Thursday, December 24, 2009

SABAH PKR CONVENTION 2009 : The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

By Nobleman

“Ini adalah konvensyen terbaik yang pernah diadakan di Sabah”said Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim in his closing address on Sunday at Atlantis Restaurant to the cheering crowd of more than 1500 party leaders.

The State PKR Chairman Saudara Ahmad Thamrin Jaini and Datuk Kong Hong Ming the chairman of the Organizing Committee were beaming. Christina Liew wept uncontrollably but only God knows why, as she has a very poor command of the National Language. So it can’t be the speech delivered by Anwar. Newcomer Datuk John Ghani who was seated next to her looked confused. He must be wondering why...!!Keningau Divisional Chief, Gapari @ Jeffrey who was still on sabbatical leave sat impassively without betraying his emotion.

Among the crowd were John Jinus Sibin, Jeffrey Yap, Hj Awang Bakar, Peter Linuk, Adris Taripin, Amirbeck bin Laja and their fellow AJKs from Keningau, Kota Kinabalu, Tenom and Batu Sapi Divisions. The party owes them unspeakable gratitude for holding the forts when the going got tough-all the fanfare of ultimitums. These were the good guys.

“ Datuk Dr Jeffrey Kitingan telah membuat keputusan untuk berbuat demikian,saya menghormati keputusan dia,tetapi bukan bererti saya bersetuju dengan tindakan dia. Hak dan kebebasan untuk membuat keputusan adalah di tangan kita sendiri dan perlu di hormati. Keputusan yang saya buat ini adalah atas dasar prinsip moral dan maruah. Sebab itu saya meneruskan perjuangan saya didalam PKR dibawah pimpinan Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim,John Jinus Sibin Setiausaha Bahagian”. That was his sms to Hj Ansari Abdullah on the 5th. November, 2009 at 1.59pm.

On the first day of Ramadhan, while Muslims elsewhere were celebrating Hari Raya to commemorate their victory over human weaknesses and desires, a memorandum was crafted to humiliate Pakatan Rakyat Whip and Party Vice President YB Azmin Ali, the Sabah State PKR Chief. PKR Sabah was tested to the brink as the oncoming drama unfurled. It had to wither it's most bitter and painful storm since it's inception in Sabah in late 1999.

On the day of the convention, PKR Sabah had survived the onslaught by its own so-called leaders because there were those in the Division level who had the guts to stand up and defend the struggles of the Party. To these Borneo warriors, the Party and its objectives are more important than individuals, whoever there are.

John Jinus Sibin and his colleagues in JKC Keningau had prevented the party from being dissolved. “Once Keningau is dissolved, Kota Kinabalu will also be dissolved” so say Christina Liew in Malaysiakini. Earlier she had resigned as a member of the Party’s Central Committee on the ground that her mother were ashamed that she was not reappointed as Deputy Chairman of Sabah PKR.

However, when she tabled the motion to the committee members of Kota Kinabalu Division for it to be dissolved, Jeffrey Yap and the other committee members opposed the motion. No other member of the Divisional Committee supported her. For all these transgressions against the Party, she was rewarded with the appointment of Deputy Chairman PKR Sabah. Her partner in crime, Gapari @Jeffrey Kitingan was reinstated as nominated Vice President. Christina’s Mother will be celebrating like Santa Claus this Christmas.

Gosibin the acting Chief of Tenom with his “Kadoh Agundung” hairstyle and Datuk Nahalan Damsal were nowhere to be seen. Sylvester was busy carrying his computer, chair and table from the Papar division office as he and Evelyn Gobili had just taken their “sabbatical leave.” Daniel John and Moses Iking must be occupied with Parti Cinta Sabah. They were “the bad” guys.

There are other good guys, like members of the Organising Committees for the dialogue, convention and dinner including Dr Roland Chia, Ronnie Klassen, Jonathan Yassin and Datuk Chau Chin Tang the moderators. The eloquent speeches of YB Zuraidah Kamaruddin the Wanita Chief, YB Tian Chua the Director of Strategy and Hj Ansari Abdullah at the Convention and YB Tian Chua and Dato Chua Jui Meng at the Dinner made the Convention a memorable curtain closer for a stormy 2009 for Sabah PKR. The highlight was of course from the ever charistmatic leader of Pakatan Rakyat, Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

I leave it to you to decide who are “the ugly” but while doing so, please do not forget “the good” guys like John Jinus Sibin and the rest.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Ku Li: BN has destroyed Malaysia’s future

Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah (pic) today painted a bleak future for Malaysia under the Barisan Nasional government, saying it had squandered the nation’s oil wealth to the tune of “billions and billions” of ringgit.

The former Finance Minister said Petronas’s oil profits had been used “to bail out failing companies, buy arms, build grandiose cities amidst cleared palm oil estates.”
“Instead of helping eradicate poverty in the poorest states, our oil wealth came to be channeled into our political and politically-linked class,” the first Petronas chief and former Umno Vice President said in a speech at a one-day summit for Young Corporate Malaysians today.

He said the Petronas money had been used as a slush fund to prop up authoritarian rule, to corrupt the entire political and business elite and to erode constitutional democracy.
The Gua Musang MP, who agreed to head the Parliamentary Caucus to look into the oil royalty issue proposed by Pakatan Rakyat leader Anwar Ibrahim earlier this month, told the summit that Petronas has contributed 40 percent of the national budget over the years.

But such a great reliance on oil income is getting untenable. “The oil that was meant to spur our transition to a more humane, educated society has instead become a narcotic that provides economic quick fixes and hollow symbols such as the Petronas Towers,” he said.
He said the future for Malaysians looks bleak with the government seeking to broaden the tax base by introducing a goods and services tax (GST) where Malaysians are required to pay an additional tax on top of income tax.

Malaysia is now caught in a middle-income trap, stuck in the pattern of easy growth from low-value-added manufacturing and component assembly and unable to make the leap to a knowledge-intensive economy, Tengku Razaleigh added.

The text of Tengku Razaleigh’s speech reads:

‘In a speech I made in April this year, I spoke of where we stand in our developmental path and what I felt we must do to move forward.I need to revisit that argument in order to develop it further.We are stagnating. The signs of a low-growth economy are all around us. Wages are stagnant and the cost of living is rising.

We have not made much progress in becoming a knowledge and services based economy.
According to the World Bank, Malaysia’s share of GDP contributed by services was 46.2 percent in 1987. Ten years later, that share had grown by a mere 0.2 percent.

Between 1994 and 2007, real wages grew by 2.6 percent in the domestic sector and by 2.8 percent in the export sector, which is to say, they were flat over that 13-year period.
Meanwhile, our talent scenario is an example of perverse selection at its most ruinous. We are failing to retain our own young talent, people like yourselves, let alone attract international talent to relocate here, while we have had a massive influx of unskilled foreign labour. They now make up 30 to 40 percent of our workforce.

Alone in East Asia, the number of expatriate professionals here has decreased. Alone in East Asia, private sector wage increases follow government sector increases, instead of the other way around. We are losing doctors and scientists and have become Southeast Asia’s haven for low-cost labour.

I said that we are in a middle-income trap, stuck in the pattern of easy growth from low-value-added manufacturing and component assembly and unable to make the leap to a knowledge-intensive economy.
Regional competitors with larger, cheaper – and dare I say – hungrier labour forces have emerged. China and India have risen as both lower cost and higher technology producers, and with giant domestic markets.

The manufacturing sector which propelled the growth we enjoyed in the 90s is being hollowed out. There is no going back, there is no staying where we are, and we do not have a map for the way forward.
I am glad that the characterisation of Malaysia as being in a ‘middle-income-trap’ has been taken up by the government, and that the need for an economic story, or strategy, for Malaysia is now recognised.
We stand in particular need of such a model because we are a smallish economy. We cannot be good at everything, and we don’t have to be.

We need only make some reasonable bets in identifying and developing a focused set of growth drivers. It is not difficult to see what the elements of such a growth strategy might be. Whatever we come up with should build on our natural strengths, and our strengths include the following:
+ We are located at the crossroads of Asia, geographically and culturally, sitting alongside the most important oil route in the world.

+ We have large Muslim, Chinese and Indian populations that connect us to the three fastest growing places in the world today.

+ We have some of the largest and oldest rain forests in the world, a treasure house of bio-diversity when the greatest threat facing mankind as a whole now is ecological destruction, and the greatest technological advances are likely to come from bio science.

+ We have the English language, a common law system, parliamentary democracy,good schools,an independent civil service and good infrastructure.
    These advantages, however, are declining. Our cultural diversity is in danger of coming apart in bigotry, our rain forests are being logged out and planted over, our social and political institutions are decaying.I have spoken at length on different occasions about the causes and consequences of institutional decline. The decline in our society and indeed in our natural environment, originates in a decline in our basic institutions.

    The link between these is corruption. The destruction of our ecosystem for example, is made possible by corrupt officials and business people.The uncontrolled influx of unskilled labour is a direct result of corruption.

    These are problems we need to be aware of before we speak glibly about coming up with new strategies and new economic models. We need to understand where we are, and how we have gone wrong, before we can set things right.

    You are young, well-educated Malaysians. Many among you have left for other shores. Record numbers of Malaysians, of all races, work abroad or have emigrated. Among these are some of our best people.They sense the stagnation I described.

    There is a certain lack of energy, ingenuity and “hunger” in the climate of this country that young people are most sensitive to. In the globalised job market, young people instinctively leave the less simulating and creative environments for those that have a spark to them.
    How did we lose our spark as a nation?

    We have a political economy marked by dependence on easy options and easy wealth. Like personal dependencies, these bad habits provide temporary comfort but discourage the growth of creativity and resilience.I mentioned our dependence on low-cost foreign labour.

    The other dependence is something I played a part in making possible.This is a story I want to leave with you to ponder in your deliberations today.

    Our nation is blessed with a modest quantity of oil reserves. As a young nation coming to terms with this natural bounty in the early 70s, our primary thought was to conserve that oil.
    That is why, when Petronas was formed, we instituted the Petroleum Development Council. Its function was to advise the prime minister on how to conserve that oil and use it judiciously for national development. We knew our reserves would not last long.
    We saw our oil reserves as an unearned bounty that would provide the money for modernization and technology.

    We saw our oil within a developmental perspective. Our struggle then, was to make the leap from an economy based on commodities and low-cost assembly and manufacturing to a more diverse, economy based on high income jobs.
    Aware that we had an insufficient tax base to make the capital investments needed to make the leap, we planned to apply oil royalties to what you would call today strategic investments in human capital.

    Whatever money left after making cash payments, allocations for development funds, etc, was to be placed in a Heritage Fund for the future.The Heritage Fund was for education and social enrichment.

    In working out the distribution of oil between the states, who had sovereign rights over it, and the federal government, we were guided by concerns for equity between all Malaysians, a concern to develop the poorer states (who also happened to be the oil rich states) and a concern for inter-generational equity.That oil was for special development purposes and it was not just meant for our generation.

    Sabah and Sarawak joined Malaya to form Malaysia because of the promise of development funds. Yet today, despite being their massive resources, they are some of our poorest states.
    Instead of being our ace up the sleeve, however, our oil wealth became in effect a swag of money used to fund the government’s operational expenditure, to bail out failing companies, buy arms, build grandiose cities amidst cleared palm oil estates.

    Instead of helping eradicate poverty in the poorest states, our oil wealth came to be channeled into the overseas bank accounts of our political and politically-linked class.
    Instead of being the patrimony of all Malaysians, and for our children, it is used as a giant slush fund that has propped up authoritarian rule, eroded constitutional democracy and corrupted our entire political and business elite.

    Our oil receipts, instead of being applied in the manner we planned upon the formation of Petronas, that is, according to its original developmental purpose, became a fund for the whims and fancy of whoever ran the country, without any accountability.
    The oil that was meant to spur our transition to a more humane, educated society has instead become a narcotic that provides economic quick fixes and hollow symbols such as the Petronas towers.

    Our oil wealth was meant to help us foster Malaysians capable of building the Twin Towers than hire foreigners to build them, a practice in which we preceded Dubai. I would rather have good government than grand government buildings filled with a demoralized civil service.

    It is no wonder that we are no longer productive, no longer using our ingenuity to devise ways to improve ourselves and leap forward.
    Malaysia is now an “oil cursed” country. We managed to arrive at this despite not having a lot of oil.When I started Petronas in 1974, I did not realise I would see the day when I would wish we had not uncovered this bounty.

    The story I have told is a reminder of the scale of the challenge of development. My generation of young people faced this challenge in the 60s and 70s. You face it now.The story tells us that development is about far more than picking strategies out of a box.
    You have kindly invited me to address a seminar on strategies for reinventing and liberalizing Malaysia’s economy. But the story of our squandered oil wealth reminds us that it was not for want of resources or strategies that we floundered.

    Our failure has been political and moral. We have allowed greed and resentment to drive our politics and looked the other way or even gone along while public assets have been stolen in broad daylight.

    I encourage you to take up the cause of national development with the ingenuity that earlier generations of Malaysians brought to this task, but the beginning of our journey must be a return to the basics of public life: the rule of law, honesty, truth-telling and the keeping of promises.

    The Malaysia we need to recover is one that was founded on laws and led with integrity. With the hindsight of history we know such things are fragile and can be overturned in one generation, forgotten the next.

    Without a living foundation in the basics you might sense an air of unreality around our talk of reinventing ourselves, coming up with “a new economic model” and liberalizing our economy.

    So before we can reinvent ourselves, we need to reclaim our nation. That larger community, bound by laws, democratic and constitutional, is the context of economic progress, it is the context in which young people find hope, think generous thoughts and create tomorrow

Friday, December 4, 2009

PKR may take SESB and Felda to court

Courtesy of Daily Express

Kota Kinabalu: Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) Sabah is thinking of going to the courts to stop the construction of the proposed coal-fired power plant in Felda Sahabat, Lahad Datu.

It is considering initiating legal action, firstly against Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) and the Federal Land Development Authority (Felda), in support of the green non-governmental organisations' effort to stop the building of the plant.

Its Supreme Council member, Haji Ansari Abdullah, said the party's Sabah legal bureau which is chaired by Datuk Chau Chin Tang and of which he is also member, will hold a meeting to discuss this sometime next week.

"The meeting is for us to consider bringing up a suit against the SESB as well as the State and Federal governments, Felda particularly," he told a press conference at his office here Thursday.

Ansari said the party cannot sue but would identify people who are prepared to come forward.

"We are going to consider this step, as part of our contribution to the effort to stop Sabah turning from 'green to black' because of the plan (coal-fired power plant) É at the moment our first intention would be on the SESB and Felda, and followed by others later," he said.

Ansari said one of the things they would highlight is the agreement between the State Government and Felda sealed on Dec 4, 1979, He claimed what is happening now is "against the letter and spirit of this agreement."

Showing a copy of the agreement signed by then Chief Minister Datuk Harris Salleh, he said if they followed what had been agreed to the State government about 13,000 Sabahan families would have been saved from poverty now.

"But it did not happen as agreed and because today is the 30th anniversary of this agreement, we will treat this suit matter as a 'birthday gift' to Felda," he said.

Ansari explained that on that said date of the agreement some 200,000 hectares were given to Felda for them to develop a settlers scheme for the benefit of at least 13,000 Sabahan families (assuming each family receives 15 acres).

"But now after 30 years Felda turned it into a commercial plantation É and further than that they now also want to build a power plant there, which is actually not the reason the land was given to them," he said.

"So we have a moral duty (to do something about this) É as a political party we are morally obliged to ensure that the State that we hand over to our children will be something similar to what we inherited from our forefathers É nobody has the right to destroy what we have been blessed with in Sabah," he added, claiming Felda Sahabat is now like another state within a state guarded by its very own policemen.

Should the plant be built, he said, it would destroy the image of Sabah as a green and beautiful state which is already well known worldwide apart from its many potentials.

Meanwhile, Ansari said he has filed a writ against Sohon Singh, Joe Fernandez and Steven Gan, who is editor-in-chief of news portal Malaysiakini over a news article published in the Malaysiakini news website on him titled "Sabah PKR Division Chief Runs to China from Debt".

"This because there was no apology forthcoming from them," he said. The writ was filed at the High Court here Thursday.