How about the 111 marginal fields?

Are we waiting for Omar Ong (Ethos Consulting) to come out with a business plan where Ethos will function as a global project coordinator like it did in the Felda Global Ventures (FGV) listing’s come-what-may exercise?

Is CIMB perhaps busy thinking up some merger plans for some new O&G outfit to manage the 111 marginal oilfields?

Maybe a new company that will be floated and more money going to the Barisan Nasional and Umno piggy banks? That is a likely scenario.

The writer is a former Umno state assemblyman but joined DAP earlier this year. He is a FMT columnist.