I walked into a petrol station along a busy road in Penang last night and engaged in some small talk with the cashier. I asked him what kind of impact the petrol price hike has had on his collection. “In ringgit terms, it has gone up,” he replied. “But in terms of litres sold, there has been a drop.” Hmm, so there has been a drop in consumption, at least at this station, I thought to myself.
Some people are making big bucks from the higher prices of food, including rice. But not the farmers. The Star (8 May) carried this tiny report on page 32 – it should have been front page headlines, Chun Wai! – telling of how over 2,000 rice farmers in the country’s “rice bowl” state of Kedah are now threatening to turn to oil palm cultivation because of the low price they are getting for their padi. And who can blame them? Many of them are just hovering around the poverty line. The farmers want the padi price to be raised from the current ceiling of 65 sen/kg to RM1/kg. They complain that they have to sell their padi cheap, cheap but when they buy rice, the price is between RM2.20-2.80/kg. Where got meaning? (There’s no ceiling price for rice.) “Farmers have to absorb the escalating costs of fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides and [Read more]
Severn Cullis-Suzuki, then 12, addresses the Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro in 1992: To all those greedy and wasteful people (and their corporations) who are destroying the environment, think of your children and your families and what kind of world you will leave behind for them. Who is she? According to Wikipedia: Severn Cullis-Suzuki (born 1979) is an environmental activist, speaker, television host and author. Born to writer Tara Elizabeth Cullis and Canadian geneticist and environmental activist David Suzuki, Cullis-Suzuki received a B.Sc. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Yale University in 2002. She has spoken around the world about environmental issues, urging listeners to define their values, act with the future in mind, and take individual responsibility. In 1992, at the age of 12, Cullis-Suzuki raised money with members of ECO, the Environmental Childrens Organization (a group she founded) to attend the Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro. [Read more]
If the NEP goes, what will replace it? The Malaysian Economic Agenda? Unlike the NEP, the MEA calls for providing assistance to all those who need it, irrespective of ethnicity. Fine, but PKR, DAP and Pas leaders must realise that the people voted for more subsidies and greater government social spending. This is what they were promised. They did not vote for “free market”, “business friendly” policies. Neither did they opt for neoliberal policies (privatisation, corporatisation and policies favouring the corporate elite), which have actually widened the gap between the rich and the poor. Voting for greater democracy does not mean support for “free-market” policies. Actually, what we often have in Malaysia is a situation, as economist Charles Santiago puts it, “where you had subsidies for the rich and a free market economy for the poor. While you subsidise the rich on one side, the debt of the country is [Read more]
There’s been a lot of reaction over the selection of the Perak Mentri Besar, which has gone to a Pas candidate. Kit Siang should not have asked his DAP state assembly members to boycott the swearing in. After all, there was an agreement among the DAP, PKR and Pas at the state level that they would respect the Perak Sultan’s choice. And if party leaders believe in democracy, then they should understand their roles in the party. Lim, is just an adviser to the party, though he played a significant role in contributing to the Opposition’s good showing. It should be borne in mind that many Malaysians voted across ethnic and religious lines. By asking DAP assembly members to stay away, how different is that from the BN assembly members staying from Guan Eng’s swearing in ceremony in Penang? Really, Kit Siang should respect the wishes of a large number [Read more]