— Ali Kadir
The Malaysian Insider
Nov 13, 2011
NOV 13 — It is left to us, ordinary Malaysians, to show outrage at the thievery, corruption, mismanagement and subterfuge that is happening in our country.
Let us just ponder at what has happened since the Auditor-General noted that the National Feedlot project was a failure or on the verge of being a failure. First, you have the deputy prime minister downwards trying to convince Malaysians that the project was a success, with arguments that defy logic.
Then you had Noh Omar and Khairy Jamaluddin speaking up and defending the track record of the project and the main beneficiaries of the RM250 million soft loan: Shahrizat Jalil’s family.
Their defence of the incredible — the squandering of public funds — indicated that the old and new of Umno are joined at the hip by ignorance, stupidity and a seemingly endless acceptance of bad practices.
Then came the revelation that the holding company behind the NFC project diverted nearly RM10 million in federal funds to buy a condominium in Bangsar. A company with a mandate to develop cattle project dabbling in property speculation, or was it a case of some people siphoning out public funds to build up their property portfolio?
According to Khairy, who — to an outsider like me — seems mighty ready to prove that he is a reliable Umno man, said that the company did not want excess funds to lie idle. This guy thinks that we are dumb as the Umno people he mixes around with.
When government funds or a soft loan is issued for a specific purpose, it cannot be used for other purposes. Otherwise, can you imagine the rampant abuses that would be taking place?
Here is the thing that has been disturbing me: Instead of shining a light on wrong practices and even owning up to mistakes, Umno and this government are prepared to lie and defend the indefensible.
In this NFC case, it is because a minister’s family is caught in this mess that politicians and the media are all colluding to defend the abuse of taxpayers’ funds.
Is Shahrizat’s family the only one who obtained a sweet deal from the government? I believe this is not the case. Our ministers and politicians want leadership positions so that they can suck out the marrow from our country.
According to blogs, the son-in-law of our DPM is involved in the biometric scanning system for foreign workers. Doesn’t Muhyiddin Yassin chair the Cabinet Committee on Foreign Workers? Was there a conflict of interest? Was there an open tender?
Did you read about this in the newspapers? Or course not, because they are collaborators in keeping Malaysians misinformed.
It sounds tough and despairing but the events of the last few weeks shows that we need to reclaim this beautiful country from the cheats and thieves.