Blatant lier and their Crab culture

Carol Yong

It is alarming that the ‘Thief Minister’ of Sarawak, Taib Mahmud, as chief of a flock of ‘Apologists and Yes-Ministers’ doesn’t know real economics. According to a report in one Sarawak newspaper, Taib has argued that Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and other developed countries “are in trouble due to lack of social discipline where a small group makes demands and carry out demonstrations against the wishes of the majority.” He thinks he’d made a clever statement about “their dire economic situation and subsidy-minded approach.”

Taib’s remarks about the situation of these countries are as fudged as his latest “blatant lie” that there are equal opportunities for everybody to be rich. To no one’s surprise, the ‘Thief Minister’ has a particularly voracious appetite for political rhetoric, and in this case, utter nonsense about “social discipline” and “wishes of the majority.” In future, it’d be better if Taib gets his information right before he criticises.

First, the named countries are very different countries. A second fact is that each has its own politic, economic and social situations. And even Lisbon has argued its situation is different from Greece and the Irish Republic, both of which reported as needing an international bail-out. Portugal’s problem is that they haven’t really coped with the collapse of their colonial past. The Portuguese colonial empire (e.g. Timur Leste, Mozambique, Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea Bissau) was the last to collapse, in 1975. As such, its economy hasn’t yet reached a level to compete in the eurozone. As for Spain, it is just the fear over Portugal’s crisis spreading there. And this means the economy of Spain did not collapse!

For the Irish Republic, it was comparatively poorer compared with those nations in Western Europe, until the “Celtic Tiger” boom, and with it, initiatives toward financial reforms including financial markets and liberalisation. The banking and financial sectors had dominated, which meant that the country was hit by the financial crash in 2008 severely, thus suffered the consequences. So the economy got into trouble had little to do with ordinary Irish people, but with the banking and financial sectors.

As for Greece, the downfall of its economy was said to be because of a corrupted administration. Many Greeks who live outside of the country are very rich and successful. However, within the country, it is not the ordinary people who are responsible for the economic problems but rather the leaders.

Taib’s rhetoric on “wishes of the majority” comes in stark contrast to what he is actually practising. Who are “the majority” in Sarawak? The majority population of Sarawak are the native people, yet they are being governed by a small elite group of politicians and rich business tycoons. The wishes of the majority of Sarawak’s native communities for recognition of their native customary rights (NCR) to lands have instead turned into a nightmare of land-grabbing for them. Allegations abound that Taib abuses his powers to arbitrarily alienate NCR land and award lucrative government projects, contracts, concessions and so on to “a small group,” none other than Taib’s family and friends, i.e. cronies. Then he engineered a number of “development” models “for Sarawak to be a developed state” whilst a majority of the Sarawak people especially those in the rural and interior regions, remain some of the poorest in Malaysia.

Click onto Hornbill Unleashed , Sarawak Report and amongst many other blogs and websites, to read the full reports about how Sarawak’s indigenous communities are suffering in the name of ‘development’ in the likes of commercial logging, mega-dams, oil palm plantations, or their exclusion from meaningful participation in decision making on development policies that might affect them. Or correspondingly, the widespread and documented evidence available of alleged gross corruption, human rights abuses, environmental devastation and electoral fraud all associated with Taib’s 30 year regime, thus the label as one of Asia’s greatest kleptocrats and one of the most corrupt politicians in Malaysia.

Well, some bloggers did not dub Taib Mahmud as the “Thief Minister” for nothing.