ANTHONY LOKE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND SOME SIMPLE BASICS

 Here is the video of Anthony Loke's Media Conference yesterday. Click here. 

 

Anthony Loke spoke about Puspakom and then the airline. 
Lets talk about the airline first.

1. Seven major technical problems with flights since January last year.

 

 

Anthony Loke seems to be confused about 'questioning the professionalism' of the airline. If the airline has had seven major technical failures since January last year, it is no more an issue of just 'questioning'. It is a serious problem of already having suffered seven major technical faults which made flights turn around, make unscheduled landings in Alice Springs, delayed flights etc. 

• Ok Anthony lets not use difficult words like 'professionalism'. 
• Can we use other words like 'competence'? Still cannot? 
• What about words like 'ability to keep the planes in the air'? 

Anthony Loke says other airlines like Cathay Pacific have also suffered technical problems. This is not an intelligent answer. This is not an answer at all. So, Anthony are you suggesting that if it ever happens that a Cathay Pacific flight crashes into the sea, then is it ok for our flight to crash into the mountain? In such an unfortunate event, will you then say, 'Cathay Pacific flights also crashed' ?

Blaming delays in the 'supply chain' (for parts) is also quite nonsensical. If the supply chain can cause technical problems (for example for those seven flights since January last year) then why were those seven flights allowed to take off in the first place? These are airplanes that fly 30,000 feet up in the air. One mistake and they can fall out of the sky. 

I also want to ask about the airline company's financial performance. To the media and to the opposition Members of Parliament, please ask Anthony Loke about the financial performance of the airline? 

Here is TEN YEAR OLD NEWS from Malaysiakini:

Gov't spends RM1.4bil to buy out M--
Published:  Aug 8, 2014

M-- said today Kh---h Nasional will offer 27 sen for each share in the company it does not own, amounting to nearly 1.4 billion ringgit to take the troubled airline private.

So TEN YEARS AGO in 2014, RM1.4 billion of taxpayers money was spent to delist the airline and take it private. In 2014 the airline had already accumulated multi billion Ringgit losses for the three previous financial years.   Since 2014 the public does not know what is the financial performance of the airline (because it is not reported in public lah).

Can the Media and our opposition MPs please ask Anthony Loke to brief the taxpayers (who were forced to pay that RM1.4 billion in 2014) what is the financial performance of the airline since going private in 2014? What is their financial status now? 

Have they made any profits? Are they still suffering billions of Ringgits in losses?

Can the airline's cashflows sustain its operations? Can they pay their supply chain bills on time? Or does the airline depend on cash infusions (of any type  - loans, debt converted into equity, cash grants, financial guarantees etc) from the government, to keep it afloat?

• Can Anthony Loke please answer professionally ? 
• Anthony Loke can you please show some due regard to the taxpayers?
  

2. Puspakom

Well it looks like after 20 years, my own personal, single handed campaign against monopolies and oligopolies is starting to bear fruit. (Dear readers, do you know of anyone else who has been campaigning against these govt licensed monopolies and oligopolies like I have been doing for more than 20 years? I wrote about monopolies in my first book in 2005 "To Digress A Little". No need for accolades. But some appreciation from you folks will not hurt.)

Thank you very much to Anthony Loke for putting an end to Puspakom's monopoly over vehicle inspections. 

I really hope that after terminating Puspakom's monopoly the PH gomen will put an end to the other monopolies and oligopolies like :

• the rice import monopoly
• digital broadcasting monopoly
  
• postal monopoly
• govt vehicle maintenance monopoly
  
• calibrating weighing machines monopoly
• banking oligopoly
  

plus the hundreds of monopolies and oligopolies that the gomen has licensed over the past decades.

Coming back to Puspakom, it looks like Anthony Loke is now creating another oligopoly instead. From monopoly he is moving to oligopoly.

No 1. Anthony Loke says the closing date for applications for new vehicle inspection licenses ends on 31st October 2024. Why should it end on Oct 31, 2024? 

Lets take the example of a much more capital intensive, much higher technology, more high value jobs creating and much higher risk industry - airline operations. 

Hello Anthony Loke, is there a closing date to apply for licenses to operate a new airline in Malaysia?  If I apply for a license to operate an airline from Malaysia say on November 2nd, 2024 will my application be rejected because I missed the closing date? WHY would you do that?

What economic theory or economic text book are you referring to when you say that there will be a closing date to apply for a new business license? What kind of logic is that?

No. 2 And then Anthony Loke says (in the video, do listen to it) that there are already applicants and most probably by January 2025 there will be TWO new entrants into the vehicle inspection business. TWO NEW ENTRANTS? Hello kawan, that is an oligopoly. 

So from a monopoly you are creating an oligopoly. 

Vehicle inspection, weighing machine calibration, rice import monopolies, postal services, govt vehicle maintenance are low value added, low technology businesses. 

But Malaysia is perhaps the only country in the world where low value added and low technology businesses like these can become major corporate players, raking in millions and billions of Ringgit in sales and profit. WHY? Because the foolish gomen grants monopoly/oligopoly licenses for these businesses.

For those of you who are really thick in the head imagine this situation.

• How value added is the shoe repair fellow repairing your shoes along the tepi jalan?
• How high tech is the tukang kasut fellow who sits outside C_MB Bank in Lucky Garden in Bangsar? 
• How many high income jobs does he create repairing your shoes?

Now here is how the gomen can make this tepi jalan, tukang kasut business a multi-million Ringgit business overnite. You can even go for a tukang kasut listing on the Bursa Saham.

All the gomen has to do is to pass a law or a regulation that there can only be ONE tukang kasut for every 1.0 million population. Since Malaysia has 34 million people it means there will only be 34 tukang kasut in the entire country 'dari Perlis sampai lah ke Sabah'.

Overnite the tukang kasut will become a multi-million Ringgit business. All you need to do is get one of the 34 tukang kasut licenses and you will be running a multi-million Ringgit business. 

This is exactly what the failed BN gomen had been doing since the 1970s. They made monopolies  / oligopolies out of low value added, low technology, low job creation, low income businesses like vehicle inspection, postal services, rice imports, gomen vehicle maintenance, weighing machine calibration which instantly turned these low value added businesses into giant corporate players.

And these monopoly vampires have been sucking the peoples' money for all these years.

Anthony Loke says those who want to apply for the vehicle inspection licenses must have minimum paid up capital, minimum size of land etc. These are just silly excuses to make sure only the millionaires and the big boys get to enter these low value added businesses.

In other countries, the vehicle inspection is performed by the mechanic's shop (kedai mekanik). Go and see how they do it. You do not need a special vehicle inspection company. No need to reinvent the wheel.

• The gomen should specify the functions of the vehicle inspection. 
• NOT the paid up capital or the land size of the vehicle inspection company. 
• Or the closing date for applications.
• How stupid can you get?
  

For those of you who are really thick in the head, ponder this.

Lets say you take your car to Puspakom for inspection. You FAIL the inspection. Say one cylinder is not firing (timing chain rosak, camshaft worn out etc). Your engine is vibrating too much (engine mounting sudah koyak). Plus your shock absorbers on one side are also koyak. (kereta senget). So Puspakom says INSPECTION FAILED.

So what do you do? You take your car to Ah Wah at the kedai mekanik. In one afternoon Ah Wah fixes the cylinder, changes the engine mounting and the shock absorbers. Then you take your car back to Puspakom and they PASS INSPECTION.

Are you telling me that Ah Wah the mechanic, who operates from a shoplot and whose paid up capital is maybe less than RM50,000 and who can expertly repair your car, lorry, van, pick up truck, bus etc CANNOT perform a simple vehicle inspection?  You must be more stupid than you never thought before.

And if you let all the car mechanics also do the vehicle inspections, there is a car mechanic located at every other corner.  There are about TEN car mechanics within 2 km of my house now.    

WHY? Because this is a low value added, low technology (the Puspakom boys who came to my house to inspect my car just used a torchlight to read the chassis number), low income worker business. There is no need for engineers, MBAs or computer experts for vehicle inspection.

So you take a low technology, low value added, low income jobs type of business like vehicle inspection and you make it a monopoly, or an oligopoly, with minimum paid up capital, minimum land size, closing date for license application bla bla and suddenly it becomes a big business.   Suddenly the big boys want to get involved.

Anthony Loke please inform your DAP colleagues. It is now 22 months since you came to power. So far you are just bungling along. If after 22 months, this is all you can offer then you are certainly a one term government.  Especially since you DAP, were already in power for 22 months from 2018 until 2020. This is (or was) your second chance. You have failed. 

If you want to have a chance at winning another term, then dismantle ALL the monopolies and oligopolies that are still sucking the peoples'  blood. Damned vampires. Living off the toils, sweat and tears of the ordinary people. 

Just get rid of all the gomen licensed monopolies and oligopolies.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.