BN irresponsibly creating hatred amongst races and religions to avoid answering their failures to curb corruption, rising prices and cost of living, waste and inefficiency, growing indebtedness of the country and rakyat, declining educational standards and deteriorating public infrastructure

BN is behaving irresponsibly by creating hatred amongst races and religions to avoid answering their failures to curb corruption, rising prices and cost of living, waste and inefficiency, growing indebtedness of the country and rakyat, declining educational standards and deteriorating public infrastructure. BN’s hypocrisy and double-standards is not just about talking 1Malaysia to non-Malays and 1Melayu to Malays and talking of national reconciliation and yet illogically blame the Chinese tsunami for causing BN to win only 47% of the popular vote against PR’s 51% when the Chinese only form 25% of the population.

BN is also pitting the Malays against non-Malays as evidenced during the hate-fest during the UMNO General Assembly, Muslims and non-Muslims through their reckless exploitation of the “Allah” issue but now even amongst Muslims by playing up the Shia and Sunni schism in Islam. These dangerous political games of playing fire with religious and racial extremism is focused on burying BN’s mismanagement and denial syndrome that their greatest success is making Malaysia the world champion of corruption according to Wall Street Journal and Transparency International.

The announcement yesterday by the Works Minister that highway toll rates will rise next year is the latest in the series of price rises for petrol, sugar, and electricity rates. This will only increase the cost of living which will be worsened when the GST of 6% is implemented in 2015.

At the same time, no action is taken to curb the waste and inefficiency highlighted in the latest 2012 Auditor-General Report involving a shocking RM6.5 billion. Lest we forget these are some of the financial malpractices that have gone unpunished.

The AG’s Report highlighted the repeated annual problems of overspending, under-utilised, sub-standard or paid well above market prices in the procurement of works, goods and services such as:-

• RM1.3 milion worth of equipment by the police force that went missing, including 156 handcuffs, 44 weapons and 29 vehicles were missing.
• the Department of Broadcasting’s purchase of 20 wall clocks at RM3,810 each, 38 times more than the estimated RM100 each, and three A4 size scanners at RM14,670 a unit, more than 70 times the estimated price of RM200 each;
• the Customs Department’s having to destroy RM600,000 worth of shoes it had purchased because they did not suit its officers;
• the Melaka state government’s illegal building of its Customs and Immigration Quarantine Complex on private land, which eventually cost it an extra RM10.8 million to compensate the landowner, plus an extra RM40 million in building costs that had shot up because of the delay;
• Ministry of Youth spending RM3 million excessively and imprudently for the National Youth Day celebrations, including RM1.6million to bring in K-Pop groups from Korea.
• RM1.3 billion in additional costs over the USD 2.3 billon Bakun Dam project and paying RMUS$133 million (RM430 million) in compensation to two foreign contractors for losses incurred which suffered delays of up to four years in civil engineering works.

BN has run out of ideas how to manage the country as it can no longer borrow money as the Federal government has hit the statutory debt limit of 55% of GDP with RM541 billion. However more disturbing is the household debt to GDP ratio of 83.5%, the second highest in Asia, which makes the livelihood of poorer income groups miserable as most of their income is towards paying off debts. The price increases of sugar, petrol and electricity will not only make their situation worse.

The deteriorating infrastructure shows that public expenditure does not comply with the principle of “value for money”. The floods and confused public transport, flooding at international airports or even building a Melaka airport that is empty of aircraft is some of the glaring examples. How many more times must the ceiling of the Serdang Hospital fall before action is taken against the contractor?

What is more worrying is the bleak future of our country. To win the future, we must invest in the future. Investing in the future requires investing in education to produce human talent. However despite investing 21% of our annual budget in education, there is no value for money. Instead the 2012 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) reported that our educational standards has declined precipitously until our students are 4 years behind the top performers from China, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Malaysia even loses out to our poorer neighbours from Vietnam and Thailand!

Ths shame of poor educational standards is matched by Malaysia’s top performance in the illicit outflow of funds comprising of tax evasion, crime and corruption. Malaysia’s exceptional performance as the world champion of corruption is justified with of RM173.84 billion (US$54.18 billion) of illicit funds outflow or dirty money siphoned out of Malaysia in 2011, ranked fourth worst in the world. For 2011, Malaysia is behind giants Russia (US$191.14 billion), China (US$151.35 billion) and India (US$84.93 billion).

According to Washington-based financial watchdog Global Financial Integrity (GFI) Report, despite a smaller population Malaysia has a higher illicit funds outflow than many larger populated countries in the world from 2002-11.With a total of RM1.2 trillion or USD 370.38 billion lost from dirty money between 2002-11, this huge loss of funds from dirty money is larger than Malaysia’s GDP this year or next year. Or nearly RM4,300 per Malaysian over the last 10 years.

Every country on the top 10 list of shame, has a population larger than Malaysia. PR will press for a full accounting for all the huge financial scandals such as the RM 52 billion bumis shares scandal where ordinary Malays missed out on these shares which disappeared presumably to BN leaders, the RM14 billion Port Klang Free Trade Zone scandal and the annual exposes of financial malpractices highlighted in the annual Auditor-General Report(involving amounts of RM 6.5 billion in 2012).

For Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Paul Low to dismiss the illicit outflow of “dirty money” as only an annual loss of RM1 billion from corruption and RM34 billion from crime shows his complete loss of credibility in fighting corruption after becoming a Minister. Clearly a Ministerial post is more than a rewarding substitute for all the previous principled stand of fighting for accountability, transparency and integrity.