(Penang, Monday): The plight of Guan Eng and Anwar Ibrahim and the unfair highway privatisation concessions are only three examples of a very long list of the lack of justice, freedom, democracy and good governance in Malaysia.
I will touch on a few examples of this long list of the lack of justice, freedom, democracy and good governance in Malaysia.
Mid-term Review of Seventh Malaysia Plan. The government has yet to make public its Report on the Mid-Term Review of the Seventh Malaysia Plan although we are in the fourth year of Seventh Plan. The Report of the Mid-Term Review of the Sixth Malaysia Plan for instance was debated in Parliament in the third year of the Plan, i.e. in 1993. The long delay in making public the Report of the Mid-Term Review of the Seventh Malaysia Plan is an indication of the serious misalignment of the present government.
A deadwood Cabinet. Malaysia is having the worst deadwood Cabinet in the history of the nation. A year ago, I had suggested to the Prime Minister that he should carry out a major cabinet reshuffle to remove the deadwoods in the Cabinet and to form a National Economic Crisis Cabinet with technocrats and experts as members of the Cabinet with the expertise and knowledge to deal with the national economic crisis, and most important of all, who can command public confidence in their integrity, competence and professionalism.
How many of the Cabinet Ministers can pass the triple tests of public confidence in their "integrity, competence and professionalism"?
If there is a Cabinet of integrity, competence and professionalism, the scandal of Anwar’s "black eye" and other injuries while under police custody would not have been dragged out for four months, with still no answer as to who were the police person or persons who had assaulted Anwar in the very inner sanctum of the police high command in Bukit Aman on the night of Sept. 20, 1998!
If there is A Cabinet of "integrity, competence and professionalism", the RM9 billion Kuala Lumpur International Airport, described as the "airport of the next century", would not become the most high-tech but rat-infested airport in the world!
Last July, the Transport Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Ling Liong Sik announced that a pest control company had been appointed to exterminate rats at KLIA, that it had caught 291 rodents and that there were still about 600 rats in the airport! Six months later, Liong Sik got into the CNN when he gave an update report that 3,340 rats had been exterminated, conspicuously omitting to mention the present rat population at KLIA - where it had ballooned to 1,000 or 2,000. Recently, a Malaysian Airlines flight to Perth had to return to KLIA with its 251 passengers half an hour after take-off after a rat was spotted on board the first-class cabin. Yet Liong Sik had the cheek to say nobody apart from the press have complained about the rat menace in the KLIA!
If there is a Cabinet of "integrity, competence and professionalism", the Information Minister, Datuk Mohamad Rahmat would not have called on Malaysians to boycott foreign magazines allegedly for spreading "lies" about the country - which is itself a confession of failure of his Ministerial portfolio as Information Minister. Would the Information Minister support the boycott of the local mass media, both printed and electronic, for telling lies about the Opposition and NGOs?
EPF. Recently, EPF declared that it was adopting a policy of openness. However, when it was revealed that EPF had lost RM10 billion in the stock market last year and I asked for full details, the EPF reverted to its old policy of opaqueness and non-accountability.
(1/2/99)