Monday, May 6, 2013

The Best Government

What is the best government for Malaysia?

I thought we had probably the best model when we started out but somehow it was stolen in transit.

So we went explicitly racial with distribution at the expense of growth until the economy went into a grinding halt.

Then came the FDIs and the stockmarket and the privatisation and the mega projects, funded at the end of the day by Petronas.

Some wise guy declared, "At least, we made a few billionaires even if the policy has failed." Failed?

The strategy is to spend our way out of the problem. There is nothing wrong with government debt - only that the debt should be to enhance innovation and productivity gain. None of these happened. We are spending good money to get very poorly made stuff. Hence, our inability to get out of the middle-income trap. Nobody is working except the voters from the other third world.

The policy is bad. But the horses have bolted.

So, the best government is a new government. It has proven not to be so easy. It's a structural issue, as it has been pointed out. So, we are stuck in a very awkward position.

There are some of us who wished for want we want. There are some of us who accept the reality. We should try, but we should also accept that good things take time to happen. We have been here enough, we should know.

What kind of government do we want? Each seller promises an answer to a problem, but none the same answer to the same problem. We are in the political market.

The economy is going through a very hard time. Many businesses will suffer. We are still peddling the same old commodity model of the seventies. We haven't really taken off, except for property prices and food prices and everything else that we cannot afford.

What about the election? It deserves one phrase: it's over.

8 comments:

james chua said...

Sure, it is over. But all indications are this election is rigged. So should the people just accept that they likely got cheated? Especially when it means that for the next five years they will have to live with the fact that the government they have are those that cheated to be in power?

Of course, accepting closure will allow progress. But accepting closure means walking away from what is right. Sometimes, ethorists, we need to have to have to stand our ground against cheats. If not, the likes of Hilter will appear again and rain havoc on humanity. What if Mandela had accepted closure from the jails of pretoria and did nothing. What if Anwar had just gone away quietly? and be like Al Gore, make a lot of money but with no respect from humanity? What if Zhuge Liang had just stayed at his farm and not followed Liu Bei? What if Lee Kuan Yeow had just accepted the corruption and bigotry of UMNO and stayed on in Malaysia. Good cannot happen without principled stands and people of conviction. We need to support Anwar. Especially bright people like you that can lead society and bless us with good that is hard to find in humanity. Thank you for your blog, I enjoyed it and will continue to. Hope you see my point of view. Malaysians must make a stand for us to gain comfort of our love for our country.

walla said...

I have just finished a post in de minimis. He is probably previewing it with some apprehension.

I like to take some liberty and reproduce it here for james chua. And all the silent ones reading in.

In their individual heart of hearts, they must surely resonate with what they read. Prove me wrong:

What is it the electorate want? An honest, fair and efficient government.

In people like Saifuddin Abdullah of Umno, for that matter Khalid Ibrahim of PKR, you have those qualities.

Yet, if Saifuddin's party is otherwise, how can he articulate and execute the very things the electorate want done and yesterday?

The voters who know and care about good government have already answered that question.

They have given up on the remote possibility that more Saifuddin's in the power corridors of his party would change the federal governance of this country.

That's why he was voted out not because they didn't think he could deliver but because they knew his party would never let him deliver.

And that you can immediately deduce for yourself in the way his party chiefs responded to the massive swing in upset votes despite chicanery in the polling.

They just blamed a certain community of rakyat and voters for being ungrateful.

For one, the tsunami was by all communities which means you have a head of government twisting a fact just to save his own skin, taking cue from the template master whose son he had announced would be made state chief even before the results were out.

Second, putting the blame on one community was irresponsible and divisive, in fact contrary to the unity messages belabored before the polls. Some may even say it was seditious for you certainly cannot excuse it as memory loss in the heat of a juvenile disappointment.

Thirdly, saying the rakyat who had voted for the Opposition were ungrateful is downright insulting of their defense of principles besides derogatory of any true leader's own values to lead, inspire and administrate.

Can the Mahathir's, Najib's, Ghani's, Rustam's and so on in this country therefore answer a simple question in front of their own family members in a court of law let alone a place of worship?

The simple question is this:

"Would you want your family members to be unquestioningly grateful to and blindly supportive of those who are corrupt and crooked for whatever concocted justification of ends justifying means at the expense of both the general populace and the nation?"

walla said...

2

The people in Saifuddin Abdullah's party have dragged ethical principles and moral values down into the gutter.

They will not hazard an answer to that question for they know they have no place to hide when they answer it. For if they answer no, they are hypocrites. And if they answer yes, they confess they are criminals.

Meanwhile, they want the rakyat of this country to look the other way so that they can win to govern over them again so that they can continue to cream off more of the rakyats' future funds, now just announced to be a stratospheric trillion ringgit.

That's why it was important to switch tally sheets so that Perak was lost a second time. Saravanan may even admit to that when he talks in his sleep out of a bloodied conscience.

As for Teh, his pugnacious air during one PKFZ press conference can make you cringe how in tarnation he was appointed.

This would explain why he as well as Teng of Barisan Penang could be so callous as to knee-jerk the closure of service centres out of spite.

The only result of their doing so is to affirm to the rakyat that they never really had a true heart for the rakyats' welfare in the first place, seeing the proffered service as a trade for votes in much the same way Barisan's Najib would say i help you provided you vote for me which is no different from him going onto the golf course and saying the same thing to his buddy whose company was later parachuted into a mega-project under his direct control as self-appointed finance minister.

Is that how we want this country to be governed? Is that how we want the young to "listen up" and learn? Is that what we want to read next of who was awarded what project in the new trillion ringgit round of Umno-controlled ETPs? Is that how we want to spend our time reading all this with growing chagrin and shaking heads?

As flyer68 would say, "you be the judge".

Which comes to the post on the best and brightest for the federal cabinet.

Outcome of GE13, Pakatan was more popular than Barisan and yet Barisan wrested the federal government again. It was by gerrymandering and other devices at Barisan's sole disposal which had also been raised by Bersih and others yet foot-dragged until it was consigned in malaysia-bolih manner to oblivion.

How can the results then be fair to the rakyat? Therefore, talking about having the cream in Barisan's federal cabinet seems premature, doesn't it?

Secondly, one must ask how can a weak guy like Najib under the shadows of a tinpot like Mahathir pick fine senators for his cabinet when he had deliberately overlooked the complicity of Shahrizat in and out of his cabinet and party?

Thirdly, if Najib knew about Zambry's award of state land to his proxies in the previous session, would he not also have known of Rustam's formula of forty percent commission for projects in which case how can he appoint the best and the brightest when he was already tardy in even appointing the cleanest?

That would explain why those trains are standing still in the city. The poor supplier lost out. Do the rest of the folks there still have some brains left?

Fourthly, where are the best and brightest to come from now that Najib has shown he has:

(a) all along been under the thumbs of Mahathir whose favoured candidates are those with singular ethnic fascism, dual heritage, tripled standards, and quadruply split tongues;

(b) now to keep his promises to the warlords asked to give way; and

(c) soon to have to appoint his people from Sabah and Sarawak who know nothing about the peninsular what more modern, and clean, management.


walla said...

3/3

Which comes to this euphoria that the capital market took cue and spiked a bit. They had to if they want to take advantage of punters going in so as to relieve themselves of the shares that were languishing.

Depending on capital market performance to credentialize an administration is hardly the way to welcome a new era of economic transformation.

As for paring down debt levels, tell that to those who had blown an estimated eleven billion ringgit just to try and buy popularity, results of which you now have before you.

Besides chopping down an entire bamboo forest in contravention of the geneva convention of environmental protection.

And if all the corruption money is returned from those who know where they are, we needn't even be having to wax about social safety nets. The rakyat would be richer, perhaps so rich they can be more welcoming to those who have been given instant ICs for some unfathomable reason. Best ask the one who still walks free, apparently now with pompous glee.

Finally, the two posts on the MCA. I had already made comments before:

http://is.gd/QlzkUJ

http://is.gd/z3cR1w

It remains to ask with all the toxic branding and devastated standing, how can the MCA reinvent itself inside the next five years when it also doesn't have any representation in the new federal government which is now for all intents and purposes an Umno the majority don't trust and have rejected?

If the MCA is given positions, they will be beholden to (a) and if that's not bad enough, (b) and (c) as well. It might as well be given a poison pill right now and be put out of its misery. One understands there's some cyanide in one of its plants in Raub.

Ok, last bit before i bid you goodbye...

There's this new rumbling about national reconciliation and a new unity. You can have all that BUT ONLY AFTER THE CORRUPT ARE EJECTED AND ANY GE13 FRAUD REVIEWED AND ACTED UPON ACCORDING TO THE WILL OF THE RAKYAT OF MALAYSIA.

Otherwise the rakyat will be taken for another ride again by the same group which has had the nerve to say it was the Opposition which had taken the rakyat for a ride.

It's the same old Mahathir MO.

People, learn faster, be more alert, do the right thing for your children.

-end post from http://is.gd/uJqpdn unpublished at this moment -

walla said...

intermission:

http://is.gd/DEHfVA
http://is.gd/HWytqC
http://is.gd/Mugnl6
http://is.gd/ZPHjIF
http://is.gd/7Rg0hz
http://is.gd/OIhN5o
http://is.gd/E5v1M3
http://is.gd/VK735U

james chua said...

Walla, exactly and so eloquently put. You should be in politics!
Thanks for the repost from de minimis.

Can we Malaysians afford another five years of economic havoc and pilferage by an illegal and irresponsible government?

I think the Malaysian economy is on the verge of a collapse, and there will be much hurt. The huge leakages and inefficiencies have to be addressed immediately before financial disaster hits our agro sector which has been infused with inefficiencies from FELDA and FELCRA. Can we wait for the next election and allow the thievery, corruption and abuse to continue? The damage done already will take at least one generation to reverse. I dont think time is on the side of Malaysians to wait further. We can no longer sit on the sidelines and let Anwar take all the risk for us. Everyone has got to be involved, by mine because of distance can only be moral support.

james chua said...

Walla

Thank you on the subject of enlightenment. Thats a fair bit for the ole noodles to chew on but much appreciated as guys seems to get emotionally unstable pass mid age.

walla said...

Thank you, James. Glad you enjoyed Tolle. Indeed, the power of now is with the rakyat of Malaysia.

I think GE13 was the most definitive seismic shift in the history of this country.

People overturned their own mindsets and found as they embraced the new political force a new esprit de corp with fellow men and women of all colours and stripes enjoined by a common goal and a mature pragmatism to exercise their right to full and honest changes.

This year they streamed the queues by age groups. It was gratifying to see those of saluran satu not having to queue, considering their ages. But amongst other foul-ups, they were not told in advance.

What was equally edifying were the queues for the other age groups. In the cities, saluran dua turned up in full force. These are those born around merdeka and you could see in their anxious faces that they have had enough; theirs was the silent, determined, mature look of those who have gone through life facing all the tumults and storms, holding onto the destiny of this fragile battered nation, even as they go into the twilight of their careers. In a manner of speaking, each and every one of them personified Malaysia.

So too the other saluran-saluran. Most encouraging were the youngsters. What energy and verve! They knew what they were doing; they had risen to the challenge and made up their minds; they realized what the future would hold for them if they didn't. In a single leap, GE13 advanced their political maturation and national awareness. Inspiring, to say the least!

Yes, they too wanted their say on who and how this nation is to be run. Many came back from all over the world, spending their hard-earned savings just for the flight.

A few who had remained behind overseas for the postal voting narrated encounters with indifferent consular staff redolent of attitudes of the mahathirean era - partisan, bureaucratic, parochial, arrogant and apathetic. Right, Mahathir?

Let those in Putrajaya sitting in cushy chairs in their air-conditioned offices who are reading in now wake up their own conscience, if it has not yet been buried by personal fear or self-delusion.

On May 5th this year, millions had walked and stood patiently for hours in sun and rain, the same millions who pay the taxes so that those in Putrajaya can have their jobs and perks even as they already know they don't have one iota of moral courage or national conscience to match that shown by even the youngest of those millions.