Cooking oil - failure of government

Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny

- Shakespeare, Hamlet

Yes, I am back and ready to rock and roll ;-)

Thanks to all for their kind wishes and emails - sorry I won’t be able to reply each of you individually but everyone has my grateful thanks for your kind wishes and, even when I was inactive for the last two weeks, your kind visits to my blog. I was held incommunicado alas, sob, due to a very eventful Christmas-New Year break ;-)

And what do I read when I got back to ‘civilization’?

… the various news reports including those from Malaysiakini about MCA’s Chua Soi Lek and his now-not-so-private private life.

Maybe he took Shakespeare’s advice and told himself, WTF, even if I were as pure as snow (not that there is any snow in Malaysia or that snow is even pure) I would be ‘whispered’ to ruins, so …

Do I care about his private life or that he has at least the basic decency to resign? Not in the least, because there are far more important issues to worry about.

An example of what I have been more worried about has been the perennial and disgraceful issue of essential goods not being readily available for the public.

Malaysiakini reported in its news article Cooking oil on ration after panic-buying that “supermarket shelves were stripped of cooking oil in several states, with retailers not able to replenish supplies fast enough.”

So our dear government did its usual problem solving trick – Malaysiakini said “it has slapped restrictions on cooking oil purchases after panic-buying triggered by rumours of price hikes caused severe shortages ...”

Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Shafie Apdal said that come the new week, customers will only be permitted to buy a maximum of 5 kg of cooking oil at any one time.

Ya, define what does he mean by 'at any one time'? And as a member of the public, why should I be subordinated to such restrictions because of administrative incompetence.

If it’s not cooking oil, it’ll be eggs, chicken, beef, rice, sugar, gas, you name it, that item would have been placed at one stage or other on the controlled list. Previously even the price of a kopi-o wasn’t spared the incompetent but heavy-handed hands of the administration.

The Minister unashamedly admitted: "This is not the first time we are conducting a rationing exercise for controlled items. We did the same when there was a similar crisis involving sugar."

Instead of going the full hog in his confession and admit that poor administration has been the root cause of all these evils, he blamed smuggling. And his solution was to boost the production of cooking oil by 10%.

But this is a mere tactical solution, without addressing the alleged cause, that of 'smuggling'. What is there to prevent that extra 10% production of oil from being smuggled too?

Items become scarce usually because of the triad of evils in the first place, namely control, cronyism and corruption. And behind every smuggling action, we may reasonably believe there's something dodgy on the other side.

In recent times, each year without fail, we see some essential items running out especially when festive seasons approach. There was a time when Malaysia had plenty of everything and those who indulged in ‘panic buying’ would end up regretting the unjustified misuse of their scarce money.

Oh, by the way, just in case we forget, Malaysia is a leading producer of palm oil yet we can't enable our public to buy as much oil as their hearts desire.

If the government can’t even guarantee the reasonable supply of basic essential food stuff, how in the world can it lead us into the 21st Century globalised world, or even dream of participating meaningfully in space science and technology.

But even worse, we see that it will do nothing to attend to control, cronyism and corruption?