Kula: Bungalow-gate critics missing out on feng shui

Critics of Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng’s purchase of a bungalow at a supposedly below-market price are remiss on a factor economic planners are apt to omit in their calculations of market behavior: the influence of culture in determining price.

DAP national vice-chair M Kulasegaran surmises that the reason the previous owner of the bungalow in Jalan Pinhorn in Penang that Guan Eng purchased last October for RM2.8 million was willing to part with the property on below-market terms was because of what had transpired at the premises in the time it was rented out to the CM.

“A series of incidents such as demonstrations by Umno protesters, the carrying of a coffin, the presentation of items signifying contempt and a host of other happenings must have produced a disturbing impression about the property,” said the MP for Ipoh Barat.

Kulasegaran said experts are susceptible to the delusion that they can predict the outcome of countless interactions of a complex market society.

“Not enough reckoning is given to the play of cultural prejudice in these interactions,” noted the lawyer-cum-legislator.

“Admittedly, economics is the science of rational expctations but that is a convenient assumption necessary for turning the study of the marketplace into a science,” he remarked.

“We know, however, that the assumption is not always valid,” mused Kulasegaran.

He said incidents over the years that had occurred at the property which Guan Eng purchased could be viewed as having invaded the realms and jeopardised the composure of the feng shui.

“This is a cultural factor that could have determined the price the seller was willing topart with the property,” he surmised.

“These considerations would not have figured in the overt discussions but they would have had an influence covertly,” he speculated. -Mkini