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Moooving Tales in Bolehland!

By Martin Jalleh

Q: What is the nation suffering from at this moment?
A: Cowburn Mooonoxide!

Q: What are the twists and spins given by the bosses of the National Feedlot Corporation (NFC) scandal called?
A: Mooodifications!

Q: Who was the then Agriculture minister who dubiously awarded the project to the incompetent Shahrizats in 2006 and initially said he saw “nothing unusual or anything wrong” with the project and passed the buck to current minister Noh Omar to answer further questions?
A: DPM, Mooyiddin!

Q: The Shahrizats has no cattle-rearing experience whatsoever?
A: Yes, they were moo-clue-less!
Continue reading “Moooving Tales in Bolehland!”

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A Critique of the ETP: Part 4 – Enterprise – Private enterprises are rejecting the ETP

By Dr. Ong Kian Ming BSc (LSE), MPhil (Cantab), PhD (Duke)
Teh Chi-Chang, CFA, BSc (Warwick), MBA (Cantab)
Refsa

The very basis of the ETP is in jeopardy. A key foundation of the ETP is that the private sector is to lead the massive RM1.4 trillion of investments needed to catapult Malaysia to high-income status by 2020. But the 35% private sector share of ETP investments to date is far below target. The RM114 billion investments by government and GLCs are nearly double the RM62 billion invested by the private sector.

PEMANDU obfuscating again. PEMANDU responds that private sector investments are closer to the targeted 60% share if big-ticket public sector projects like the MRT are excluded. This is intellectually dishonest. The ETP Roadmap Report includes such projects in its desired investment mix. There is no justification to exclude them. It is akin to giving a recipe for a rich chocolate cake and then saying it is not fattening if you exclude the calories from the butter.

Is PEMANDU attempting to cover up tepid private sector response? We would expect the big-ticket, long-gestation infrastructure projects to be prioritised in the early days of the ETP. However, PEMANDU has chosen to obfuscate rather than clarify. Is it because the gap between the desired 60% private sector target and the current 30% is unlikely to be bridged?
Continue reading “A Critique of the ETP: Part 4 – Enterprise – Private enterprises are rejecting the ETP”

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Why should I care about 1 Care?

By Shamini Darshni | February 15, 2012
The Malaysian Insider

FEB 15 — When the idea of a national health financing mechanism came up in the mid-2000s, the question of how the funding scheme would be implemented caused much concern.

As a journalist then with an interest in public health issues, I followed the arguments made, then observed how the idea of “the rich paying for the poor” disappeared.

Logic suggests that the then-proposed national health financing mechanism — or scheme, as it was also referred to — had gone back to the drawing board. Today, it seems that the same idea has been repackaged under 1 Care.

Rebranding aside, the idea of 1 Care is noble. But the sketchy details are worrying. Why a major announcement is made without being accompanied by proper details boggles me.
Continue reading “Why should I care about 1 Care?”

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Malaysia in the Era of Globalization #100

By M. Bakri Musa

Chapter 12: A Prescription For Malaysia

An Open Letter to the Prime Minister

May 13, 2002

The Next Young Mahathir

Today you are busy attending to the nation’s business. Rightly so, but I do hope that you ponder these questions and answer them in your memoirs. Subsequent generations need to learn the lesson. In the remaining years you must concentrate not on party or policy, but on personnel. You once quipped that you would like to be succeeded by your clone. Alas, there is no young Mahathir out there. Sadly, this more than anything else is the most glaring failure of your leadership.

Finding the next cadre of leaders will not be easy. While previous generations were inspired by the struggle for freedom, no such inspirations exist now. Today’s young Mahathirs, if they have not already succumbed to the lures of the First World, are busy pitting their talent in the highly lucrative private sector. You must make a personal and concerted effort at talent scouting. Fortunately, again thanks to the successes of your very policies, there are many capable Malaysians. Finding them would not be difficult, but enticing them into public service would be the challenge. There will be a few who, having reached the peak of their career and having put aside a comfortable nest egg, would consider public service a noble calling. Grab them. Under your masterful tutelage, these fast learners would grasp the political skills soon enough. You will also find them to be a different breed from the ones currently serving you.
Continue reading “Malaysia in the Era of Globalization #100”

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Siapa yang guna wang rakyat untuk kepentingan peribadi, sila kembalikan

By Aspan Alias | February 15, 2012
The Malaysian Insider

15 FEB — Nazri Aziz meminta NFC membayar balik semua wang yang telah dipinjamkan oleh kerajaan sebanyak RM 250 juta itu. Nazri berpendapat Shahrizat Jalil tidak perlu berhenti atau berundur dari kerajaan.

Kata-kata Nazri ini memberikan banyak perkara yang membuatkan kita lebih memahami cara dan kaedah Umno menyelesaikan masalah yang dilakukan oleh pemimpin-pemimpin kita dan keluarga mereka.

Kenyataan Nazri ini boleh membayangkan cara berfikir dan sikap pemimpin kita berhubung dengan isu-isu besar yang dihadapi oleh negara. Sikap pemimpin kita boleh membezakan nilai diantara sikap serta “attitude” kepimpinan yang sepatutnya ada kepada pemimpin demokrasi dengan apa yang sebenarnya ada pada pimpinan kita.

Jika Shahrizat menjadi pemimpin dinegara maju, misalnya di England, beliau sepatutnya berhenti dari awal lagi untuk menjaga imej kerajaan.. Shahrizat adalah ahli jemaah Kabinet negara, maka etika wajar menjadi elemen yang terpenting dalam pentadbiran itu.
Continue reading “Siapa yang guna wang rakyat untuk kepentingan peribadi, sila kembalikan”

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Another Saturday with The Oracle of Syed Putera

By Sakmongkol AK47 | February 14, 2012
The Malaysian Insider

FEB 14 — Malaysian Indians are back with BN. The Oracle appeared pleased when he told me that. Who told you I asked? Nong Chik. Does the boss (Tun Daim) feel the same way? He does, said The Oracle.

Hmm… this was an unusual slippage on the part of Daim , I said to myself. Usually he takes statements and information as preliminary “noises”. He will then investigate further by sending out the Baker Street Boys or the Baker Street Irregulars like Sherlock Holmes did. It was unusual of Daim to accept what Raja Nong Chik tells him. Daim must be fatigued.

BN must be really desperate. They have resorted to reading tea leaves and, in some places, chicken entrails. Some whispers here and there are taken and read as signifying real and substantial progress. Hence, for example, some casual and insouciant intimation that Indians are coming back to support BN is treated as orgasmic news.

What are we to make of these innocuous remarks? Should they be taken seriously? The Indians are coming back into the fold of BN. Yes indeed, there are so many of them.
Continue reading “Another Saturday with The Oracle of Syed Putera”

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What every Malaysian needs to know about ‘race’.Part 2: Exploring and disaggregating ‘bangsa’

By Clive Kessler | February 15, 2012
The Malaysian Insider

FEB 15 — So important in private thinking and central to public discussion of Malaysia’s most fateful challenges, the word bangsa, it was suggested in Part 1, is inherently vague, complexly ambiguous.

It is a general, multi-purpose word that yokes closely together a number of related but ultimately differing ideas.

That is the strength and value of the word.

By bringing a number of divergent things together, it helps us to compress and condense out thinking and, then too, the verbalisation of our thoughts.

It makes possible all sorts of mental “short-cuts” around difficult issues.
Continue reading “What every Malaysian needs to know about ‘race’.Part 2: Exploring and disaggregating ‘bangsa’”

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I don’t know, Noh Omar says of NFC breach of trust

By Shannon Teoh
The Malaysian Insider
Feb 14, 2012

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 14 — Datuk Seri Noh Omar insisted today he did not know if the National Feedlot Corporation (NFCorp) breached loan conditions despite de facto law minister Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz pointing out the family of their Cabinet colleague Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil should return the RM250 million federal loan.

The agriculture and agro-based industry minister said he could not comment as he has yet to receive any information from ongoing investigations into the controversial national cattle farming project.

“I don’t know. I don’t know because we have not received any decision. As agriculture minister, I have not received any report. Let them investigate,” he told reporters here.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Nazri said earlier today NFCorp, owned by Wanita Umno chief Shahrizat’s husband and three children, had committed breach of trust by using the government loan meant for cattle farming to fund other purchases. Continue reading “I don’t know, Noh Omar says of NFC breach of trust”