Effective Rights

Last week I visited Singapore during a working vacation. I chanced upon an interview given by Tengku Mahaleel on Channel News Asia, a Media Corp news channel. He highlighted a few things during that interview.

The first was the reasons why he believed he should have been allowed to continue the job but we are not going to dwell on that. What surprised me was that when he left, he said Proton had cash in the tune of two billion ringgit. He says they now only have 300 million ringgit.

If what he says is true, then one must wonder where the cash has gone. Has it been used to purchase more rediculous entities like MV Agusta or for designing vehicles like Tiara and Juwara that were a disgrace and should have been scrapped at the design stage itself.

Or there could be one more possibility. The money has been used to line the pockets of the rich and powerful few while we suffer here with the burden of Proton being protected through high tariffs for foreign cars. If Proton has the quality in it’s products, then fair and good. However, their standards are well known and why should we the public suffer the burden.

If Tengku Mahaleel is right, then I hope Proton will come forward and let us know what happen to all that money and how do they propose to safe the national car industry. The people are now more knowledgeable and thus we demand more answers. This is just one industry involving a government linked company. I wonder what kind of worms are in the tins of other GLCs.

Then I hear the Deputy Prime Minister saying on national television that the government has given 14 billion ringgit in subsidies for petrol while Petronas has forked out 13 billion ringgit in subsidies.

I can understand when his Honourable DPM speaks of the government subsidies but as for the subsidies by Petronas, well we all know that they must pay for the exclusive right of finding and getting petrol out of this nation. Do we have to beg for what is rightfully ours? Even if the government has given all these subsidies, it is not from the coffers of their party but from the taxpayers money. They are only returning the wealth belonging to every single Malaysian i.e. the oil and soil belongs to all of us.

The government privatised many national bodies with the idea of making them more efficient and to better serve the public. However, due to their monopolistic situation, the public is still not getting what they deserve.  The nature of monopolistic business is such that the consumer always gets a bad deal. The monopolistic situation even extents to private companies linked to the selected few.

The time is right for all to come clean. The road ahead may be a long one but if we start reforming now, maybe, just maybe we could achieve the dreams of our forefathers and live in a peaceful, modern and coherent society.