Singapore - Malaysia High Speed Rail

After years of intense lobbying, the collusion of politicians and mega business has finally won. Malaysia and Singapore governments had finally inked the agreement to build a High Speed Rail(HSR) between the countries.

If you’re interested in professional business commentary on this matter, please stop reading and go to http://www.kinibiz.com/story/corporate/4688/capitalland%e2%80%99s-danga-bay-deal-a-steal.html or other business media.

Firstly, I cannot dispute that this project will be a GDP booster on steroids. We could also at a stage that such a HSR link is the the next logical step for both countries development.

People of different political divides will celebrate the supposed HSR economic multiplier effect will give our economy a good kick in the ass. Even the most harden Pakatan Rakyat might welcome some of the projected economic benefits from this project (namely employment).  If Mirzan or Mokhzani gets a huge piece of the pie, our ‘Grand Malaysian Champion’ Dr Madey who is very anti-Singaporean publicly will also rally the poor Malaysians to support this project.

I am assuming that our supposedly more technological advance Singaporean counterpart will help eradicate all the shitty stuff normally associated with tera Malaysian engineering projects. Also assuming there are no political and complicated security procedures. And also assuming that the traffic are smoother than a baby buttock from the HSR train stations to other parts of these two countries.

There may be still many social and economic landmines ahead for this project. Being just a closet socialist, I am neither an economist nor a sociologist. Please spare a few minutes for my uneducated worries:

1)      Effects of  Land Price Inflation

1a) The land moguls who had cornered strategic land cheaply will become even richer (in an explosive way). One of the most extreme lobbyists for this HSR is Frankie Yeo (YTL). He made no secret of his desire to drive KL land price to those giddy heights of Singapore with this HSR being the critical piece of his plan. 

http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/8/28/business/6930514

1b) It's all fine and dandy for these supposed entrepreneurs to become more filthy rich. But what about the working class who are already borrowing up to their nose just to buy a house in Puchong? Or maybe they can just buy respirator device and borrow until they are fully submerged.

2) GDP Growth vs Real Wage Growth

2a) The cukongs and politicians will tell you not to worry . 'The rising tide will lift all boats'. One of the favourite propaganda among capitalists and fascists .  However, there is a frequently omitted part that says 'When the storms come, the sampans will get slammed onto the hull of the cukong battleships and later sliced up by their propelars'. It is just another variation of the excuse for trickle down economics.

2b) Trickle down economics is more of a dogma then a proven methodology (or pedagogy? Sorry I am no graduate student). It never really worked in Malaysia (or US, Mexico, China and maybe Singapore as well). If trickle down had work, Malaysians would be having Swiss living standard by now from all of Dr Madey’s long list of tera projects (Sorry, but cannot resist taking a shot ex-PM Goh as well).

2c) RM362 per square feet for land anyone? Land only and may be swampy one also.

http://www.kinibiz.com/story/corporate/4688/capitalland%e2%80%99s-danga-bay-deal-a-steal.html

Even without HSR, some lands are already priced out of the ordinary folks. And what was our proposed minimum wage again? RM900 per month.

2d) The public and private sectors of both countries are overly reliant if not addicted to growng their economies by inflating land price. Many are still waiting for their real wage to get stimulated from all the supposedly real real-estate hype.

3)FDI or Exportation of dirty jobs?

3a)  Jobs, jobs and more jobs . No doubt about it. Back to the earlier point. Theoretically speaking, when demand for labour rises wages will tend to follow also.  But if asset price rises at a faster rate, then labour share of income/wealth will actually fall. Will the wages eventually catch up and really get stimulated? Maybe I should be more patient. After all, it is only a few decades since Merdeka.

3b)   There seem to be a trend in the wealthy parts of the world to dump some of their not so prime population somewhere else.

http://rt.com/news/camden-london-forced-migration-213/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/26/german-elderly-foreign-care-homes

3c) Don't get me wrong. I am not discriminating against the people and the jobs involved. Singapore exporting their addiction to foreign workers, housing and aging problems can actually create huge demand for services and new employment in Malaysia.

3d) But knowing Malaysia as being even more addictive to foreign workers, the rapid influx of more Singaporean demand may cause quite a few complications here. Malaysia if you are not already aware, has an almost unresolvable illegal (maybe some are kopi-o legal) foreign population problem.

4) Clawing Back Free Lunch

4a) Malaysians are already very familiar with land scam modus operandi that dishes out free lunches to the cukongs and cronies. From PKFZ, Kg Buah Pala, MIC Selangor  building, Sabah UMNO building, Tun Daim projects and many more.

4b) Malaysia sadly still doesn't have a sophisticated enough legal and tax system to prevent these obscene profiteering from occurring again and again. To introduce a Godzilla-esque project like HSR may lead to the largest daylight robbery binge in Malaysian History.

4b) At least introduce some initiatives for more comprehensive RGPT and land tax structure. Current RGPT is only applicable for the first 5 years after real-estate acquisition. They are not a big deterrent against obscene profiteering. More taxes sound sounds counter-intuitive, but please remember that it will always be difficult to put those slicker than Brylcreem cheating cukongs and cronies in jail.

4c) So the 2 taxes mentioned above can at least claw back some of the ill-gotten gains and use it to fund public services. Proper land tax schemes can also have some democratic effect by deconsolidating capital from the hands of mega corporations and federal agencies in the capital cites.

4d) These taxes can help reduce the amount of hard earned money and easily borrowed money being capture as rent into the private pockets. Personally I see land as a natural resource similar to water and air. It should not be monopolised or oligopolised by cukongs and cronies.

5) Financing

5a) Contrary to what most people think, this sort of projects is not funded by rich private entrepreneurs. Sure Frankie Yeoh might throw in a big stash of money from his own pocket. But most often these cukong corporations will just borrow billions of electronic money created from overseas (mainly offshore tax haven). And they will use Malaysian government guarantee as collateral. 

5b) The other financing method would be government running bigger deficit through internal borrowing. Which might not be a bad thing but feared by general public (especially Pakatan supporters).

5c) The billions borrowed will be spent very fast on acquiring land from cronies, commission (halal and non-halal) and subsequent construction cost. We can only assume that a seemingly feasible project like this will generate enough revenue to payback those offshore banks right.

5d) The rate of paying back depends the passenger volume. HSR are different from MRT and LRT. The distance and local economies that such project spanned varies tremendously. So it is very difficult to compare this with other HSR projects in other nations.

5e) For PM Lee to compare our HSR to that of London and Paris is rather vague to me. Maybe Singaporeans enjoy a Parisian way of life but Malaysians certainly do not speak Queen's English anymore. There is a huge purchasing power divide both countries and those in Western Europe. We certainly cannot compare this HSR with Guangzhou-Shenzen link that spans 2300km and billions of people.

5f) The technology involved are not only expensive but can vary greatly in terms feature and maintenance cost. Will the appropriate overseas rail contractor be chosen? Can the average Malaysians or perhaps Singaporeans afford the ride on such trains?

5g) Malaysia's only HSR so far is ERL by none other YTL. It was supposedly the cheapest HSR in the world.   http://www.ytl.com.my/erl.asp

But still it to be needs to be subsidised by the Malaysian government. http://www.thesundaily.my/news/604621

RM35 per ticket is not cheap even for Singaporeans.

6) True Business viability

6a) How about 2nd Link then? The last major engineering joint venture between the two governments. After more than a decade of ulu-ness, the area is at least booming now. Probably sustainable in the long term if political obstacles are overcome.

6b)Anyone remember Dr Madey Multimedia Super Corridor. Everything was in place buildings, infrastructure and research funding. It took off briefly, landed quietly and pretty quiet till today.

6c) Infrastructure projects will boost GDP numbers no doubt. However a balance qualitative approach is needed to create a high value added business sector to complement the general economy. Both countries are struggling to innovate out from their low labour cost oriented economy.

6d)Malaysia seems to be going back to the basics. Natural resource and agriculture are slowly regaining the limelight after being overshadowed by Dr Madey rapid-fire industrialization crusade. Singapore has some success in the niche technology areas. However such early successes has not prevented Singapore economy from being more and more financialised.

6e) A good read on the effects of infrastructure investment at various stages economic development can be found here.

http://econsmalaysia.blogspot.sg/2012/10/japans-lost-decades-not-quite.html

7) Fundamental Economic Problems and Organic Growth.

7a)Sure we want improvement of living standards that this HSR project will probably bring. But we should also be focusing on how to prevent projects like this from making worse more fundamental economic problems. Such as managing foreign population, a more sustainable wealth/income gap and profits going offshore. A good read on how goodies are shipped out of the economy by MNC (maybe even GLC also).

http://econsmalaysia.blogspot.sg/2013/02/the-economist-on-tax-avoidance.html

7b) Irregardless of this HSR success or failure, common folks like us are going to repay the debts incurred by taxes or more borrowings.But do we get some real influence on the design, land acquisition, tendering process and concession terms.

7c)If not, can our supposedly elected governments, trusted banks and mega contractors do a good job in channeling these borrowings to good use and minimizing leakage? The more mega the projects are the more likely it is to be less democratic.

7d) The governments of both countries are seen as increasingly shaky in their relevance and mandate. An alternative would be putting more reforms into these intuitions before embarking on probably the biggest infrastructure in history for both countries.

A slower but more manageable organic economic growth(coupled with tax reforms) may not be anyone cup of tea. But maybe a few billion Ringgits less in leakages .

(And shit, I am starting to write in point form like Dr Madey)

econsmalaysia.blogspot.com

Just discovered econsmalaysia.blogspot.com. It had a very good post named A FAQ On Malaysian Government Debt.
I am very much anti-BN but I really had difficulty stomaching Pakatan politicized attack on Malaysian public Debt and deficits. They went too far with their household comparison and omitting the fact that public debt for other countries was growing pretty fast in the last 5 years also.


My comments on his post are reproduced here:
Pardon me a blue collar worker for adding a few grain of under informed opinions hereon what most Malaysian Debt/Deficit Doomsayer choose not to touch:

1) Malaysian Government don't print money. They can only borrow money from Bank Negara Malaysia(BNM) or other institutions(private/public)by issuing government securities(MGS). As a result, the interest on MGS will also cause the national debt to grow.

2) Pakatan doesn't mentioned that other countries governments also rollover their debt consistently. And it is one of the major contributing factors to why most countries saw their gov debt rose steeply in recent years.(Compound interest curve become pretty scary after the 20th year)

3) Gov deficit(public spending) represents a surplus for the private sector. Singapore has a public debt of 102.1% of GDP. Singapore public debt are used to keep public transport affordable, keep the street safe and other commonwealth functions. Malaysian gov deficit are spent into the pockets of cronies. We should be panicking because of corruption and not debt levels per se.

4) Public(Gov) money vs Private(Banks) money? Both increases their liabilities(leverages) to supply the economy with money. But not enough panicky weight has been placed on the level of private debt(mortgage and vehicle). As much as we lament irresponsible gov borrowings, the private banking credits(created out of nothing too) are as culpable in messing up the economy. Both puts money into businessmen to create oligarchies/monopolies and very little are trickled down. Both also pushes the normal folks into debt choke-hold. Bottom line Najib's government needs to face the electorate but CIMB answers to the rich elites only.

5)CM Lim Guan Eng mentioned briefly about private debt but fell short of implementing anything concrete that can curb excessive land speculation in Penang.

6) Malaysia the next Greece? Only if Malaysian foreign debts grow out of proportion and our government cease to be sovereign state that can create its own credit money. Actually, we do have a decent trade surplus by today's international standard.



IMHO instead of worrying about debt level, our main problem is political and legal. How to keep our sovereignty? Meaning what are we going to about practical issues:

1)prevent escalation of an artificial crisis where predatory private individuals/entities (foreign or local) can buy up Malaysia for cents on the ringgit?

2)If SHTF how are we going to repudiate some of the odious debts incurred by corrupt politicians?

3)Gotta to admit that huge amount of the loots had already been illicitly transferred out of the country. So can we come up with some contingencies to claw back some of these funds? Can we find some way to neutralized the value of these illicit Ringgits overseas?

4) Seems that half of our EPF had also been drawn down by our current gov(they seem to prefer borrowing form EPF than BNM). It is not ideal but we have to face the fact that EPF is not going to be fully funded for future retirees. But we can nonetheless find some way to manage the funds flow by not compromising on the retirees or the working public too much.

5) And most importantly when the hell are we going to vote out the crooks in parliaments?(added later)

MRT breakdown : An outsider view

Singapore Government and GLCs have done a pretty efficient job so far compared to others in the region. So how to manage Singapore is none of my business most of the time(except for the cases involving foreign workers like me).

I have worked with some Singapore Statutory Boards and GLCs on public projects for about 4 years. Most of these project and engineering team that I had encountered are pretty decent people. There were some who had used their pangkat as an excuse for being incorrigible, but they are minorities really.

This MRTs breakdowns had already been blown up, dissected and scrutinized. So I am just going to add some personal views only.

My view on the MRT breakdowns are more on the incentives side. An entry level SMRT technician salary now is the same as what I got when I started as a foreign worker in Singapore 10 years ago. Many ITE/Poly grads just used these positions as a stepping stone to other places.

It needs to be asked whether there are sufficient incentives to foster a committed team (people who actually maintains and detect potential problems)? It will be very difficult to come up with a sustainable and effective maintenance program without a committed ground crew.

We can throw all sorts of exogenous management strategies, systemic feedback approach and engineering failure analysis at the problem. Probably solving the problem currently on hand. But have we solve the human problem? The problem with incentives and fairness (or the lack of it) as perceive by people. This in turn will affect the level of cooperation the management will get from its employees.

The problem is not unique to Singapore. Morale in the general labour force are at a very low everywhere you go in the East Asian economies. Management everywhere will always argue that wages need to be kept low as possible because we need to compete with slave like labour in China/Vietnam. That is true and is not going away soon.

To further complicate the problem, a SMRT engineer once told me that it is difficult to increase the technicians and engineers salaries. Due to its nature as a public service, increase in wage bill may incensed some Singaporeans. There is a need for public transport to remain affordable he said.

But there are other areas as well people to delve into. As much as everyone like cheap public transport, do the people want technicians that may need to resort to pizza delivery to supplement their meager salaries? Sleep deprived technicians manning the shifts?

Or is it possible to have detailed breakdown of the company wage distribution? This can justify management position that the workers are fairly compensated within the organization. I mean people can work wholeheartedly even for less money if they feel are fairly treated and sincerely feel they are part of something meaningful.

Globalization and capitalism should not only be restricted to labour must compete among themselves to stay alive. Competitions comes in various forms and on various issues. It can be a competition between cheaper public transport vs higher public worker salaries. It can be 3 corner fight between shareholders, management and employees on how best operate the business.

Furthermore capitalism also concerns the balance in risk (responsibility/liability) and reward(incentives). To keep things in order, management can choose to employs an ex-military or ex-police man to catch night shift technicians dozing off and shouting nasty words to keep them working their toes. Or would it be wiser to consider whether the technicians are fairly incentivised with respect to your expectations? Fairness or bureaucracy first?

High time we wisen up. But to whom?

I came across an article High time we wisen up — Justine Mei-Ern at The Malaysian Insider yesterday. I felt it was related to my blogpost Relevancy of The English Speaking Middle Class that I did a few days ago.

Below are the comments I left on on TMI (with some correction on the phrasings that does not the distort the points of my original comments):



Mei-Ern,

I do not disagree with your moral reasoning regarding the apathy of some Malaysians who do not vote or PM Najib's depth. But I do hope that educated middle class people such as yourself could leap out of your intellectual domains into the reality of the non English speaking masses.

We have been troubling ourselves over the wrongs of BN for so many years. But should we instead be worrying about the probability that even if all the educated middle class voted against the BN; that BN will still be calling the shots in the next government or the one after it?

Should be worry about why BN could summon millions of gullible folks for votes and listen to BN rubbish propaganda? Yes, those gullible English incompetent, shallow and don't read much folks. Those folks that are outside the sphere of our articulate English rants.

Is it because BN do get their people to talk with them and maybe throw some money at these folks surviving on meager wages?

Should we be asking these gullible folks to catch up at Mat Rempit speed and speak our type of English? Or should we instead be learning how to communicate in their jargon and enlightened them?

Should we be using our academic and business prowess to help them organize their local community to become less dependent on BN handouts? Should be lamenting how undisciplined and slow the low level workers are? Or should the business circle be risking their bottom line slightly to give them a survivable wage and some respect for their work first?

Call me what you may, but I believe that the building assabiyah(social solidarity) and goodwill among populated majority(middle and lower hierarchy) is more democratic than any elections. Votes are exogenous measures(not unimportant though) while the level of Assabiyah forms the foundation of the society.

So should we start by fighting first - for a solid lateral community socially in the realms below us or against corrupt ruling elites above?

Why I Stayed : Relevancy of The English Speaking Middle Class

Below is my email to the The Malaysian Insider:


I am your typical blue collar worker who commutes daily to work at our neighbouring country. I had been reading with some interest the ‘Why I left’ and ‘Why I stayed’ sections at The Malaysian Insider. In the ‘Why I Left’ section are the usual ‘Malaysia doesn’t love me’, ‘for the children’s sake’, ‘Malaysia not what it used to be’, ‘I love Malaysia very much but she cannot be save’ and so on. In the ‘Why I stayed’ camp are those ‘please look deeper there is beauty/virtue underneath all the crap’ and ‘Patriot who chooses to save Malaysia despite having a chance to leave’.

Interestingly both camps do articulate well the reasons they stayed or left. But there is one big problem, most of them are educated English speaking middle class and the minorities who has the privilege to choose.

What about the rest of the country? What about the big of majority Malaysians who speaks broken English(or can’t speak at all) and do not have the skills(other than manual labour) that developed countries desire?

Okay, I am a sour grape. All I can probably achieve is a subsistence wage blue collar worker in Malaysia or as a lower middle class blue collar worker in developed countries. Not much fancy social mobility there. So to me and the rest of Malaysia, the stuff expressed in both sections sounds more like bickering of the privileged few than anything sound for nation building.

Yes, everyone is entitled to their choices and opinions. And yes, the prosperity of a nation is tied the prosperity of the middle class and the extent of skill professionals are allowed to contribute(meritocracy). To make matter worse we have a corrupt government that tries to slaughter the middle class and productive entrepreneurs for short term profits.

Instead of lamenting how they are being treated by the ruling elites, how about focusing on the relevancy of the educated middle class. Are they relevant to the society they live in? To paraphrase Chris Hedges “Nicolas Sarkozy is a creep, but he is scared stiff by French worker unions and students organizations”.

Lets face it, most politicians are corrupt or will become corrupt by power. So the balance of the societies can only be achieved through educated middle class leading an intelligent/organized rebellion for the betterment of society.

The respect for rule of law, human rights, democracy, meritocracy and egalitarianism of developed countries was the product of great sacrifices by the simple folks and the educated middle class. It was not without sweat, tears and blood.

But how to organized rebellion against Malaysian ruling elites without kena ISAed? No way mah!. So just keep quiet and enjoy our transient GDP growth. And later when Malaysia is loaded with so much public and private debt, just cabut lari before it is too late loh!

Of course, I am not advocating for the middle class folks to get tear gassed at every demos. But there were many little things that they could have done.

For example, for as long as I knew JB factory operators have been working 12hours/day and 6-7days/week. They earn RM34-38 per 12 hour shift and mind you no overtime rate for Saturdays. That works out to be about RM2.60/hour. Operators are force to work like robots with speed and precision, leaving many of them struggling with body aches on a daily basis.

So did the educated/talented middle help to organize a solid grassroots movement for better working conditions? Or were the engineers and middle management too busy pleasing the corporate structure? Or were they busy figuring out what to spend on or invest with their profit pegged bonuses? Was there anyone who did not look the other way (other than the socialist bugs, of course)?

It does not take an awful lot of foolish socialistic imaginations to predict that such a class structure (apologies for sounding Marxist) will have huge negative impacts on the society. How are the workers at the bottom going to find time for their family? Burdened with physical plus mental exhaustion from work, can they provide the care and guidance that their children need? Will it then lead to dysfunctional families and domestic violence?

You mean if the middle class had done something to help the lowly educated poor, Malaysia would not be in such deep shit (pardon my language). Woit really meh? We educated middle class run businesses not welfare. That is the government job.

So we left it to the government because we pay our taxes okay! While the bosses gets their profit and middle class get their comfy pay package. These monies were later used to bid up privatize monopolies in BSKL and as collateral for loaning more money into existence to fund land speculation. The recipe for turbo charge financial wealth generation and GDP growth was set in motion. Good solution right. If that was the case Malaysia should be a smashingly great place to continue living in.

But something went wrong. The poor folks became poorer as a result of inflation eating up their meager wage. Even with both parents working, poor families still could not cope and even more destruction of the family unit awaits. The youths are lost, disgruntled and felt short changed by society. They of course did not want to end up as slave-like labour like their parents. And so the middle class blamed the unreliable ill-disciplined workers for going MIA on work. Luckily we found the solution for the businesses, 'Foreign Workers' from all over the world !!!

The ruling elites was not going to let this opportunity go to waste. They bombarded the low income groups with racist propaganda, hedonistic TV programs and lusty magazines/tabloids. And did any of our English speaking philosophical middle class stood out against such Orwellian and Huxley techniques? Or organized any grassroots movement to enlightened the lowers class?

The low income Malays were confronted with the marginalization by capitalism and artificial incitement by the ruling elites. They had nowhere else to turn to but UMNO. The fortunate ones was bribed with comfortable government jobs at the same pay as a torturous factory operators/technician. The unfortunate ones became Mat Rempits. Many low income Indians and Chinese youths turn to gangsterism and criminal syndicates affiliated with top people in the government. The Sabahans, Sarawakians and Orang Asals were even more ill prepared to face the similar challenges and were absolutely screwed.

And that is to the best of my knowledge how the ruling elites managed to monopolize the formal power(governmental) and informal power(crime gangs) which enable them to steamrolled over any piece of law, any person and any organization.

Back to the stay or leave discussion. I certainly have no problems with Malaysian leaving for greener pasture or not. But I certainly do have a problem with some myopic views on the Malaysian problem.

Firstly both camps seem to think that those developed countries are great because they have niche stuff like rule of law, good business environment and high academic standards. And Malaysia is a rotten place because we have substandard version these stuff. I would like to argue rule of law and other niche stuff are merely symptoms and not the cause of the developed nations prosperity.

The cause for prosperity lies in the solidarity of people will and the resources needed to achieve it. And what most of our English speaking middle class missed was the resources needed achieve prosperity. The poor nations needs to be corrupt and rotten for developed countries to exploit it. They need from the poor countries - natural resources, slave like labor and the cream of their crop to help them manage it. Well I guess, helping developed countries indirectly to exploit other nation seems to be a better choice. It sure beats being at the wrong end of the stick.

A few examples:
1)Warren Buffet’s Wachovia Bank needed to laundered Mexican drug cartel money to stay afloat.
2) An ounce of gold is worth USD1500. The cash cost for extracting an ounce gold is about USD500 to USD600. Out of the cash cost only less than USD300 are used to pay the workers in Africa and to grow their economy. The rest of the cash cost are probably bribe money that resides in London. An African country only gets 20% of the gold value and cyanide waste for the work to get the gold out of the gorund.
3)US had to invade Iraq for oil.
4)Germany and Britain were the top exporter of arms to Libya
5)Taib Mahmud monetize his exploits in Malaysia and invested it in prime real estates(Australia, UK, Canada and US)
6)To make profit and maintain good standard of living in Australia, Lynas have to pollute Kuantan.
7)The high standard of living that the French enjoyed is powered by nuclear energy. They are powered by uranium to Namibia. (Uranium more nasty than Lynas’s Thorium)
8)IMF and US corporations profits from the devastation of South American economies.
9)More than 90% of rare earth used in electric cars, wind turbine, IPhones and high tech applications are mined at great environmental cost from China.
10)More than 20 ex government leaders wanted for genocide resides and stash their loots in London

Secondly both camps keep on repeating that the problem lies with the ruling elites who are the mastermind of all the bad stuff plaguing Malaysia. But is it worth debating whether there are actually mean and evil people in Malaysia. Should we be questioning how they actually got away with their evil deeds instead? They can get away with it because they have control over the large majority of people at the bottom.

The middle class and those with talents were too preoccupied with getting their fair share for the efforts they put in. But that is only the meritocracy between the middle and top hierarchy. Did they forgot a simpler form of meritocracy between the middle and the bottom of hierarchy? The type of meritocracy that doesn’t involve billions worth of scholarships and projects. The type of meritocracy that accord basic dignity to the normal folks(with no exceptional talents) for their simple daily chores of keeping factories, businesses and our country running. The type of meritocracy that requires only a small amount of fair wage and some spare time for the family.

Stagnating wages and rising cost of livings had been crushing the low income group for more than a decade. The middle class is finally feeling the same weight on their shoulders. So suddenly we have a whole lot of them becoming civil activists, openly criticizing the government and marching for change. Better late than never I guess. At least the discussion of minimum wage is going mainstream nowadays.

In my bias opinion again, such reactionary stance totally wipes out their moral and intellectual high ground that they know better than the rest of society. They disconnected with the lower class. A void was created and the ruling elites came in and filled it with hate, jealousy and some other garbage as well. The ruling elites totally exploited the lower class and turned them against the middle class. And the middle class didn’t see it coming.

The fate of this country depends on the middle class ablility to connect with those lower in the hierarchy and not complaining to the ruling elites above.

PS:A quote from someone else "The measure of a civilization is how it treats its weakest members."

Dr M: Ada orang Cina yang 'Gila Kuasa'

DAP’s Chinese backers power-hungry ‘extremists’, says Dr M

Deras betul komen Dr M. Sebagai seorang rakyat Malaysia berkaum Cina, saya memang setuju dengan pendapat beliau bahawa memang ada orang Cina yang gila kuasa dan sanggup membuat apa saja untuk memperolehi kuasa kerajaan.

Antara orang Cina yang begitu gila kuasa ialah:












dan juga



Chow Ah Beng merancang lakonan tangisan hokkien dan skandal jet Sarawak

Dan ada juga orang seperti ini:




Pakatan Rakyat pun ada juga orang gila kuasa:


Dan kita undi orang yang menolong rakyat dan tak gila kuasa:

Berita MMM #002 : Muyiddin not the only crook, its a racketeering team.

Last month, there were reports of Malaysia International Tuna Port(MITP) scandal at Malaysia Chronicle and The Malaysian Insider. In the reports, Tony Pua was questioning forcefully Tan Sri Muyiddin role in this fiasco.

Tony Pua's tirade was focused on Muyiddin and BN government, nothing new really. But Tony's defense of Credit Rating Agencies(CRAs) really woke me up. IMHO, it was totally unnecessary. CRAs very often appears to be grey institutions and sometimes downright crooked.

BN ministers acts as part of a racket(gerombolan cukong)with other parties. In PKFZ or the current MITP, CRAs or the bond buyers(instituional investor)have been in business for sometime and cannot claim ignorance to the fact that only the Finance Ministry can give legal guarantees. Any grey support letter should have been verified of their legality during the early stages to avoid confusion many years later.

All the parties involved knows what was really going on. It's really just part of a elaborate scheme to help private groups to get easy money by pawning the state coffers. For the racketeering team, they assume that they can always get away scott free because the rakyats are a bit slow.

My suggestion is that Pakatan Rakyat should really rethink their narrow strategy of laying the blame always solely on BN. The ministers are not the only crooks in town. They couldn't have looted the multi-billions on their own.

So the abusive relationship is really between the rakyats(victims)and the racket(predators). To attack Muyiddin only will give UMNO more ammunition to attack Pakatan as anti-Malay.

So to attack the racketeering team as whole and suggesting ways to dismantle it, does seem more palatable to rakyats of all groups. Then you might also dispel UMNO exclusive ethic advantage into just another plain crook.

All this and much more in the 2nd Episod of Berita MMM. I really hope this youtubing project can reach out beyond English speaking middle class to the masses. So I would appreciate it if you help to spread the word.

Sports betting is not a 'pasar malam lesen'. It's a monopoly right.

The 2010 World Cup is already over and the Vincent Tan's BolaGate took a hike(for now). I was too busy to write something during that time. So I would like to dig it up now with my few cents.


Pics from anilnetto.com


Pics from anilnetto.com

The huge fiery(fanned by Pakatan Rakyat) public outcry caused PM Najib to make an U-Turn on awarding sports betting license to Vincent Tan. The 2 main spots that Pakatan try to hit are :
(1) Moral and Religious ground.
(2) That sports betting is just a tool to help Vincent Tan in bankrolling Barisan Nasional.
This post is going to stay clear of any moral and religious controversies. So I like to go a bit into some stuff that precedes point no (2).

One thing that struck me most during saga was MCA strong support for legalized betting. So it is going to be convenient their press statements as a tool to discover further.

MCA press statement on 15 May 2010 :
"MCA does not agree with any form of gambling, be it legal or otherwise, and raising revenue should never be used as a valid reason to justify legalization of the gaming industry."
Seems pretty harmless.
"Licensing conditions imposed must include the punter’s minimum age requirement, maximum betting amount, outlets’ location and business operating hours, etc."
Notice how it is just about normal stuff of a sport betting counter. (However Vincent Tan later alluded that it was possible for him to appoint sports betting agent without using his Sports Toto premises.)

And another press statement on 26 June 2010 :
"From Day One, this issue has been politicised to the hilt by Pakatan Rakyat leaders who were posturing for selfish interests."
So does this mean the rakyat are protesting because of PR self interest and not the nation interest.
"It is a shame that the Government has lost a golden opportunity to regulate a thriving sector in the underground economy. Had sports betting been legalised, the Government would have been able to manage and mitigate the social impacts that come with the industry."
A lost opportunity for whom?

What MCA is not pointing out that the government is not just dishing out a pasar malam license but is in real terms relinquishing her monopoly rights. This monopoly right will give Vincent Tan pornographic level of profits (free lunch).

So the question is really how the government is going to recover most of the proceeds of sports betting (not just a meager gambling tax). IMHO sports betting rights should be treated as a natural monopoly right of the state and must not be abused to enrich private individuals. So the there must be a legal plus operational in place before the awarding of any monopolistic or oligopolistic right. It is to ensure that the appointed 3rd party operator gets their decent management fee but cannot runaway with the money through accounting fraud. Malaysians already have endless nightmares with the PLUS, IPPs, utilties and other form of oligarchs.

Here are some points that I lifted from Josh Hong writings regarding the check and balance:
1) What are the limits for the profit of legalized sport betting and how to enforce it?
2) How does the government check for accounting fraud to steal profits (e.g through inflating operating expenditure)?
3) How do we measure the effectiveness of legalized betting? How do we gather data on the betting volume by new legalized gamblers versus the reduction underground betting volume? Is it going to be included in Najib's transformational KPI renaissance?
4) How to regulate the disbursement of legalized betting proceeds to charitable and good causes?
5) If legalized sports betting cannot fulfill its objectives, does unwinding it going to cost a bomb for the taxpayers?

Here is a very amateurish video I've made on this issue:






Regulating sports betting is just a lesser of two evils. The main reasons for gambling malaise in our society are :
1) Greed. (Too moral, spiritual and personal for me to elaborate).
2) A screwed up general economy. When people wages are so low compare to the real cost of living, they being being pressure to into huge debt. And in their desperateness to end this misery they get hook on gambling and become even more in debt. So herein lies the vicious cycle.


Vincent Tan and MCA argued that cash based legalized betting will deter people from borrowing from Ah Long. I think they are very far out with this one. Of course Ah long will prefer normal folks to gamble with them. But with their interest rate of 18-22% pa, they don't really give a damn who you are goings to gamble with or whether you are taxi driver borrowing to send your children to public universities(true story).

One last word for MCA. Since the ministers from your parties have approved so many licensed money lender, why are the Ah Longs still terrorizing every neighborhood in the country with impunity?

So it is not as simple as just giving license away.

Milk Powder Thefts. Trivial matters?

To some of you out there, this post is going to be something so trivial that it is not worth writing about.

My mom was at the neighborhood Chinese medicine shop in the morning. The lady boss was complaining about 2 cases of milk powder being stolen from her brother shop and also hers. In the first case the thieve was a middle age Chinese uncle and the second was a middle age Indian auntie. The normal reaction would be to dismissed these cases as just your normal insignificant shoplifting cases.

Due to my paranoid character, I am going to make some baseless speculations from here . The perpetrators seems to be your average looking aunties or uncles.

Does this make sense? Is it worth the risk to steal large items like tins of milk powder right under the nose of watchful keepers of small shops ?

If there is a rapid rise of such crime, does this means that there are parents out there who are so desperate that they need steal milk powder for their babies or toddlers?

Could this be the symptom of the the section of Malaysians in between the poor and middle class breaking down?
Would the lower middle class be the next to hit bottom ?
After which the upper middle class will start migrating en masse?
What is next, the cliffhanger collapse of Malaysia?

For those of you who have read this far, I sincerely apologize if find the above as nothing more than paranoid questions .

Malaysia, A Banana Constitutional Monarchy? (Updated)

I was watching an episode of Keiser Report on youtube the other day. In it, the hosts Max and Stacy likens the U.S. to a banana republic. So I figured it would also be quirky to draw some similar parallels with Malaysia too. But of course we need to use term 'Banana Constitutional Monarchy' instead.

So let's get started with some basic characteristic of a Banana Country :

1)Profits are privatized and debts are socialized.
The Malaysian government had been dishing out sure profit deals to private companies. For example we Berjaya Sports Toto,IWK, Highway concessions, Independent Power producers and many more unknown companies below mainstream radar.In addition to that we have many land giveaways at below market price (Kg Buah Pala, Naza TTDI and Godfather Daim).
Then we also have gigantic bailouts like CIMB(at least 3 times if I remembr correctly), Perwaja and numerous companies of ex-minister offsprings, We also transfer forex, tin hedging and other market manipulation losses onto the public shoulders.


2) Devalued paper currency in the international community.
Here is a chart I generated from World Bank. It shows the Real Effective Exchange Rate Malaysian Ringgit for the past 25 years.

Its basically an index that compares a currency with a basket of other currencies. The last peak was in 1984 and it has been downhill ever since. So that sort of explain why a Kapok guitar now cost RM100 compared to RM40 when I was back in college.

3)Kleptocracy.
Kleptocracy though not often used in here but it is actually the most accurate to describe Malaysia. Constitutional monarchy or Westminster democracy are no longer the basis for this country. Now the core of the Malaysia system is just kleptocracy, where the current bunch of ruling elites are nothing but thieves who spent most of their time stealing form the public. All sort of monopolies, oligarchies, toll booths, Approved permits, subsidies, compensations(for nonsensical reasons) and schemes are created to move money into the hands of ruling thieves and their proxies.

4)No principle of accountability within the government.
Unlike in UK or Japan where politicians and gov officials resigned over the slightest of impropriety. Those in Malaysia never need to take any responsibility for their wrongdoings.
For all those thousands deaths in NS camp, 1 Malaysia camps, Kg Memali and police custodies no minister or senior civil servants was held responsible. Where are the culprits for PKFZ, Bakun and other fail projects which losses amount to tens of billions? They are still smiling all the way to the banks and some are still occupying ministerial post.

Half of the MPs in Dewan Rakyat are there dubiously because of postal votes and gerrymandering. Dewan Negara is just a dumping ground for past shelf life rejects trying to become backdoor ministers or worse, just to secure a comfortable pension. Monty Python and Mr Bean gets more respect in the international community than our judges. Corruption exists in every level of our police and civil servants.

So it is fairly accurate to say that the whole government structure is just a rubber stamp by the kleptocrats 'kecil' and 'ular besar' kleptocrats to enrich themselves.

Malaysia 'Truly Banana...........'

Update 29Jun2010 : The government had just socialized another RM700 million of Kuala Dimensi Sdn Bhd debt.