For someone who had ruled Malaysia as PM for 22 years (or 40% out of 55 years since independence in 1957), it is surprising (or is it unsurprising?) that he is worried over the possibility of opposition Pakatan Rakyat's victory in the next General Election. Many believe and would readily agree that Dr. Mahathir ruled as de facto dictator because no minister in his cabinet dared to question his decisions.
Offhand, personally I can think of mega projects like new federal capital, Putrajaya, which was created out of agricultural land into ostentatious government office buildings, man-made lakes so that beautiful bridges could be build over them, largest roundabout round a hill, and so on; brand-new airport, KLIA which appears under-used compared to its low-cost counterpart, LCCT; Sepang F1 circuit which is losing its appeal; Petronas Twin Towers in KL built on former race course land which helped his crony made a bundle, enough to build his own building next to it; Proton national car project which costed our country dearly (until recent privatisation) and still effectively forcing car buyers to pay much more because of high import and excise duties to protect its survival; and so on.
One thing we can be sure is that it was at the time when Petronas was producing oil and earning much revenues which accounted for almost half the nation's yearly. That Petronas is only accountable to the PM meant its accounts were shrouded in secrecy and much of its revenues unaccounted for. Recently, Tun had countered that his successor, Abdullah Badawi had used up more during his much shorter period as PM. But then again, we are talking about billions of Ringgit. When someone was fully in charge of such huge amounts of money, the opaque procurement process which benefited the political party, its leaders and selected cronies would have ensured huge benefits to the decision-making PMs, whether or not we could find the trails leading to them. But being Malaysia, and Umno being the only political party running the country since day one, corruption in the ordinary sense had been covered up (with the help of Acts of Parliament like OSA, ISA and Sedition Act) and treated as acceptable over the years. All the institutions meant to check and control were subservient to the PM and effectively 'closed one eye and shut the other' when it mattered. So it is unbelievable when I read about the overly simplistic points mentioned by the great Tun in his blog...
MY FEARS
http://chedet.cc/blog/?p=775
- KoSong
Mahathir has been to NZ, Aus, Canada, UK, USA & EU, let me ask him & UMNO leaders, with their apartheid, racial, corrupt, undemocratic antics and multi-billion squander and losses, how long would he and UMNO leaders last in those bersih, democratic countries before being brought to court? 55 years or 5 weeks?
ReplyDeleteSome leaders gain zero respect from the transparent, democratic world community. Often the mere appearance or utterance of someone can be nauseating, especially someone detested internationally. Self-aggrandizing, super-racist, with no consideration for human-rights & equality. Corrupt Malaysian leaderships cannot attract men of integrity; neither can they enact & foster laws to maintain high moral standards, transparency, performance & success in governments like leaders in of NZ & Singapore.
ReplyDeleteSome politicians are righteous, infallible, great and God-like…only in their own distorted & deranged minds. From an impartial, democratic, transparent 3rd country. We see too clearly. PBB, BN & MACC are corrupt, immoral & rotten to the core. One out of many examples: Despite a registered letter from some 15 NGOs demanding arrest of Sarawak’s Taib after 31 years of plundering, ref: sarawakreport.org MACC etc, pretend all the massive multi-billion corruption are non-existent. It is obvious, BN’s interest is not in the people’s welfare, only in winning election & clinging to power. They support deception, cheating & multi-billion thefts on a grand scale. They tortured & murdered Teoh B.H on his wedding day over an issue of few thousand $, while few hundred millions of Scorpene Submarine bribes, & Mongolian's blasted murder went unheeded. Where is their integrity, sense of shame? These are beasts of the lowest form. Let them burn in hell.
ReplyDeleteHow can you tolerate another day an incumbent Gov’t BN/PBB whose gratitude to you for electing them is: Manipulating, gerrymandering, controlling media and freedom, fooling and fleecing the rakyat, brutality, sabotaging the Opposition, promoting racism, appointing & feeding cronies, massive purchases & projects with mulit-million kickbacks; plundering and mis-managed losses estimated to surpass US$100billion. US$100 billion is 100,000 million US$. All these for 55 years? No contest! Not another thought or word! Not another hour!!
ReplyDelete