PM Najib: To Walk the Talk

The time for rhetoric and sloganeering are but over.

It's time to aggressively walk the talk. It is time to genuinely seek talent across the board to help develop the economy. The much annoying  and irritating rent-seeking mentality must go!

Let us read what PM has in store for the bumiputeras and other deserving non-Malay citizens who can contribte meaningfully to national growth.

The Najib administration has abandoned the policy of helping just one or two Bumiputera businessmen as it does not bring economic or political benefit to the grouping.

Instead, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said his government would focus on prospective entrepreneurs who genuinely qualify for assistance and have the potential to venture abroad.

“People come to see me, asking me to approve contracts. I can do so but this is not the way to help the Malays as we don’t want to help only one or two of them. We want to help them overall,” he told reporters after opening the Penang Malay Economic Convention here today.

Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s ambitious industrialisation policy in the 1980s saw a group of Bumiputera businessmen taking over privatised government projects and services in aviation, telecommunications, land and sea transport, and other services.

Some of them were linked to Umno and a few had to be bailed out by the government when the Asian financial crisis hit in 1997/1998. Most were linked to former finance minister Tun Daim Zainuddin and also sacked deputy prime minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

Recently, a group of businessmen linked to the Malaysian Malay Chamber of Commerce had proposed a RM50 billion buyout of all tolled roads and highways in the country through a special purpose vehicle called Asas Serba.
They had promised to cut toll rates by 20 per cent and said they would finance the deal through bonds. Some analysts have called their plan unworkable while the Pakatan Rakyat insists the government nationalise the toll roads as most were controlled by government-linked company, UEM.

Najib stuck to his line of helping more people, saying there was no short cut to helping them but that the government also does not want to help undeserving Bumiputera entrepreneurs.

The government had previously assisted Bumiputera entrepreneurs via contracts and equity holdings, but this did not have the desired results, and instead, leakages occurred along the way.

“Today, we give shares to the Malays, tomorrow it will be owned by others and this is what we mean by leakages and we don’t want this to occur again.

“If we look at Bumiputera shareholdings, how much is still left in the hands of the Malays? The numbers will be shocking if we mention it,” he said.

The prime minister said if there were no leakages, the 30 per cent Bumiputera equity holding meant for the grouping would have already placed them on a stronger footing economically.

“Maybe something was not right then, that’s why we need the New Economic Model,” Najib said, adding that the government, in their pursuit to help Bumiputeras, would not neglect the other races who qualify for help.
He also called on Bumiputera entrepreneurs to establish business networks in order for them to progress.
Najib, who is also Finance Minister, said with networking, it would be easy for the government to extend assistance to help them prosper at the state, national, regional and international level.

“Business networking will help small-and-medium enterprises to secure business from big corporations and not solely depend on government contracts,” he added.

He said that via business networking, government assistance would be more business-friendly, transparent and sustainable.

Can we see action as the people wants performance now.........?.

Tunku Abdul Aziz: The Visionary of Wisdom

I read his article, "1Malaysia: Another Morning Glory?" and I liked it.I like the analogy and I liked  his hindsight views of the wherewithal of 1Malaysia. His analysis on what Najib can do with his clarion call of 1 Malaysia is spot on. We can do with more doyens like him.

Let us read and improve our mental horizon.

MAY 8 — An old English friend of mine, the late Humphrey Ball, the Malacca lawyer, once described Malaysia, his adopted country, as a morning glory — a reference to “a climbing plant with flowers shaped like trumpets that open in the morning and close in late afternoon.”

Having lived among us for so long, he was used to putting up with our little foibles, and if he was irritated by them, he kept his feelings very much to himself. Humphrey was the quintessential English gentleman.

We were having breakfast and it was a lovely morning and the city looked splendid. In between another cup of tea and a round of toast and marmalade, he surveyed the Kuala Lumpur skyline from the veranda of the Selangor Club and declared that from his experience, many of the state of the art concrete and stainless steel structures that were jostling for breathing space in the ever expanding concrete jungle of Malaysian towns and cities would go the way of all the other buildings he had seen in this country — in wreck and ruin within a few years.

“You know, Tunku, Malaysia is not unlike the morning glory,” he intoned.

Humphrey was, of course, right. We are good at building with the help of legions of exploited foreign labour. Maintenance is not part of the equation and we see this not only in the state of our buildings but also our suburban roads.

We neglect to repair a small hole as soon as it appears in the road until it becomes big enough to maim or kill a motorcyclist or damage a car. The Government, both Federal and State, is lucky that suing the authorities for negligence has not become a common feature of Malaysian life.

This is because the overwhelming majority of our people are ignorant of their rights. The time is not too far away when, as in the US and other developed countries, the authorities will be held legally accountable for their actions — in this instance, their lack of action.

Humphrey’s morning glory best describes our general attitude and approach to civic or public duty and responsibility. We undertake a government construction project with a lot of trumpeting and enthusiasm, but we seldom ever complete it successfully.

We see hundreds of such monuments to crony capitalism and entrenched, systemic corruption in every state of the nation. This is what happens when governance is driven by political rather than rational considerations. When meritocracy is on the backburner instead of in the driver’s seat, this is to be expected.
Datuk Seri Najib Razak may mean well in what he says about policy reforms, but will he be allowed the freedom to act effectively? Present indications are that he will be allowed to talk about his vision of a united and prosperous Malaysia ad infinitum.

His rival and other powerful political minders know that there is not much harm done to existing policies that benefit the party as long as they control and curtail his actions. He may not know it, but he has already caught the morning glory disease of beginning with a bang and ending with a deafening whimper.
Najib must wish he had not spent so much public money that is needed more urgently elsewhere to launch his 1 Malaysia, which looks destined for an early demise, like the morning glory of Humphrey’s evocative analogy. 1 Malaysia will forever remain a puerile offering of a confused mind that is best forgotten before the nation is subjected to further ridicule.
Please do not get me wrong. I have, all my life, promoted racial unity and integration, the acceptance instead of tolerance of cultural diversity, long before Najib even thought about these unifying elements.

But my version of 1 Malaysia is one that provides equal opportunity for all, based on the principles of justice and fair play.
My 1 Malaysia is a Malaysian Malaysia where all citizens are treated equally and discrimination in any shape or form is outlawed.
My 1 Malaysia is Middle Malaysia where extremism in economic, social, and political terms is totally expunged, and where the notion of racial supremacy is killed as soon as it rears its ugly head.

My 1 Malaysia will be free of the contradictions such as we see in our existing policies that favour a particular section of the Malaysian community to the detriment of sustainable overall development.

For the life of me I cannot see Najib delivering on my order. Can you, my fellow Malaysians? — mysinchew.com

Don't you agree that this is a gem of an article?