Saturday, October 30, 2010

Mahathir was never wrong

The Opposition is actually heading down the wrong road. More often than not, the Opposition choose to link Dr Mahathir to every political issue.

Take for example, the recently announced Budget. As usual, it was DAP leaders who provide comprehensive review of the Budget and never PAS or PKR as they have sensational statements prepared even before the Budget is read out.

But DAP leaders were also clueless, such as Lim Kit Siang. The Budget was described as Mahathir-ish. Kit Siang must have been in the game for too long and spent his life opposing Dr Mahathir without considering whether Dr Mahathir was the right fit or not.

Kit Siang made "Mahathirism" sound bad. But in actual fact, Mahathirism is a good injection to a very crappy economy back then. Neither were Mahathir's Budgets and if Najib's budget is Mahathir-ish, then Najib is on the right track.

To understand what Mahathirism is all about, read

  1. Mahathirism in my eyes
  2. Mahathirism's pet projects
  3. Mahathirism - Education and Foreign Relations

To add on, Dr Mahathir ensured UMNO's stability and indirectly the country's stability when he "politically managed" his former deputies such as Tun Musa Hitam, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and Tun Ghaffar Baba.

We cannot deny that under Dr Mahathir's years, the political arena was well controlled and ensured that the country's development and progress continued smoothly.

One phrase sums it all. Dr Mahathir was never wrong.

He was not wrong when he pressured Tun Abdullah Badawi to resign even though our friends in Pakatan Rakyat thinks he is a good Prime Minister (this shows what sort of quality we have in PR, hopefully they invite Pak Lah over to their party to lead them in 13 GE since he is so good).

I mean, seriously. Who in their right mind will want Pak Lah, Tun Musa Hitam and Anwar to be PM of Malaysia in the 21st century and expect them to lead us to be a developed and high income nation by 2020?

Now, Dr Mahathir finally sees results in Najib when the sitting Prime Minister announced his budget and launched the Economic Transformation Programme.

PM, heartiest congratulations. The word from the ground and the coffee shop stories I hear, the PM has successfully shown that he is a man who only care about getting the job done professionally regardless of race, religion or politics.

As a parting shot, the next time you read anything on politics, think if I'm right when I say the Opposition can never put aside race, religion and politics. It is in their blood.

Together we transform the nation.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

We don't need Talent Corporation

I am very sad whenever people talk about the Brain Drain issue. Everyone seems to have an opinion especially senior Government leaders but none were able to point out what I call the immediately executable solution!

To overcome this issue of Brain Drain, we now have a Talent Corporation under the Prime Minister's Department. If I may, I say we don't need this Talent Corporation. What for?

Each year, a scholarship fund which amounts to BILLIONS OF RINGGIT is created to ensure that 2500 of our top students get proper and high quality education.

Out of this figure, approximately 1500 gets to go overseas to universities like Yale, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, ANU, Melbourne, Osaka and many more. The remaining 1000 students are sent to top local colleges such as Taylor's, INTI, and HELP to pursue a foreign degree locally.

Of course, we have the local public universities JPA scholars also but unfortunately, I don't have any figures for that pool.

These are the top universities in the world whose graduates get employed by Barclays, Mc Kinsey, Macquarie and many more top institutions in the world. I am not making up stories and any senior HR executive can clarify this.

Surely, these graduates mean something. Unfortunately, the Government is not exploiting this pool of talent (JPA sponsored students with contractual bond).

My fellow taxpayers. Let me tell you.
  1. Our money is used to sponsor 2500 students ANNUALLY

  2. Only a handful is called up to serve their contractual bond with the Govt.

  3. The rest either proceed to stay on at the host country, work in Singapore (closest model of Malaysian lifestyle) or end up working in Malaysian private sector.

  4. Even if called up, scholars are not given proper jobs that match their specialist knowledge and in fact.

  5. In fact, if a scholar is called up, there are loopholes around the JPA - SPA system which a Oxford scholar can probably exploit and continue with his work at Barclays while totally ignoring the Government's notice or his contractual terms.

Now, I have no problems with scholars who end up working in Malaysian private sector. But there is no clear mechanism that all those 2500 scholars, who didn't get a "please serve your contractual bond" notice from Govt, end up contributing to the nation.

It seems to me many are in the first and second category - stay on at the host country or work in Singapore, the closest model of Malaysian lifestyle.

So yes, my fellow taxpayers. We have been financing the brain drain probably up to a conservative estimate of 1000 top scholars per year (out of an estimated 2500 private education scholars).

Now, tell me, why the hell do we need a Talent Corporation to identify talent when we are not even exploiting the academic but unpolished talent of Malaysia in the form of JPA scholars?

I do understand. JPA might not be able to hire all 2500 JPA scholars ever year. I have no problems with that.

But the geniuses in Government should have considered a solution to this. In the scholarship contract, it is easy to put in a clause to say that the JPA scholars are required to serve in the country with any company for a certain number of years, if not for the Government.

Don't tell me this can't be done. I heard Singapore is using this clause too.


If given a chance to act on this, I will surely tell those who walk the corridors of power that we don't need a Talent Corporation for now and please make full use of the 2500 students which the Government sponsors every year.

Every year, my fellow taxpayers, we are the financiers of the Brain Drain in Malaysia. On top of that, we have loopholes to the whole system! When will the leaders come to their senses and at least listen to me?

We really need a Civil Service Transformation Programme.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Dear MCA

There are questions which I believe no one can answer me and I doubt even MCA leaders can answer. Come on my fellow friends and leaders in MCA, prove me wrong.

Convince me, dear MCA.

  1. What does MCA mean to the learning youth, to the trader, to the executives n to the man walking on the street?

  2. What is MCA to kids in schools, to youth in colleges, to working class in offices, to professionals in suites?

  3. What can MCA offer in 13GE to the Malaysian Chinese that DAP is not already doing? What about to other communities?


I believe if MCA can answer these questions and work towards this directions, then we are all good. We can then walk to PM Office in Putrajaya and tell the PM, "Sir, rest assured. You have the Chinese votes in the bag".

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

MCA 57th AGM

MCA, since establishment, is seen as a representative entity of Chinese community that covers various Chinese based guilds, associations and chambers of commerce. That's a massive organization and not even DAP enjoy that sort of connections.

And PM spoke at the AGM that Malaysian Chinese today are not pendatang but rightful citizens who had contributed much to the development of the country. Thank you PM!

Judging from the Prime Minister's reform initiatives lately, he is definitely on track as compared to the "de facto leader" who was too busy teaching Election Commission on clean and fair elections but ended up having a questionable one in his own Party. Take that, Anwar!


Anyway, back to the MCA AGM. Let's look at statistics first.

MCA Youth and Wanita MCA had approximately 45% delegates who weren't interested in the AGMs. And approximately 20% of the seniors weren't there for the national MCA AGM as well! One can go around saying that this is due to the fact that people have religious events to attend to but come on, 45% of them?

Also, the alternative media reported about Wanita MCA's criticism of the President's morality issue. The ladies claimed that they couldn't answer back whenever they get involved in a debate and the Opposition raised the President's you-know-what case. Hey, these ladies have a point! MCA Infocom, send someone to help Wanita MCA on how to deal with this. Send someone to teach me too.

Lately, the Presidential Council of MCA has been very vocal on many national issues with heavy support from The Star (yeah, you know why).

Actually, we can see evaluate this from two angles. One is that MCA is doing her job and finally speaking up. Two is that MCA is part of the Government and the Party is giving advice publicly to the Government which is quite contradicting!

Speaking out is one thing. If MCA talks too much publicly and the Government ended up not able to do the things which MCA said, then this matter will end up haunting Barisan Nasional. The Chinese will start saying "itu Barisan dan MCA, cakap saja pandai".

It will also jeopardize the relationship of MCA with her partners in the coalition.

Take for example, we talked about low Chinese participation in civil service for the past 10 years. Wanita MCA raised this point again this year. When will we solve it and how to overcome this issue?

So my advice is let's keep it controlled and manageable before it is too late. More importantly, we must not start pointing our guns at each other in Barisan Nasional as it might escalate to the "blame game" level one day and send Barisan Nasional crashing down.

Remember, MCA. We are Barisan Nasional first, MCA second (I doubt Kit Siang can say he is Pakatan first, DAP second and neither can Nik Aziz).

Barisan Nasional's macro objective is our priority number one. The clear cut opponents of MCA is not any of our coalition partners but the Crescent, the Moon and the Rocket which takes them to the land of nowhere.

During Tee Keat's days, he was brave enough to face the Opposition. In fact, in Youtube, there are videos of Tee Keat and Dr Wee Ka Siong debating against DAP leaders back when he was younger.

The current MCA leadership must shift its focus on the Opposition's agenda and shred it to pieces, just like how Tee Keat did while able to defend MCA too. No doubt, MCA won't win Election by being vocal on issues alone.

Saturday, October 02, 2010

Perak DAP's Ngeh-Nga

In Dec 2009, I wrote an article - All good in Perak DAP ?

Well, this problem inside DAP started way before in fact. In 2008, the well respected "cili padi" of Perak - YB Fong Po Kuan - announced her decision to quit as candidate for the 12th General Election.

Many believed that her decision was due to Ngeh Koo Ham and Nga Kor Ming's style of grabbing safe seats for themselves (I let DAP fellas tell you this, if they are not subject to any gag orders from Lim Sr).

YB Hee Yit Foong left after the 12th GE even though she was the Deputy Speaker of Perak and today she is a nobody after leaving DAP to be BN friendly.

In her maiden interview with SinChew after she announced her decision to quit DAP, she hinted that it was due to YB Ngeh Koo Ham and YB Nga Kor Ming (they are cousins in DAP Sendirian Berhad).

Nobody believed her story and in fact, some Perakians did this :

After that, we had the famous story of a YB who wept openly when delivering a speech (YB Leong Mee Meng of Jalong). The story too was linked to Ngeh-Nga.

Today, online news portals were splashed with Perak DAP Deputy Chairman and MP Ipoh Barat - YB M Kulasegaran - saying "Just finished DAP leadership meeting in Ipoh. Sad day as I will announce what is lacking in Perak leadership 2molo n why I have 2 leave 4good".

Yes, a fool will also tell you this is linked to Ngeh-Nga. YB M Kulasegaran, time to call for EGM. Takkanlah DAP ni tak ada demokrasi atau DAP hanya berfungsi mengikut titah daripada Bapa dan Anak keluarga Lim?

The people in Perak should now be wise enough to judge for themselves on Ngeh Koo Ham and Nga Kor Ming. These two arrogant and power crazy guys must be sent packing by all means.

There is clearly a problem internally in DAP with heavily divided factions and the downfall of Pakatan Rakyat Perak might be due to Ngeh Koo Ham and Nga Kor Ming.

Some questions from me.
  • Will the Lims protect Ngeh-Nga just like how they protected Ronnie Liu?

  • Or will they just issue a meaningless "stern warning" like what they did to YB Teng Chang Khim's "OMG, real culprit is freed" tweet?
This is a problem when DAP's Lim Sr and Lim Jr sweep everything under the carpet all the time. Dear YBs, please go and check on your comrades in Kedah also. For those who don't know what's happening there, google it or give DAP Kedah a call.

Whatever. DAP Sendirian Berhad, that's your problem. The quickest way to solve these is to issue a gag order.