PENANG, Jun 19 (IPS) – He died a lonely death in a budget hotel room in downtown George Town earlier this month, far away from home. The death went unreported in the local media and unnoticed by most Malaysians. But what drove this worker from India in his mid-20s to take his life, assuming there was no foul play? Undertakers told IPS that the death certificate indicated the cause of death as hanging. His body was sent home to India on June 10. Full article: Death of a migrant worker
Death of a migrant worker
Malaysians are so riveted by the Altantuya murder case that they didn’t notice that another foreign national has died in Malaysia in mysterious circumstances. Well, I wouldn’t blame them as the news went unreported in the local media.
Vipin V Nair was found hanged in a budget hotel room in George Town, Penang earlier this month. What drove a young man from India to take his life in a foreign land?
Sadly, even if we had heard about it, I doubt if the news would have raised any eyebrows. After all, he was “just a migrant worker”. No big-time political intrigue, no political powerplay.
But if we care to look deeper, we will see that many migrant workers are victims of exploitation, cheating and deception. Many parties stand to make a lot of money from the recruitment of foreign workers into Malaysia. Think about it: you have recruitment agents’ fees and other costs in their home countries, Fomema charges for medical tests, higher general hospital charges for medical treatment, annual foreign workers’ levies and of course low wages once they arrive here. That doesn’t include the bribes and extortion rackets that some foreign workers encounter along the way.
Most of us look the other way and turn a blind eye to such exploitation and a deaf ear to their cries of anguish. After all, the attitude is as long as we can live in prosperity, why bother? Never mind if there are others who suffer in the process.
Here is the story I wrote of Vipin and his friends and their experience in Malaysia:
Oil wars and nuclear nightmares
What happens when one day you go to the petrol station and find that there is no more petrol? One of the main worries in many countries these days is that the oil is running out.
All the while, political leaders and corporate tycoons will avoid addressing the principal issue that can slow down global warming and save fast-depleting oil and gas reserves. That is, they will avoid questioning our model of economic growth. For that would mean looking at corporations and the powerful influence they have in brain-washing entire populations that their activities are sustainable.
We are going down a road that is not sustainable and can only lead to darkness and chaos in the future. Let us do something about our wasteful lifestyles. Let us question the power and influence of corporations and the assumption of unending economic growth before the oil dries up and we are forced into a nuclear energy nightmare.
In this piece for the Herald in February, I argued that our economic growth model is seriously flawed:
Rather than turning to conservation and looking at other alternative sources of energy such as solar and wind-power, we are hell bent down the path of producing and consuming even more. That is not surprising given that our whole political-economic-corporate edifice rests on that basic assumption, which is never questioned, of annual economic growth ad infinitum.
Energy Minister Lim Keng Yaik says there is a need to diversify our energy sources, but that does not address the energy requirements of the next generation of Malaysians.
The scary thing is that more and more countries will be tempted to resort to nuclear energy when the oil, gas, coal and hydropower is not enough to meet people’s unquenchable demand.
Even in Malaysia, already we can hear talk of nuclear energy as a possible future source, although Lim dismissed the possibility of that in the immediate future especially in view of the surplus electricity from Bakun Dam in Sarawak. Plans are underway for surplus electricity from Bakun to be channelled via undersea cables to the peninsula while the rest will be taken up by energy-guzzling and polluting aluminium smelter plants in Sarawak. (That is another debacle, too long to go into in this piece.)
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Meanwhile, we see the United States already involved in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now they are sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq while the thump of war drums for a possible strike against Iran grows louder. Some analysts say that the US military will pretty soon be turned into a force to protect its energy security needs, including oil wells and pipelines around the world.
Alliances will be formed between countries to address their energy needs and countries will be forced to take sides. We saw how upset a top United States lawmaker was when he found out that a Malaysian firm was involved in a huge energy deal with Iran to develop offshore gas fields in south-eastern Iran and establish liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants. So upset was he that he called on the US administration to suspend discussions for a Free Trade Agreement between Malaysia and the United States. This just goes to show that by signing an FTA, Malaysia would be expected to fall in line with the United States not only in trade matters but also with larger US “strategic goals” anywhere in the world. Meaning, their enemies will become our enemies.
Size does matter: Small is beautiful
We are told Bigger is Better. Big Airports, Big Bridges, Big Corporations, Big Shopping Malls, Big Dams, Bigger Banks, Bigger Plantation Firms, Bigger Highways (oh, what a nuisance, the oil is running out though) and even Big Agriculture. And we measure our well-being by how much we earn (and consume) – as in Per Capita Income levels – and how much more we can produce (the Gross Domestic Product or economic growth rates). We rarely factor into the equation the damage done to the environment or the loss of scarce natural resources.
And everywhere people are working to feed the unquenchable System, which it turn feeds our materialistic and consumerist desires. As a result, many Multinational Corporations today are richer and more powerful than some of the developing countries.
We have talked a lot about this Big Neo-Liberal Economic System. It is a system aided and abetted by politicians and their cronies, who are driven by greed and corruption to further deplete the world of its resources.
The System is decaying, though. The Pax Americana world we live in is tottering, the US dollar highly vulnerable, due to the massive financial deficits in the United States. The dollar is only propped up by demand for US dollars from developing countries and their external reserves maintained in dollars, but that could change as more nations switch to the euro currency.
The housing bubble in the United States is bursting and this could lead to a sharp slowdown in the US economy, precipitating a crisis of sorts. In the Middle East, America is stuck in a quagmire and could worsen matters by taking some sort of military action against Iran, which could overstretch its armies. Faced with the twin threat of global warming and imperial overstretch, the US-influenced global Empire is about to come unstuck.
But what is the alternative to this Empire, you might well ask? In this excerpt from an article I wrote for the Herald, I tried to show that the only way out of the crisis facing humanity today is to adopt simplicity and renunciation as guiding principles in all areas of life and to use small local solutions wherever possible.
First of all, we have to be convinced that…a system based on materialism and greed goes against the basic principles of the Gospel (and for that matter, Buddhist teachings). Think of the call to renunciation (“Sell all your possessions and come, follow me”), simplicity (“The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”), and sharing of possessions (The Feeding of the Multitude).
We cannot rely on nation states or national politicians alone to significantly reform such a system – because for the most part, many of them are deeply mired in and compromised by the System. Maybe that is why many people in the developed world, sensing this, have withdrawn from politics, thus contributing to low voter turnouts at elections.
Concerned people and communities must act to bring about the change we want. But what sort of change do we want?
“Small is Beautiful”. That happens to be the title of a series a path-breaking books by Schumacher. No, not the Formula One driver, but E F Schumacher, an economist.
“Ever bigger machines, entailing ever bigger concentrations of economic power and exerting ever greater violence against the environment, do not represent progress: they are a denial of wisdom,” he observed. “Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful.”
“Man is small and therefore, small is beautiful,” he famously declared.
Heavily influenced by Buddhist economics from his travels to Burma, Schumacher believed that people needed good work to achieve holistic human development. “Production from local resources for local needs is the most rational way of economic life,” he said.
He was also greatly influenced by Catholicism. Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and the thoughts on distributivism by Catholic thinkers such as G K Chesterton resonated with Schumacher’s own thoughts on socio-economic justice. In 1971, Schumacher converted to Catholicism.
Today, people at the local level are beginning to stir. We can also see the signs of this “glocal” approach during the gathering of grassroots groups at the annual World Social Forums, also attended by Christian (including Catholic) groups involved in justice and peace work. At home, we saw it during the local protests against the Broga incinerator and PMPCIII’s call for a revival of basic local communities.
But for change at the local level to blossom, we also need local democracy, which requires elections to town and village councils, something we don’t have in Malaysia. Real local democracy would allow people to participate in the issues that concern them – very much in line with the CST principle of Subsidiarity.
Fudging the real causes of global warming
Although there is now belated recognition of global warming as a critical issue for humanity to grapple with, world leaders and the mainstream media are still fudging the real causes of global warming.
One likely reason for this smokescreen is that global warming has a lot to do with the system of corporate capitalism, which encourages consumption and infinite GDP growth. Many of us are so enamoured with “The System” because it gives us a false illusion of “progress” and comfort (though many others suffer or are exploited by this same system).
In this piece for the Herald, I observed that we are so locked into this system and its illusion that it prevents us from seeing that corporations and consumers are feeding off each other while seriously harming the environment.
The neo-liberal economic system also prevents our leaders from taking decisive action to protect the environment and its people. Instead, they spend a lot of their time protecting the interests of corporations and their corporate cronies.
“…the fundamental point is that, to reach their powerful positions in society, Blair, Brown and other western leaders have had to subordinate the planet’s future to the prerogative of global economic ‘growth’; or, to put it more honestly – to the bottom-line corporate expediency of endless profit benefiting privileged sectors of society,” observed the UK-based Media Lens group, which has produced some outstanding critical analyses of the corporate media. “Any would-be political leader determined to change the current patterns of production and consumption would barely get out of the starting blocks, never mind reach the finishing tape of real political power,” it observed.
This corporate-led system puts capital above labour, profits above people, and GDP economic growth above the environment. Under this system, corporations burn fossil fuels to obtain the energy needed to meet our rising levels of consumption. The corporations are also responsible for fuelling this rise in consumption through their aggressive marketing and promotion strategies and pervasive advertisements. And all the while, they clear the land and cut hills for “development”, pollute rivers with their chemical discharges, emit toxic fumes into the air, and burn more and more fossil fuels.
Even activists feel resigned, thinking that there is no way we can stop this kind of globalisation in its tracks. Sometimes they sigh, “Globalisation is here to stay; we cannot stop it, so what can we do?”
Yes, globalisation is here to stay. But let’s be specific. What kind of globalisation do we really want? Is it corporate-led globalisation that benefits a small fabulously wealthy elite group, widens the gap between the rich and the poor, fuels global warming and exploits workers? Do we really want to live in a world ruled by corporations?
Or would we rather have people-centred globalisation that promotes solidarity with the poor, harmony with Nature, holistic and spiritual growth, and respect for the rights of all?
As long as we do not tackle the real causes of global warming, so long will we have to deal with it apocalyptic results – death, illness, homelessness, famine, and misery.
Changing the model of globalisation will not be easy. But change it we must so that it does not exploit people and the environment. We have to work and struggle for it in our own way. Every little bit will count.
How corporate con-artists “cook the books” and engage in fraud
It is not difficult to “cook the books”, as most accountants will be aware.
But what about the external auditors? They are supposed to be independent and professional, right? In theory. Far too often though, the partners of audit firms develop a cosy relationship with their clients, especially if the audit fee is substantial.
In this article for Aliran Monthly, I discuss some of the common tricks used by financial con-artists and dishonest management/staff in committing fraud or engaging in “creative accounting”. This is by no means an exhaustive expose – just a sample to give you an idea how vulnerable most firms are to fraud and dishonest accounting.
Devious accountants can also manipulate financial results by bringing forward or deferring the recording of expenses in the accounts. Thus, a firm’s management is able to show a higher or a lower profit figure to suit its circumstances. It may want to show a lower profit figure – to save taxes or to provide a cushion for future years. Or it may want to disclose a higher profit figure for the year – to match overly optimistic profit forecasts that were issued earlier to entice investors to buy shares in the firm. This kind of unethical accounting practice is often cynically referred to as “creative accounting” or window-dressing. Full article: EXPOSED – Dark secrets of the private sector
Transmile’s RM333m shocker: Cooking the books in Malaysia
So a special audit of Transmile Group has discovered that its revenue for 2005 and 2006 may have been overstated by over RM500 million ringgit. Gulp! Let me say that again s-l-o-w-l-y: over RM500 million.
And its pre-tax profit for 2006 of RM207 million may have been inflated by RM333 million – which means that its real bottom line should have been a pre-tax loss of RM126 million.
Uh-oh, someone has been very naughty here. Cooking the books, it would appear. A fine work of “creative accounting”, indeed.
And investment analysts have got egg on their face, expressing shock and horror at this turn of events. When news first emerged that something was amiss at Transmile after the firm failed to submit their audited account before the 30 April deadline, it seemed that the market consensus was that the bottom line was overstated by about RM50 million or so.
But I knew something was seriously wrong when I first heard that the external auditors had refused to sign the declaration stating that the accounts showed a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the firm. That refusal should have sent up a wave of red flags. It simply couldn’t have been merely because of a book-keeping error, which could have been easily rectified.
Auditors rarely refuse to sign the accounts – unless something is seriously, seriously wrong.
The real question we should now ask is: how widespread is such dodgy accounting in Malaysia?
Most accountants would be familiar with the tricks of the trade – “creative accounting”, they call it. This involves creating fictitious invoices and dummy sales contracts, for instance. You know, the stuff they don’t teach you in accountancy school. Basic book-keeping entries – such as credit sales, debit debtors – can do “magic” to your bottom line. Another common trick involves playing with provisions for doubtful debts and stock losses – or not making enough provisions.
Accountants and management often have an intuitive feel for what kind of bottom-line the market (or their board of directors or key shareholders) is expecting. When their promotion prospects, stock option prices or bonuses depend on what kind of profit they deliver, devious management staff can easily “massage” the figures until they reach a “profit” that is within the range the market (or top management) is expecting. As for junior accounting staff, they often know when they see accounting entries or dummy invoices that are false or concocted. But they are usually too afraid to refuse to enter such transactions in the books for fear of losing their jobs.
About a decade ago, I sent in an article to the journal of the Malaysian Institute of Accountants titled “My boss wants me to cook the books” or something to that effect. In that article, I discussed what accountants and other financial staff could do if ever they faced pressure from their bosses to manipulate the accounts or to put in false entries. The article was never published.
Anyway, this is a piece I wrote a couple of days ago for Asia Times Online – before the preliminary findings of the special audit on Transmile were reported. You will see that Transmile is not the only firm to practise “fancy accounting”:
PENANG, Malaysia – Dodgy accounting at a handful of prominent listed companies has put the spotlight back on Malaysia’s financial reporting and corporate governance. Not only has it taken the shine off the stock market’s recent good performance, which is only now emerging from the doldrums of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, but it has cast a shadow over recent upbeat investor sentiment. Full article: Cooking the books in Malaysia
Constantine, Christianity and the values of Empire
Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity had a profound impact on history. The imperial values of the Roman Empire were pitted against the values of the Gospel, as expounded by Christ in the Beatitudes (Blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek etc). That tension and contradiction has reverberated right down the ages. Many Christians, while on the surface subscribing to the teachings of Christ, were in reality taken up by the values of worldly empire, materialism and militarism rather than the renunciation, simplicity and non-violence that Jesus advocated.
Although we do not have the Roman Empire with us today, we have other superpowers. The values of Empire – and a global neo-liberal economic structure that favours the rich and the powerful – are still very much in our world. If at all there is an unseen global enemy, it has to be the unjust economic system that these powers nurture. It is a world ruled by a small group of fabulously wealthy elites who promise an utopia of worldly riches and bliss but instead oppress the poor and downtrodden even more.
In this piece for the Herald, I tried to show the impact that Constantine’s conversion had on Christianity and how the early dynamism was eaten up when Christianity became the religion of the Empire.
For the first couple of centuries after Christ, the early (Christian) communities were very much the Church of the Poor, sharing their possessions and working for the common good. “I have come to bring the Good News to the Poor,” were Jesus’ first words as he embarked on his mission. Since then, the message of Christianity has been widely seen as a critique of the rich and powerful.
Constantine’s conversion to Christianity had positive and negative implications for Christianity and the Gospel message. Constantine’s chief legacy was to ensure that the persecution of Christians ceased. Christianity, as the state religion, became more widely known to the farthest reaches of the Empire.
But Christianity also assumed some of the imperial trappings of the Roman Empire, though some laws were liberalised a little and Christian worship was tolerated. Much of the trappings of imperial power had nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus but everything to do with the quest for earthly power. Gradually, the Emperors turned Christianity into a religion of the rich and powerful while the Church confined itself to formalism and ritualistic legalism and basked in triumphalism.
Constantine unfortunately introduced the sword into Christianity – a prelude to the use of violence in the name of Christianity. He ironically and tragically put the cross – a symbol of Christ’s suffering and oppression – on the shield of the Roman soldiers, the majority of whom were pagans.
It set the stage for the abuse of Christianity to justify violence in centuries to come: the bloodbaths and torture during the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the conquistadors (the Spanish conquests that brought swathes of Asia and South America under colonial rule).
These were the dark eras in church history, for which the late Pope John Paul II, to his lasting credit, apologised. In a marked contrast to earlier ages when the church was allied to the superpowers of the day, John Paul earned the ire of the present day superpowers, the United States and its allies, when he rejected arguments in favour of the war on Iraq and condemned the US-led invasion in 2003.
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Other transformations occurred when Christianity became the official religion of the Empire. The reign of God, under which the early Christian communities believed they were ruled, was compromised as many mainstream Christians tried to conform with the values of the Empire and the reign of the Emperor.
Instead of the liberty they enjoyed as the people of God, there was the obligatory profession of an imposed religion. Instead of trying to detach themselves from worldly possessions and sharing their possession in solidarity with others, Christians were now content to perform the bare minimum ‘obligations’ to conform with the ‘natural law’.
As Antonio Gonzalez observes in his book ‘The Gospel of Faith and Justice’, (Orbis Books, a Maryknoll publication) the non-violence, great love for the community and the sharing of possessions, which was distinctive of the early Church, ceased to be practised widely. Instead, many began to regard these practices and way of life as the preserve of ‘superior’ Christians who opted for religious or monastic life.
World Bank should go with Wolfowitz
So Wolfowitz goes without being held accountable for his criminal scheming against Iraq.
After I wrote the piece below, an academic friend told me, “Although he did have to step down, it was hardly a fall — guy walks away with that statement about acting in good faith, plus a golden hand-shake of a year’s salary. The girlfriend gets to keep her pay increase and the pension of USD100k.” Well, he has a point.
Still, Wolfowitz’s gone, with his reputation in tatters. And, as an Indonesian activist told me when I was writing this piece, now that Wolfowitz is stepping down, it is time for people around the world to realise that the World Bank’s role is over. ”We must learn from Hugo Chavez that there is no development and democracy with the World Bank,” he stressed. ”I hope it’s not just Wolfowitz stepping down from the World Bank, but the World Bank must now ‘step down’ from our country (Indonesia) and the world.”
PENANG, Malaysia, May 21 (IPS) – Paul Wolfowitz’s fall from grace is symptomatic of the double standards and hypocrisy of the World Bank and strains the marriage between neo-liberal policies and militarism that he embodied, say activists and analysts. Wolfowitz, an architect of the war on Iraq, finally bowed to pressure after a favouritism scandal involving his girlfriend, ex-bank employee Shaha Riza. He is due to step down as Bank president on Jun. 30, three days after another key player in the aggression on Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, heads for the exit. “It’s a humiliating, and, for many, not unwelcome, fall for Wolfowitz who thought he’d found a respectable bolt-hole at the World Bank after his criminal enterprise in Iraq,” said Glasgow-based political scientist John Hilley, who has written on militarism and neo-liberalism. ”Yet, it’s a dark irony that he has gone down for engaging in cheap, nepotistic malpractice while his high crimes, the design and execution of mass terror in Iraq, go unpunished.” Full article: World Bank should go with Wolfowitz – Activists
“I don’t know anything about politics”
Some people complain when they hear sermons from religious preachers which they think are too “political”. Many feel uncomfortable when these preachers question the existing social and economic and even political order and the prevailing values of the day. Politics, they feel, has nothing to do with religion.
In fact, the sharpest critics of such preachers are those who have a conservative and narrow understanding of what it means to be a compassionate and concerned human being in a world where 2 per cent of the world’s population control half the world’s wealth. Others feel that politics is of no interest to them and they do not see how it is connected to their lives.
In Christianity, Jesus himself was “politically incorrect” in his sermons: the values he expounded – compassion, sharing of resources, love, justice – were sharply at odds with the values of the Roman Empire as well as the authoritarian local religious system of his time.
Here’s an anecdote about Burma’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, which I included in a piece I wrote for the Herald in December. (By the way, let’s add our calls for the release of Suu Kyi, whose term of house arrest will come under review on 27 May. This courageous freedom fighter has been detained for 11 of the last 17 years by Burma’s military regime, which is afraid of its own shadow).
Suu Kyi once wrote about a young woman who got up during a meeting and complained, “I don’t know anything about politics.” She asked the young woman why she was at the meeting then and the young woman began to explain why.
“I discovered that she (the young woman) knew everything about politics,” wrote Suu Kyi, in the foreword to the book “Burma – More Women’s Voices” (published by the Alternative Asean Network on Burma or Altsean-Burma).
“She did not know she was talking about politics. She talked about the fact that she was worried about her children’s education, she talked about insecurity of her husband’s job, she talked about the worry of constant inflation, she talked about the fact that people were afraid to talk freely on the streets. All these really were political matters but she did not realise that they were political matters. Which is why I say that women are very, very politically aware although they do not know it themselves.”
The classic divide-and-rule strategy
As we celebrate 50 years of Independence and 44 years of Malaysia, we would do well to consider some of the cleavages in our society that have given rise to simmering tensions every now and then.
Our ethnic-based political system compartmentalises us into neat categories of Malays, Chinese, Indians, Kadazans, Iban, etc. And now we have certain groups dividing us on the basis of religion.
Granted, not all these divisions are created by the politicians but they have to bear some responsibility for allowing the system to unleash these forces and divisive laws and rules on the population. The bumi-non-bumi dichotomy is one such example; you know, the emphasis on race, rather than need, when it comes to affirmative action policies.
In the last few years, a new divide has emerged: the Muslim-non-Muslim divide. This has arisen from a number of factors which we won’t go into in this piece.
These divisions and cleavages are not a uniquely Malaysian phenomenon.
According to Asghar Ali Engineer of the Mumbai-based Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism, the ruling classes in India have used caste and communal issues to divert attention from horrific problems such as poverty, malnutrition and deaths from hunger. “The Gujarat carnage of 2002 took place precisely when the BJP Government was signing various international trade treaties and liberalising (the) economy benefiting (a) handful of economic elite.”
This is a piece I wrote in December for the Herald:
Chomsky regards fundamentalism and conservatism as a conscious effort to try and undermine progressive social policies.
Christian religious groups are mobilised into a political force to focus on specific moral issues such as gay marriages that are of no threat to CEOs of major corporations, he said. Meanwhile, the social dimension of the Gospel is ignored. Christ’s path of justice and peace has been shoved aside in favour of war and exploitation of human and natural resources.
As Chomsky notes, “And if you can shift the focus of debate and attention and presidential politics to questions quite marginal for the wealthy — questions of, say, gay rights — that’s wonderful for people who want to destroy the labour unions, or to construct a social/political system for the benefit of the ultra-rich, while everyone else barely survives.”
In Malaysia, notice how the focus on religious disputes has shifted attention away from certain crucial socio-economic issues.
During the recent Umno general assembly, the Article 11 coalition and other civil society groups came under fire from certain politicians. This succeeded in drawing the delegates’ – and the Malaysian public’s – attention away from the other major issues of the day.
What are these issues? The ongoing negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement with the United States; the widening gap between the rich and poor of all ethnic groups; the huge gulf between rich and poor Malays; the awards of contracts to cronies; the RM2 billion in non-performing loans suffered by Bank Islam; the Zakaria mansion fiasco and an array of corruption scandals. More recently, came the demolition of a squatter settlement along with the surau in Kampong Berembang, leaving Malay families homeless.
All these stories were marginalised as everyone started getting hot and bothered over the keris and the threats, whether real and imaginary, to various religious groups. Notice how successfully they have steered the debate away from these socio-economic issues to issues that divide society. It’s the classic colonial tactic of divide and rule.
Moses and Gandhi: From “small people” to inspiring leaders
Very often, we admire the brave women and men of history who dared to stand up and lead their people against authoritarian and tyrannical rulers. We are so inspired by their raw courage that sometimes we fail to see that they were just ordinary people like us who felt compelled to act because of the injustice they saw around them.
Throughout history God has used “small people” to achieve miraculous deeds. It is almost as if He was trying to overturn the natural order of things. Most people usually regard the strong – rather than the meek – as the natural inheritors of the earth. When Moses was asked to lead his people out of Egypt, his first reaction was one of horror: he felt his lack of eloquence – some believe that he had a speech impediment or suffered from stammering – would be a major handicap.
This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for the Herald:
I couldn’t help but be struck by the parallels between Moses and Mahatma Gandhi. Like Moses, Gandhi was the unlikeliest of liberators. Frail and odd, he hardly showed any signs of greatness or courage in his early adulthood.
Studying law in England, he was incredibly tongue-tied and couldn’t speak in public to save his life – though he was somehow elected to the Executive Committee of the Vegetarian Society in England. Before long, one of the other committee members approached him, “You talk to me quite all right, but why is it that you never open your lips at a Committee meeting?”
Gandhi thought to himself: Not that I never felt tempted to speak. But I was at a loss to express myself. All the rest of the members appeared to me to be better informed than I.
Once when the Committee was discussing an important issue, Gandhi finally felt compelled to express his own views. How to do it was the question. I had not the courage to speak and I therefore decided to set down my thoughts in writing. I went to the meeting with the document in my pocket. But even with the help of notes written on paper, Gandhi was unable to read it out, so tongue-tied was he. In the end, the President of the Society called on someone else to read out Gandhi’s notes.
His shyness remained with him throughout his law studies in England. “Even when I paid a social call, the presence of half a dozen or more people would strike me dumb.”
And yet, this was the same Gandhi who was called upon to inspire and mobilise the Indians both in South Africa and India. He took on the might of the British Empire – peacefully, through sheer moral force – and won independence.
So you see the striking parallels between Moses and Gandhi as far as their lack of eloquence was concerned. Neither Moses nor Gandhi had the benefit of Toastmasters International training sessions. But when push came to shove, when they heard the “call”, they were transformed into men of courage who would eventually free their people from domination and imperialism.
Scomi and the “gift” to Penang commuters
In February, newspapers reported that government-owned RapidKL would take over the management of the bus system in Penang, putting an end to Penangites’ public transport woes after years of shoddy bus service. Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said it was the government’s “Chinese New Year gift” to Penang commuters.
The government’s “quick” move rendered obsolete the Penang state government’s move to set up its own firm, Penang State Bus Service (BNPP). At that time, I wondered why the federal government was preempting the BNPP, which had been in the midst of applying for permits from the Commercial Vehicle Licensing Board. The Penang state government for its part had already obtained a RM50 million (US$14.2 million) soft loan to buy new buses.
Fast forward to the present.
The Edge (30 April) reports that government-owned Syarikat Prasana Negara Bhd, which owns public transport infrastructure, recently awarded a RM31 million contract to supply buses for Penang to Scomi Engineering Bhd, a company whose major shareholder is Kamaluddin Abdullah, the prime minister’s son. Of course, Scomi “technically and financially gave good products and pricing,” said the Prasarana CEO in justifying the decision. So, it looks like Scomi is more qualified than any other company to supply buses, huh. Hmm…
That is just the appetiser though. The real prize is the RM20 billion at stake for urban rail projects: RM1.2 billion for the proposed Penang monorail project; RM5-10 billion for the Kota Damansara-Cheras line; and at least RM10 billion for LRT extension in the Klang Valley.
The Edge says that jostling among companies for the various contracts has already started: “But whispers along the corridors of power in Putrajaya allude to only the well-connected getting a slice of the pie, especially the job to provide the rolling stock and designing and implementing the electrification system.”
Those jobs were previously handled by foreign firms but now “local names have surfaced”.
The business weekly lists them as:
- MTrans Technologies Sdn Bhd, a company under – you guessed it – Scomi Engineering;
- MMC Metrail under Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary; and
- Doxport Technologies Sdn Bhd, a firm whose chairman is Umno treasurer Azim Zabidi.
PENANG, Malaysia, Mar 12 (IPS) – A state-owned bus company is set to take over public transport in this traffic-clogged northern state after a concerted civil society campaign highlighted the failure of the existing privatised, deregulated bus service. But public transport campaigners are not about to celebrate. They are wary of a federal-level firm, albeit government-owned, coming in to manage what is essentially a state-level metropolitan bus service. Earlier with the lack of enforcement by a federal-level regulatory board has not inspired confidence that an ‘imported’ solution is best. Full article: State to run city buses as privatisation fails
Ijok: Is there more than Najib vs Anwar at stake?
So I gather some see this by-election as a proxy battle between Najib and Anwar. Others see it as a mini-referendum on the Barisan Nasional’s performance. Then again, there are many who are totally put off by the way the BN announces millions of ringgit in development allocations in the run-up to polling day. They call it a “buy election”. Where is the morality; does anybody care about ethics?
In the heat of the by-election campaign, there has been much discussion about the ethnicity of the candidates and whether Keadilan did the right thing in appointing Khalid to counter the BN’s candidate from the MIC.
To me, the candidates’ ethnicity is completely irrelevant. What I want to know – and this is what voters should ask – is their stand on the issues that really matter. Of course, it is also important to have a significant opposition presence in Parliament to act as a check and balance.
One of the most critical issues that voters should be concerned about is the ongoing FTA negotiations with the United States. We may have missed the United States’ “fast-track” deadline, but that has not stopped both sides from pressing ahead with the negotiations. That shows us how badly the United States wants an FTA with Malaysia after putting Korea in its pocket. Let’s hear what the two candidates have to say about this.
I am against an FTA with the United States because I believe it will hurt a developing nation like Malaysia in the long run. I want to know why the Malaysian government is pressing on with the FTA when it hasn’t made public a cost-benefit analysis. Has it even prepared a comprehensive analysis? Shouldn’t the public know about these things? Most of us are not aware that the US trade unions themselves have joined forces with the MTUC to oppose the proposed pact.
Why would trade unions in both countries oppose an FTA pact? This is what I wrote for IPS:
KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 22 (IPS) – Trade unions from the United States have joined forces with their Malaysian counterparts to strongly oppose ongoing negotiations for bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) until workers’ concerns are first addressed. The American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL-CIO) and the Malaysian Trades Unions Congress (MTUC) are poised to ink a joint declaration agreed upon in Kuala Lumpur last week. The declaration resembles those that U.S. labour federations had previously signed with their counterparts in South Korea in June, Central America (2002) and Australia (2001), The Kuala Lumpur declaration on the proposed US-Malaysia FTA asserts that economic integration between the two countries must result in broadly shared benefits for working people and communities, not simply extend and enforce corporate power and privilege. It also warns that violations to workers’ rights had reached crisis levels. Full article: US unions oppose free trade with Malaysia
The not-so-golden golden years
Whenever we talk of marginalised groups, many of us tend to think of migrant workers, Orang Asli, refugees, plantation workers and squatters, people with HIV/AIDS.
Often, we tend to overlook the fact that many of the senior citizens among us are no less marginalised, whether at home or in public life, while the young take centre stage.
It is a sad fact that the contribution of senior citizens to society and their wisdom are rarely recognised. Many of them receive only a few hundred ringgit a month in pension or have long since used up their meagre EPF savings and have to rely on their children for financial support. For most of them, it is a daily struggle to balance their budget.
I had a long chat with William, a sprightly senior citizen, several months ago. He told me about the deep loneliness and insecurity that accompany old age and the alienation that senior citizens often feel. It prompted me to write a piece for the Malaysian Herald, an excerpt of which is reproduced below:
When you consider that the cost of living has soared, it is hard to imagine how retirees make ends meet. This is especially true in the case of health care. On the one hand, private hospital treatment is so expensive, while on the other the queues at government hospitals are so long. If Jesus were around, he would surely have pity on the crowds, many of them senior citizens, waiting to see doctors, waiting at the pharmacy to get their medicines, waiting for buses to take them to hospital. If they need to see a specialist or need specialised tests such as an MRI, they may have to wait for weeks if not months. God help those who need urgent specialist attention and who don’t have the money. Even if the serious ill are admitted to hospital, how are the bed-ridden treated there and what is the quality of nursing care like? But getting to the hospital itself is another challenge. They either have to rely on family members and friends for transport. Taxis are of course expensive, especially for those struggling to make ends meet. Our public transport, on the other hand, is hardly friendly to senior citizens and the disabled nor does it take you up to the hospital doorstep. For senior citizens to use public transport, it has to be safe, accessible, efficient, caring and inexpensive. Can that be said for the public transport we have in Malaysia? Moreover, to use public transport, you have to first walk along the road and cross at junctions. Crossing a busy road can be a nightmare for the ailing senior citizen or disabled person as unfortunately, here in Malaysia, motor vehicles rule the road. The pavements are no easier as many of them are designed without the senior citizens and disabled in mind. They have all kinds of obstacles in their path, with steep steps up and down ever so often. The pedestrian will be confronted with motorcycles (parked illegally), lampposts, telephone booths, signboard stands, tables and chairs. How are senior citizens and the disabled supposed to navigate their way through this obstacle course? This is in stark contrast to more developed countries, where senior citizens often use public transport at discounted rates and walk along or even use wheelchairs along wide empty pavements that are much friendlier to their needs.
Will Asean follow the EU model?
Few people are aware that Asean’s ‘Vision 2020’ of economic integration and competitiveness is to be further developed into the concept of an ‘‘Asean Economic Community (AEC)’’. The AEC is seen as the end-goal of economic integration in Asean and it could become a reality by 2015.
So will Asean follow the European Union route? Not quite.
The EU provides for the free movement of goods, services, capital (including investment) and people across the borders of member nations. Aseans seeks to do the same for goods, services, investment, capital and skilled labour. There is no freedom of movement for the poor, including the migrant workers, who have hardly any rights in Asean member countries. There will be no freedom of movement for refugees, either.
In other words, economic integration is to benefit the corporations and its managers and knowledge workers under a regime of neo-liberal policies. Not the lower-income group and the dispossessed.
This is an article I wrote for Inter Press Service last November.
Critics suspect the lack of public consultation over the Charter could be due to the real intention behind the blueprint. They see the Charter as giving a legal personality to Asean, paving the way for a regional economic framework that would facilitate investment and trade in the region, while the interests of ordinary people — workers, the poor and the marginalised — could come a distant second. They point to the Asean Free Trade Area (AFTA), which will eliminate tariffs on all products in the region, and the Asean Framework Agreement on Services, which aims to achieve a free flow of services, both by 2015. Meanwhile, the Asean Investment Area agreement aims to facilitate a free flow of investment. Full article: Charter for Asean bloc by-passes civil society.
The great tragedy of our time
The Beirut-based journalist Robert Fisk once said, “War is the total failure of the human spirit”.
I know what he is trying to say. War brings out the worst in human nature. Bloodbaths. Torture. Senseless killing. Indiscriminate bombing. Rape.
Then again, I am not sure if it is fair to blame the human spirit as a whole. After all, the decision to proceed with war is often made by a small group of political leaders, often after whipping up patriotic fervour and manipulating their populations into throwing their support for war with the help of a compliant or servile media. Often war is fought to seize control of territory for strategic or economic interests. These wars are planned by the rich, while the victims are largely young soldiers who, for the most part, do not know the real reasons they are waging war. Moreover, in recent times, millions of people have protested against war.
Unfortunately, despite the impressive numbers on the streets, notably in 2003, they have not been able to prevent war.
Iraq is the great tragedy of our time. It is crystal clear that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was to further the economic interests of the United States and its allies. In particular, to seize strategic control of the stupendous reserves of oil in West Asia.
Since World War Two, the world has witnessed several great tragedies. Think of the occupation of Palestine and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians after the formation of Israel. The misery from this displacement and occupation continues to this day.
From October 1965 to January 1966, the Suharto-regime massacred close to half a million “suspected communists” in Indonesia. The ‘helpful’ Americans supplied up to 5,000 names from a hit list to Indonesian army generals. And from 1975, the year Indonesia invaded East Timor with a nod and a wink from the US and Australian governments, some 200,000 Timorese – a third of the population – were killed.
In the 1960s and 70s, the killing fields of Vietnam and Cambodia claimed millions more lives. For a decade in the 1960s and 70s, the American military’s operations in Vietnam – through a massive land army, tonnes of bombs and chemical agents – resulted in more than 3 million dead Vietnamese. Then, in the early 1970s, the American bombing of Cambodia killed 600,000 people, raising the curtain for the genocidal Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot to emerge.
Thousands more were tortured and killed in Latin America at the hands of US-trained death squads during the Reagan years in particular. All this to pave the way for neo-liberal economic policies in the continent.
Then, in 1994, as the United Nations dithered and debated, between 800,000 to a million people were killed in a bloody genocide in Rwanda.
More recently, the brutal violence between the Sudanese-backed Janjaweed (“devils on horseback”) militia and the land-tilling tribes in Darfur has led to the loss of 400,000 lives.
But perhaps no other nation has suffered more in recent times from war than the people of Iraq. If you take the deaths from the US-driven sanctions imposed in the 1990s and those following the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the figure easily surpasses one million and could well be reaching two million by now. That’s not counting the couple of million others who have been displaced by the war. And that’s also not counting the dead and wounded Iraqis and Iranians – close to a million in all – during the Iraq-Iran War in the 1980s, when Iraq was backed by the United States.
Indeed, Iraq is the tragedy of our time. A war based on lies and deception whose perpetrators – Bush and Blair and Howard – are nothing less than war criminals.
This is an excerpt from an article I wrote for the Malaysian Herald last October:
If Saddam was the Butcher of Baghdad, what do you call American and British leaders who were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis since the 1990s? Think of the first Gulf War, when ‘coalition forces’ took part in a turkey shoot of retreating Iraqi soldiers, even burying some of them alive.
And think of the genocidal sanctions imposed on Iraq under a UN blockade, devised and controlled by the United States and Britain, during the 1990s, which were responsible for more than half of million ‘excess deaths’ involving children. Humanitarian relief that should have gone to Iraq was held back.
When the then US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright was questioned in 1996 about the loss of so many lives, she callously and infamously replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price– we think the price is worth it.”
Think of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which according to the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet, has resulted in 650,000 excess deaths since 2003. Every day, dozens of people in Iraq continue to be killed. Think of Fallujah (and the assault and capture of the hospital there) and the torture at Abu Ghraib… and the use of horrific weapons such as depleted uranium (DU) only adds to the crimes against humanity. The use of DU has led to a massive increase in birth defects and cancer among Iraqis.
And don’t forget the 20,000 people killed in Afghanistan, in retaliation for the 3,000 killed on Sept 11. So all in, more than one million dead in recent times.
While all this is going on, people are forgetting the daily Palestinian suffering and the rising death toll in the vast prison camp of Gaza at the hands of Israel, a US ally.
The United States never faced a threat of attack from Iraq. Thus, the US-UK invasion of Iraq was outright aggression. Such a crime was referred to during the Nuremberg trials after World War II as “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”. And 650,000 dead Iraqis is the result of the accumulated evil unleashed in Iraq by the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of the country.
A classic PR battle
You may not have noticed, but a classic PR battle is being waged between the agrichemical industry and anti-paraquat campaigners.
Round One went to the anti-paraquat campaigners, when they succeeded in getting the Malaysian government to ban the dangerous pesticide.
The industry lobby fought back in Round Two and, using the immense resources at their disposal, succeeded in getting the ban “temporarily lifted” for “further study”.
But the ‘umpire’ was far from neutral. Why did the government cave in to the industry lobby over the interests of pesticide sprayers, many of them women who are exposed to these hazadous substance? Well, that’s the million dollar question. Actually, lots of millions at stake.
The use of pesticides ties in with the Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi’s emphasis on agrobusiness-driven agriculture, which focuses on lucrative cash crops. Such cash crops not only benefit large corporations but they invariably involve the extensive use of pesticides. It is the estate workers and plantation workers – rather than the fat-cat plantation bosses and their agrichemical counterparts – who are the most vulnerable to pesticide use.
This is an article I wrote for IPS last October:
PENANG, Oct 18 (IPS) – The Malaysian government has stunned activists by ‘‘temporarily lifting” a ban on the toxic weed-killer paraquat so that ‘‘an extensive study” can be carried out. The move, this month, follows an intensive lobbying campaign by the Swiss agrochemical giant, Syngenta, which markets the herbicide under the brand name Gramoxone, and other industry groups. Full article: Return of paraquat – Activists aghast.
Local democracy or local comedy?
Few of us are aware that our country had a thriving system of elections to local councils in the 1950s and 1960s.
Back then, we had 373 local authorities – 40 town councils, 37 town boards, 289 local councils and 7 district councils. Out of some 4,200 local councillors (not including those in the Kuala Lumpur municipality), more than 3,000 were elected. George Town, Ipoh and Malacca were the most prominent of these councils and Penang itself had fully elective councils throughout the state, including the mainland. In fact, the first elections in Malaya were held in George Town in 1951 to elect nine councillors.
The government later abolished local government elections. The deathblow came with the enactment of the Local Government Act of 1976, which effectively killed off local council elections and replaced them with a system of appointments that rewards ruling coalition politicians and supporters with positions in local councils.
This is an extract from a piece I wrote for the Malaysian Herald:
I once watched a hilarious comedy performance by Comedy Court’s Indi Nadarajah and Allan Perera, in which one of them played the part of an elected representative chastising a colleague for not coming up with more ‘creative’ ways of justifying junkets abroad. With these creative justifications, there would be no need to worry about being caught for wasting taxpayers’ money on tours that include, say, belly dancing performances along the Nile. Our two comedians concluded that such foreign junkets could easily be explained away by euphemisms such as “understanding cultural practices” (belly dancing!), “studying the landscape” (a golfing holiday), and “examining consumer spending patterns” (a shopping/sightseeing tour)!
Now you might wonder what local council elections have to do with Christianity. Actually, a lot. Grassroots, bottom-up democracy at the local level is very much in line with Catholic Social Teaching (CST). One of the most constant and characteristic directives of CST is the principle of ‘subsidiarity’, which has been present since the first great social encyclical Rerum Novarum. This principle, which implies participation, means that responsibility for decisions should be as close as possible to the grassroots. This would allow people or communities who are most directly affected by decisions or policies to participate in the decision-making process.
“Participation in community life is not only one of the greatest aspirations of the citizen, called to exercise freely and responsibly his civic role with and for others, but is also one of the pillars of all democratic orders and one of the major guarantees of the permanence of the democratic system” (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, No. 190 ‘Participation and democracy’).
Do we have such participation in community life as part of our democratic system? The only time we have a say is once every five years during the general election, during which there is an intense media and PR campaign to get people to vote in a certain way. But these elections do not cover town councils.
Surely, democracy is more than that. Authentic democracy means public and popular participation in the decision-making process at all levels. Reviving elections to local councils would go a long way in restoring genuine democracy at the local level….
People in the dark over Asean Charter
Few people are even aware that a major development is taking place in South-East Asia. As usual, we are in the dark.
Before long, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) will come up with a Charter. In other words, work is in progress towards coming up with a ‘constitution’ for the regional grouping of 10 nations.
Strange, they are talking about forming an Asean Community by 2015 and yet most people don’t have a clue what’s going on.
Here’s an extract from a piece I wrote for the Malaysian Herald last October:
You would think that on a subject of this importance, the people of Southeast Asia would be consulted and a broad range of views solicited. You would think that our newspapers and television and radio programmes would be discussing this week in and week out to discern what exactly should be included in such a Charter. You would think that our political leaders would be asking us for our views and suggestions.
That’s not happening, is it?
Perhaps that’s because the real intention of such a Charter is to come up with a regional framework to facilitate business and trade. Maybe the ordinary people come a distant second. It reminds me of the high-level secrecy surrounding the negotiations for the Free Trade Agreement between Malaysia and the United States… Not good…
Human rights groups and other civil society organisations are now pushing for the inclusion of certain crucial ideas into the Charter.
They want the Charter to be people-centered as opposed to business- or trade-centred. In other words, the interests of people (labour) should take precedence over the interests of corporations (capital).
Bearing in mind there are quite a few authoritarian and undemocratic governments in the region, they also want the Charter to uphold universally accepted democratic and human rights norms.
In particular, these human rights groups are asking the drafters to ensure that human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related Conventions are explicitly upheld in the ASEAN Charter. The recognition of these rights should form the overarching framework of the Charter, which should also be gender-sensitive and oriented towards sustainable development.
But all the fine words in the world will be useless if they remain mere words on paper. Activists want the drafters to ensure that effective monitoring and enforcement mechanisms and institutions are provided in the Charter. These mechanisms could include semi-judicial bodies such as a regional human rights commission and judicial bodies such as a regional human rights court.
Watch what’s happening to your EPF money
So now the EPF is set to take over RHB.
The first question that comes to mind is, isn’t the EPF biting off more than it can chew? What does it know about managing a bank – or even supervising the management of a bank?
It already has plenty on its plate just managing its own funds – or rather, the public funds of EPF contributors – and ensuring that Malaysians get a decent rate of return on their pension savings.
If the EPF is so confident about managing a bank, perhaps it can tell us how and why it ended up holding a stake in a banking group which is now saddled with RM3.6 billion in debt.
That’s not all. I say, watch your EPF money closely. The EPF could also end up financing infrastructure projects under the so-called Private Finance Initiatives, which will finance RM20 billion worth of projects under the Ninth Malaysia Plan. I say “so-called” because the money is reportedly expected to come from the EPF, which manages public funds, your money – not private money.
This is the piece I wrote for Asia Times Online last October:
PENANG – Malaysia is poised to experiment with the next phase of its privatization process through the initiation of so-called private finance initiatives (PFIs). But the Malaysian version of the internationally recognized investment vehicles will be unique in that it will be the public rather than the private sector that takes the risks. Full article: Malaysia’s new-fangled privatisation fudge