Excerpt #4: The Future: From Blue Chip To Penny Stock

by Bakri Musa
Malaysia’s Wasted Decade 2004-2014. The Toxic Triad of Abdullah, Najib and UMNO Leadership.#4
April 26, 2015

Long before the twin tragedies of Malaysia Airlines (MAS) Flight MH17 (shot down in eastern Ukraine in March 2014) and MH370 (disappeared literally from thin air over the South China Sea less than four months earlier), the company’s shares were already languishing at the bottom floor of the KLSE at around 22 sen. Yes, that is sen, as in cents, or pennies. Even bottom feeders were shunning MAS shares.

To think that less than two decades earlier the Mahathir Administration paid RM8.00 for those same shares! Factoring in for inflation and devaluation, it should be about RM32.00 in today’s devalued ringgit. If you add in the expected appreciation as per the KLSE Index, the shares should be trading at around RM100 today.

From RM100 to 22 sen! Formerly blue chip MAS now a penny stock! It would be cheaper to use MAS shares to wallpaper your bathroom; they are useless for toilet paper.

MAS shares are an apt metaphor for Malaysia. She too has taken a precipitous drop in value as the result of the toxic leadership of Abdullah Badawi, Najib Razak, and UMNO. I should also add Mahathir; however, he is now long gone though still making some loud but ineffective noises. At any rate, the ugly legacy Mahathir bequeathed upon Malaysia should and would have been ameliorated by now if she had competent and diligent leadership.

Alas Mahathir’s successors Abdullah and Najib are neither competent nor diligent, and UMNO, the instrument of their leadership, is a corrupt and sclerotic organization, unable to respond to changes. All three are Mahathir’s legacy. That is the heaviest burden Malaysia has to bear.

The drop in value of MAS shares is readily apparent and easily quantifiable, with the burden borne exclusively by its unlucky shareholders. In contrast, the devaluation of Malaysia, while also readily apparent to citizens, has yet to register on her leaders. They still delude themselves as leading a blue chip nation. The weight of the nation’s devaluation is borne not by them but by Malaysians least able to bear it, the poor. Again let it be said so those self-proclaimed champions of the Malay cause in UMNO and elsewhere can hear it loud and clear, Malays are over represented in that stratum.

The full magnitude of this devaluation has yet to be appreciated or quantified. Consider my old school The Malay College, dubbed “Eton of the East” by its proud old boys. In the 1960s it prepared its students well for universities. Today it is but an expensive glorified middle school; its students have to go elsewhere to matriculate. This sorry state was reversed only recently with the introduction of its International Baccalaureate program.

On a more general level, in the 1980s there were still many Chinese parents who enrolled their children in national schools. Today even Malays are deserting that stream in ever increasing numbers, with both opting for Mandarin schools instead.

In the 1980s I could still gather a few Malays at Stanford to invite them to my home for Hari Raya celebrations; today there are no Malays there and few at the other elite campuses.

In late 1990s a young Malay doctor who had graduated a decade earlier from the University of Malaya (UM) did sufficiently well in her US Medical Licensing Examination to be accepted at a top American hospital for her specialty training. That reflected her superior undergraduate medical education. Today, the British Medical Council had long ago withdrawn its accreditation of UM’s medical faculty. Yet that did not stop the university’s leaders from deluding themselves that their institution could be among the top global 100 within a few years. Not to be outdone, the vice-chancellor of another public university bragged about his institution aspiring to be the “Harvard of the East,” within a decade!

As is apparent, Malaysia has no shortage of her Walter Mittys, or his local counterpart, the Mat Jenins.

That is only the education sector. For the greater economy, in the 1970s Malaysia was able to finance its ambitious and highly successful rural development schemes like FELDA, as well as expand her schools, without resorting to any borrowing, local or foreign. Today, public and private debts threaten to sink the nation and its citizens.

As for FELDA, while Malaysia brags about floating the biggest global IPO with its Felda Global Holdings(FGH), bigger in valuation than even Facebook, for a reality check, visit its settlements. The roads are still unpaved while the homes lack electricity and potable water. The schools on those settlements are an embarrassment. Oil palm, the foundation cash crop, is still being harvested in the old back-breaking and neck-stretching labor-intensive ways of the 1960s. There is little or no innovation; no hydraulic lifts or mechanical harvesters to relieve the onerous and treacherous human burden.

On the macro level, in the 1970s the Malaysian ringgit was on par with the Singapore dollar. Today the ringgit vies with the rupiah and rupees. Soon Malaysians would be trading in millions just for their daily bread. I suppose that is one way for the nation to brag about having many millionaires.

As for security, Malaysian homes are now fortified fortresses, with armed guards at road entrances. Malaysians are well advised not to don expensive watches or wrist bracelets if they value their hands. Malaysian borders are as porous as fishing nets. At least those nets trap the big fish; Malaysian borders let them in and out, their pathways greased by the devalued ringgit.

I am belaboring a point here. These are all painfully obvious to the average Malaysian. My doing so is merely to illustrate in tangible and graphic terms readily comprehensible by kampong folks the devaluation of Malaysia that is the consequence of the toxic trio of Abdullah Badawi, Najib Razak, and UMNO. They will continue to spew their lethal brew onto Malaysia at least until the next general election, due no later than June 2018. For those now burdened by their poisonous brew, that is a long time away. In nation-building however, that is only a blink of the eye. I am optimistic that positive change will come with that election if the process can be kept honest. Then Malaysians will have a chance for change.

Excerpt #5: Two Black Swans and Many More Dark Crows