Michael Backman is at it Again - Lambasting Abdullah

[youngyew]

Michael Backman, the made-famous Australian columnist who wrote about Malaysia's extravagant projects and waste of money (here), is at it again.

Malaysia's PM seems to be failing his people at every turn

On October 31, Abdullah Badawi, Malaysia's PM, will have been in office for four years. Abdullah came to office promising to fight corruption and to be a breath of fresh air. He has failed on both counts.

But he has achieved one remarkable feat none of his predecessors could: he has united most of his country's elder statesmen, established businessmen and intellectuals.

They are united in their utter dismay at his performance, a point that many such individuals made to me on a recent visit to malaysia.

The despair is compounded by the near impossibility of getting rid of Abdullah.

Before 1987, anyone who wanted to challenge the president of the ruling UMNO party (and hence PM), needed to get endorsements from just two divisions of UMNO. Previous prime minister Mahathir Mohamad had that changed after his finance minister Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah challenged him for the leadership and almost won.

Would-be challengers must now acquire the endorsements of 30 percent, or 58 of 191 divisions. This means that the prime minister's office needs to pay off fewer than 150 division heads with government contracts and licenses to ensure their support.

Critics within UMNO are anaesthetised by patronage and sadly the PM probably thinks that he is doing a good job because his inner circle constantly tells him he is. He is their ticket to riches, after all.

Ramadan has just ended and once again Malaysia has been treated to the spectacle of government ministers and other officials fasting and playing the pious Muslim on the one hand and stealing from their fellow Malaysians on the other.

Abdullah has had three chances in recent times to show that times have changed in Malaysia and to clearly assert his authority when presented with examples of such theft.

He has blown each one.

The first was when it emerged that his Trade Minister, Rafidah Abdullah, had handed out to her relatives, government officials and former officials hundreds of lucrative licenses to import cars - without any clear procedures or transparency. A good leader would have fired Rafidah immediately. She is still there.

Another opportunity arose with revelations by the auditor-general last month of fraud and corruption in government purchasing,. Some of the more flagrant abuses were at the Ministry of Youth and Sports Affairs. It had wasted millions on purchases such as paying 224 ringgit for sets of screwdrivers worth 40 ringgit, or 1146 ringgit for a 160 ringgit pen set.

More seriously, the ministry's head, who had the authority to approve contracts worth less than 5 million ringgit, was found to have approved contracts for almost 450 million ringgit. The ministry claimed that then minister and now Education Minister Hishammnuddin Hussein had written a letter of authority for the purchases but this disappeared during auditing. Despite all this occuring under Hishammudin's watch, he remains in the cabinet. The third incident relates to an ongoing scandal at the Port Klang's Free Trade Zone - Port Klang is Malaysia's main shipping port. Essentially, the port authority was forced by the well-connected individuals to buy far more land than planned for the free trade zone and at highly inflated prices, even though it could have compulsorily acquired the land, literally saving billions.

This and development costs, and "professional fees", blew out the total cost for the zone from 1.845 billion ringgit to 4.2 billion ringgit. It is a scam of outrageous proportions and is just the sort of thing that is turning foreign investors off Malaysia in their droves.
Rather than make arrests, the Government is using taxpayers' funds to bail out the authority. The auditor-general tipped off the responsible minister (a term I use loosely) - Chan Kong Choy, the Transport Minister - about the problems, as did a foreign partner in the zone, but Chan ignored the warning. Has Abdullah fired Chan? Of course not. Has the previous minister Ling Liong Sik been questioned by the police? Of course not.

These three instances were good opportunities for Abdullah to show his ministers who is boss. Well, he certainly did that.

One might ask what on earth the Finance Minister has been doing in the face of all this waste and theft. Or, indeed, even who is the Finance Minister? Extraordinarily, it is Abdullah. In a break with tradition, he occupies that post as well as being Prime Minister. The firings should start with him.

After all, it's not as if Malaysia has a shortfall of ministers. On the contrary, Malaysia has no fewer than 72 ministers and deputy ministers at the federal level. By way of comparison, Australia has 32 ministers and assistant ministers. Is the quality of public administration in Malaysia more than twice as good as in Australia? Let the facts speak for themselves.

Malaysia is truly at a cross-roads. It has many good people with great potential but it is slipping beneath the waves of mediocrity, weighed down by the officials intent on an orgy of plunder while the ship's captain stands idly by.

The process of government needs to be dramatically and urgently overhauled. Malaysia needs a dynamic, strong visionary leader who is up to the task. Instead, it has Abdullah Badawi.

From The Age. Typed by myself because I can't find the online version.

[bluez_aspic]

Hmm, no mention of Khairy.

I haven't read The Age for a while - does Backman now have a regular column? Anyway why is he writing all these articles to begin with?

[youngyew]

Originally Posted by bluez_aspic

Hmm, no mention of Khairy.

I haven't read The Age for a while - does Backman now have a regular column? Anyway why is he writing all these articles to begin with?

Not sure... According to himself:

http://www.michaelbackman.com/MM.html
http://blog.limkitsiang.com/2007/05/...s-in-malaysia/

[chongmh]

khairy?he is just as same as mokhzani mahathir...

[gonjeng]

Originally Posted by chongmh

khairy?he is just as same as mokhzani mahathir...

As the same? The words on the streets is that he is worse... I mean, far worse...

[suyuen]

I guess Backman does have his points about the government. Apart from having double the number of ministers of Australia, Malaysia has one of the highest government servants to population ratio in the world. In other words, we're hiring more government servants than we should.

[bluez_aspic]

There was another one in yesterday's The Age.

[youngyew]

Okay, I would just copy it here. (All rights belong to Michael Backman, of course, if he finds this)

Truth and justice are no longer Malaysian way
By Michael Backman
The Age
November 21, 2007

THE Government of Australia will probably change hands this weekend. There will be no arrests, no tear gas and no water cannons. The Government of John Howard will leave office, the Opposition will form a government and everyone will accept the verdict.

For this, every Australian can feel justifiably proud. This playing by the rules is what has made Australia rich and a good place in which to invest. It is a country to which people want to migrate; not leave.

Now consider Malaysia. The weekend before last, up to 40,000 Malaysians took to the streets in Kuala Lumpur to protest peacefully against the judiciary's lack of independence, electoral fraud, corruption and a controlled media.

In response, they were threatened by the Prime Minister, called monkeys by his powerful son-in-law, and blasted with water cannons and tear gas. And yet the vast majority of Malaysians do not want a change of government. All they want is for their government to govern better.

Both Malaysia and Australia have a rule of law that's based on the English system. Both started out as colonies of Britain. So why is Malaysia getting it so wrong now?

Malaysia's Government hates feedback. Dissent is regarded as dangerous, rather than a product of diversity. And like the wicked witch so ugly that she can't stand mirrors, the Government of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi controls the media so that it doesn't have to see its own reflection.

Demonstrations are typically banned. But what every Malaysian should know is that in Britain, Australia and other modern countries, when people wish to demonstrate, the police typically clear the way and make sure no one gets hurt. The streets belong to the people. And the police, like the politicians, are their servants. It is not the other way around.

But increasingly in Malaysia, Malaysians are being denied a voice ? especially young people.

Section 15 of Malaysia's Universities and University Colleges Act states that no student shall be a member of or in any manner associate with any society, political party, trade union or any other organisation, body or group of people whatsoever, be it in or outside Malaysia, unless it is approved in advance and in writing by the vice-chancellor.

Nor can any student express or do anything that may be construed as expressing support, sympathy or opposition to any political party or union. Breaking this law can lead to a fine, a jail term or both.

The judiciary as a source of independent viewpoints has been squashed. The previous prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, did many good things for Malaysia, but his firing of the Lord President (chief justice) and two other Supreme Court judges in 1988 was an unmitigated disaster. Since then, what passes for a judiciary in Malaysia has been an utter disgrace and the Government knows it.

Several years ago, Daim Zainuddin, the country's then powerful finance minister, told me that judges in Malaysia were idiots. Of course we want them to be biased, he told me, but not that biased.

Rarely do government ministers need to telephone a judge and demand this or that verdict because the judges are so in tune with the Government's desires that they automatically do the Government's beckoning.

Just how appalling Malaysia's judiciary has become was made clear in recent weeks with the circulation of a video clip showing a senior lawyer assuring someone by telephone that he will lobby the Government to have him made Lord President of the Supreme Court because he had been loyal to the Government. That someone is believed to have been Ahmad Fairuz Abdul Halim, who did in fact become Lord President.

A protest march organised by the Malaysian Bar Council was staged in response to this, and corruption among the judiciary in general. But the mainstream Malaysian media barely covered the march even though up to 2000 Bar Council members were taking part. Reportedly, the Prime Minister's office instructed editors to play down the event.

Instead of a free media, independent judges and open public debate, Malaysians are given stunts ? the world's tallest building and most recently, a Malaysian cosmonaut. Essentially, they are given the play things of modernity but not modernity itself.

Many senior Malays are absolutely despairing at the direction of their country today. But with the media tightly controlled they have no way of getting their views out to their fellow countrymen. This means that most Malaysians falsely assume that the Malay elite is unified when it comes to the country's direction.

Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, a former finance minister and today still a member of the Government, told me several weeks ago in Kuala Lumpur that he could see no reason why today Malaysia could not have a completely free media, a completely independent judiciary and that corrupt ministers and other officials should be publicly exposed and humiliated.

According to Tengku Razaleigh, all of the institutions designed to make Malaysia's Government accountable and honest have been dismantled or neutered.

It didn't need to be like this. Malaysia is not North Korea or Indonesia. It is something quite different. Its legal system is based on British codes. Coupled with traditional Malay culture, which is one of the world's most hospitable, decent and gentle cultures, Malaysia has the cultural and historical underpinnings to become one of Asia's most civilised, rules-based, successful societies.

Instead, Malaysia's Government is incrementally wasting Malaysia's inheritance.

From: The Age

[bluez_aspic]

The Tengku Razaleigh quip made me LOL - still, corruption was nowhere as bad then and he was quite a Sinophile by UMNO standards.

[chongmh]

but...most of malaysians do not appreciate this diversity of this legal system...they are wasting time by suggesting a "new" legal system...syariah legal system...why does it so?is that because of 'islamisation in 1980s by tun dr mahathir?i'm quite afraid that one day...our judicial system will be vanished by a group of people whom they want to control whole judicial system...