Does Pakatan Harapan have any plan to reclaim our public assets, especially public utilities that were privatised during the reign of Dr Mahathir Mohamad;
... to strengthen public sector health, education, housing and transport services including highways;
... to regulate financial transactions and speculation;
... to regazette all permanent forest and wildlife reserves;
... to ensure all local people are consulted before any development proceeds;
... to protect the rights of farmers and fisherfolk and create a national food security policy with a push for food agriculture instead of commodities such as palm oil;
... to distribute land fairly to all genuine farmers; to promote renewable energy projects that do not destroy forests or Orang Asli land?
During Mahathir’s reign, thousands of indigenous peoples were displaced for the Bakun dam and other mega dams in Sarawak and the Selangor dam while vast wealth has been reaped by those who have exploited and own more and more of our commons.
During Mahathir’s reign, thousands of indigenous peoples were displaced for the Bakun dam and other mega dams in Sarawak and the Selangor dam while vast wealth has been reaped by those who have exploited and own more and more of our commons.
To take the Bakun dam as an example, timber from an area the size of Singapore island was extracted by Ekran Bhd, and on top of their failure to carry through the Bakun HEP project, Malaysian taxpayers still had to compensate the company to the tune of RM1 billion.
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| mahathir's grandiose idea |
Please read past Pakatan manifestos
ReplyDeleteReNationalisation of privatised entities is NOt in the manifesto.
Ensuring fair contractual agreements is, eg. IPPs and Toll concessions.
Ensuring indigenous native rights is. In fact Pakatan has done fairly well in Selangor.
However, faced with BN threats, many native headmen are still hostile to Pakatan, even chasing them out of villages and refusing permission for ceramahs.
Kua Kia Soong should stop talking like a Gerakan supporter.
I know well Kua is a bitter and disappointed man in the twilight of his career. Locked up during Ops Lallang. While Lim Kit Siang and Karpal bounced back even stronger, Kua was a diminished man after that, and he bitterly holds that against Mahathir.
Kua then lost out in a DAP conflict with Lim Kit Siang , whom he has never forgiven.
Kua then attempted a 2nd career as an academic with New Era college in Cheras. He was eventually sacked in the course of of Don Zhong intrigue.
Again the bitterness.
Even in Suaram, Kua is very much a Has Been, focused on Old issues, while energetic younger activists monopolize with fresh current issues.
Tired Aging Man, probably should ride off into the sunset for everyone's good, including his own.
"ReNationalisation of privatised entities is NOt in the manifesto.
DeleteEnsuring fair contractual agreements is, eg. IPPs and Toll concessions."
The IPPs were created during Mahathir's time and the state owned Tenaga Nasional was more or less forced to buy power from them whether it needs it or not.
This is the crony capitalism which the opposition during the Reformasi days opposed and now they want to "ensure fair contractual agreements" with the IPPs.
Ditto for highway toll concessionaires and Pakatan wants to "ensure fair contractual agreements" with them.
When Putin came to power in Russia he jailed the opportunistic oligarchs who had bled post-Soviet Russia for their own gain.
If I were in Putin's shoes I would have had the oligarchs shot in public.
China still executes corrupt officials.
That said, I agree with you that Kua Kia Soong has an axe to grind with Mahathir over his detention and so do some other opposition politicians who are or were also detained.
However, if PAKATAN is serious about righting the wrongs which began during Mahathir's time they need to act more decisively to undo the wrongs if elected, and that includes restoration of the powers of the rulers and restoration of the status of the judiciary back the way it was before the changes.
I remember very well how dealing with the Pre-privatised Telekom was like.
DeleteA faulty phone line took 3 weeks to fix. Just getting somebody to attend to your fault report was a painful, time-wasting exercise.
Privatisation did not improve Telekom's organisational culture immediately, but over time it did.
If Kua wants Telekoms reNationalised, I say Fuck Off, Kua Kia Soong.
"..restoration of the powers of the rulers and restoration of the status of the judiciary back the way it was before the changes."
DeleteWhat has the 1st part got to do with the 2nd????
BTW, r u really with the proletariat?
Or u have another face?
"I remember very well how dealing with the Pre-privatised Telekom was like.
DeleteA faulty phone line took 3 weeks to fix. Just getting somebody to attend to your fault report was a painful, time-wasting exercise.
Privatisation did not improve Telekom's organisational culture immediately, but over time it did."
Yes. Staff of Jabatan Telekom or Jabatan Talikom took a long time to fix things when it was a government department back in the 1980s and earlier.
However, with the right management, state-owned bodies can be made to be more efficient and effective.
Jaring,a state owned company which pioneered Internet access in Malaysia was efficiently run and pretty dynamic.
Prasarana, a state-owned entity which operates our LRT, monorail, Rapid bus and MRT is efficient and effective compared to KTM which is a listed government-linked company.
So effectiveness and efficiencies are a matter of management and corporate culture.
Love it or hate it, the MCMC as a telecommunication services regulator and the successor of Jabatan Telekom is an efficient and dynamic agency, which focused more on overseeing and regulating the expansion of Malaysia's communications infrastructure and services.
It is only now under the present Minister of Communications and Multimedia that the MCMC is engaged more in policing content on the Internet.
During Dr. Lim Keng Yaik's time, the MCMC played a leading role in driving the deployment of fixed and wireless broadband infrastructure and services in Malaysia and it achieved its target of 50% household broadband penetration ahead of the deadline at the end of 2010. This five-year plan was called MyICMS 886.
Keng Yaik kept pushing the MCMC to make sure of good quality of broadband services by the privatised operators. Like a strict schoolmaster, he used to say during press conferences, "best effort is not good enough".
As for Malaysia's e-government initiative, I have found it much easier to obtain soft-copies of reports, guidelines and statements from federal government websites than Selangor state government websites.
The right-libertarian and Neo-liberal ideology which permeates cyberspace and which influences many Pakatan politicians and supporters is suspicious of any government initiative as a form of "government control" and they believe that the solution is competing privatised entities running things.
Thus, instead of solving problems such as with central banks, such as the Federal Reserve, they set up alternative, such as Bitcoin supposedly to serve as a parallel, decentralised currency system outside government regulation and control.
Well Bitcoin has instead become an asset class to be traded and exchanged for establishment currencies, so how can it then be "independent" of establishment currency systems.
Right now, the exuberance and euphoria over Bitcoin's skyrocketing exchange rate with the US dollar reminds me of similar exuberance and euphoria over dotcoms back in the late 1990s.
Well we all know what happened with the dotcoms not long after that.
Sure, some of the stronger and more well established dotcoms survived that massive shakeout and now are giant Internet corporations dominating cyberspace, with the power of landlords to evict their freeloading tenants at whim.
Those stupid cyberlibertarians thought that the Internet "belonged to no one" and "could not be controlled". Well 20 years later we know the truth which confirms what I have oftentimes said - "Free markets tend towards monopoly, just as water tends to seek its own level".
Take a look at this A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace issued by John Perry Barlow from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on 8 February 1996.
https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence
Then look at the reality of the cyberspace today and see for yourself whether Barlow's statements have turned out to be true or has the exact opposite happened.
@CK
Delete"What has the 1st part got to do with the 2nd????
BTW, r u really with the proletariat?
Or u have another face?"
If restoration of the status of the judiciary and power of rulers (especially with regards their right to assent to bills passed by parliament) back to what they were before Mahathir's actions make it better for Malaysia and the proletariat even within bourgeois rule, these will be worthwhile reforms.
If one want to undo what Mahathir has done, these are some of the changes he made which need to be undone.
From what can be seen today, the changes made with regards the judiciary and the powers of the rulers (especially in relation to the Agong's right to assent to bills passed by parliament) during Mahathir's time did not make matters any better for the proletariat or the nation as a whole. In fact it made matters worse and neither Abdullah Badawi or Najib have reversed those changes.
Look around and you'll find that some of the most repressive dictatorships in the world are bourgeois republics, whilst some of the most progressive social democracies such as Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands and so forth are constitutional monarchies, though unlike the U.K., their monarchs and royal families have a low profile.
After all, constitutional monarchs are mostly figureheads, though depending upon their respective country's constitution, the monarch can provide a check against abuse of power.
I don't blindly go by book ideology but by the practical realities in the real world at any given place, time and circumstances.
Neither do I 'buy' ideas wholesale.
DeleteAs a modern state, the symbolism of the regal institution should be further reduced not restored or improved.
Mamak has done a critical initial moves in telling the feudalistic blur-sotongs that the blue bloods r not above the laws. They should face the music when they behave badly.
Expecting the hereditary rulers to be wise enough to exercise their right to assent to bills passed by parliament IS a tall order.
"Raja adil raja disembah, raja zalim raja disanggah" belongs to the bygone age.
Hence, a conscious royal household would know how to behave & to lie low. Just like most of the current Western royalties now.
Moreover blue bloods r definitely not in tune with the struggles of the proletariat.
Unlike some atheist who r arguing for the sake of arguing (more likely job assignment)!
In as much as I have reservations about Dr. Kua Kia Soong, knowing that SUARAM, supposedly "non-governmental" has admitted to having once accepted funding from the National Endowment for Democracy and other western governments; however on these points I commend him for asking these questions.
ReplyDeleteWhilst the Selangor State government's buy back of Selangor's privatised water assets is an one example of such re-nationalisation moves, however such examples are rare in states which Pakatan rules.
The Pakatan parties have been rather silent on matters such as these "... to strengthen public sector health, education, housing and transport services including highways", which Kua highlighted and after over nine years of ruling over Selangor and Penang, the respective Pakatan state governments have done hardly anything to regulate the wild building which has been going on but instead has facilitated them.
I would like them to have promised to strengthen the bargaining power of trade unions, including promising to allow unions to strike and to repeal all legislation which forbids unionisation for Pioneer Status companies.
When New Labour won the elections in the U.K. with Tony Blair as prime minister, it did nothing to reverse the anti-union legislation introduced by the Thatcher Regime.
In fact, many Pakatan politicians and supporters tend towards being neo-liberals.
Pakatan is comprised of bourgeois parties fighting ruling bourgeois parties for power who are just as willing to exploit the working class for their gain, albeit with more liberal social and cultural policies to sweeten the bitterness of the pill.
It goes like this - "You're LGBTQ - no problem, but we'll let the capitalists exploit you economically just the same, if not worse.
"You can protest on the streets all you want, no problem, but we'll just fart in your face and ignore all your barking".
More power to the trade unions, with stronger bargaining rights including the right to strike,plus stronger labour laws to protect the interests of the workers? - "Oh, no,no, no! That's so old school, its bad for business and will drive away the foreign investors".
"Socialism is dead, whilst neo-liberalism is the in-thing in today's globalised world, so workers gotta be hip, hype and happening and gladly accept austerity measures and be willing to be screwed right and truly, whilst workers can lose themselves buried in their smartphone screens".
Perhaps they may even legalise pot so that the ruthlessly exploited workers can temporarily escape their misery in organic chemical induced euphoric fantasy.
After all, hedonism is a weapon of the exploiter and oppressor.
Whilst the Selangor State government's buy back of Selangor's privatised water assets is an one example of such re-nationalisation moves, however such examples are rare in states which Pakatan rules.
ReplyDeletePrivatisation did not improve Telekom's organisational culture immediately, but over time it did.
The IPPs were created during Mahathir's time and the state owned Tenaga Nasional was more or less forced to buy power from them whether it needs it or not.
"ReNationalisation of privatised entities is NOt in the manifesto.
Ensuring fair contractual agreements is, eg. IPPs and Toll concessions."
The question IS what's the most appropriate solution to resolve these glaring examples of cronyism created by umno?
Most of these companies r umno nominees, used to be the war chest for its clandestine operations.
At the same time they also serve as retired nest for many of its golden years elites & road soldiers for gaji buta retirements.
They have been configured as a set of convoluted commercial setups with iron-cladded MoAs.
To buy them out right will cost tons of money. Never mind also about the long & tedious legal procedures.
Besides these money will also go to the nominated cronies & eventually back to umno.
Hence, nationalise them is the quickest, cheapest solution to overcome the blood sucking 'monopolistic' problems they r associated with.
After that, revamp the management setup & operations to inject new vibrancy into these dinosaurs so that they become new vital growth engines of national development.
Bleeding heart approaches & political-correctness thinking WILL get the new government nowhere, as seen in the long entangling water issues of Selangor!
curse Mahathir for all of it and why r u protecting his name? makan dedak kah, wakakaka
DeleteYES, curse Mahathir for PART of it!
DeleteWithout that hegemonic umno, mamak couldn't do ANY such things le.
Lest u choose to forget, thus ONLY tembak mamak.
How selective can u be?
WHO's protecting his name, wakakakaka...
Currently I choose to support mamak bcoz he's the best hope to tearing apart that bigoted mothership.
While u continuously protecting yr ahjibgor by lying attacks on all his foes!
WHO's makan dedak? Betul2 terang lah!
privatisation or nationalisation have it good n bad, look at most communist n socialist, rarely nationalisation improve productivity. similar the privatisation under capitalism, some did well some no. one can only pick on mahathir failure but have to recognize some of his idea work.
ReplyDeletemy question to kua is more on op lalang, how he sure op lalang is not the main check that stop the umno rally which give in to mo1 desire to bathe his keris with our blood, of course those in oz is safe.
I'm looking at communist china wakakaka
Deleteand you are so makan dedak as to now blame ops lalang on najib, wakakaka
i believe yr knowledge on anything china is paltry if compare against me, just like i try not to comment on anything israel. mao did all the nationalisation while deng did the opposite.
Deletesincerely dun u think op lalang calm down everyone? u dun even support the use of allah, indicate u lack the radical thought like many chinese, hence yr stand on op lalang is pretty obvious. no? unless u have double personality, which is very likely wakaka.
I have to admit I'm not a Chinese communist lover like you, wakakaka
DeleteNajib's TPCA Stadium threat to bathe his dick in Chinese blood added very significantly to the tensions at the time, so Najib definitely bears a large chunk of blame for triggering Ops Lallang.
DeleteDenial of that sounds a lot like the product of swallowing Dedak.
HY is not a Chinese communist lover.
DeleteU don't seem to read his tea leaves well!
But then, for a claimed banana, how much does it knows about the Chinese thinkings except those penned by the angmo. These angmoes have totally mis-read the Chinese thought for they can't fathom that chinese intrinsic sense of being!
There r things/feelings that only a native can understand. Outsiders r just skimming the top layer ONLY.
Just like many things u have written -
Those u know, u zoom in singularly while ignoring the bigger picture.
Those u don't, u twist & manufacture to yr satisfaction.
Tsk....tsk... worth the effort or not?