the importance of being earnest

Going out on a field project today with my office co-worker we got to talking as he drove me in his proton waja to the project site which is just a little out of town. We talked about everything and anything - politics, the government in Malaysia, the MCA, the government's affirmative action programmes, kids, you name it, we probably talked about it. He is a Straits-born baba-nyonya and he is very experienced when it comes to field work so he led me along and i mostly listened. Work apart, i found his views interesting and yet somewhat unsettling. He felt that all government projects, especially projects in Malacca, were a means to an end. the means was the project, the ends was kick-backs and bribes returned for securing the projects, into the pockets of our state politicians. While at the project itself that we visited we heard of a request from a JKK (Jawatan Kuasa Kemajuan dan Keselamatan Kampung - Village Development & Safety Committee) member that the non-bumi lots facing his house lying just outside the project boundary be moved so that his house would face the bumi lots. The allocation of bumi lots in any project in Melaka is usually about 60% of all lots and the blueprint is drawn up by the state government solely without the developer's influence or input. So this request from the JKK member came as a surprise. Coming back to my co-worker, he felt that projects such as the airport expansion plan in malacca was done to grease state politicians' pockets. "Why do they do it there and not somewhere else where there is empty land? You see, when they acquire land where there is housing already they get kick-backs too". On the journey home we spoke awhile about other things such as the government's allocations for vernacular schools. His take: "Well, they take nice photos with a big mock cheque but later when they cash the cheque it always bounces one". He even thought that fast food outlets such as KFC and McDonald's charged non-bumis service tax of 5% but exempted Malays from paying service tax. He was positive that his sources were true. When we were at the project i was approached by a man whose wife was a Sarawakian bumi. He wanted to know if his wife, being a bumi, was entitled to the bumi discount and could buy a bumi lot. We told him that under existing Malacca State land regulations they could not qualify for bumi lots as the bumi lots are reserved for Malays only. The man said:" Well, then they should say in the poster only for Malays instead of for Bumis which is misleading". Another non-bumi visitor openly voiced his dissatisfaction with the status quo and wondered if his children would rebel against this system. "We can take it, but how do we explain this to them?" was his take. On the road home later my co-worker told me that corrupt officials loved to resort to court action because all the judges were on their (the corrupt politicians') side.

I've heard about enough and this comes up all the time. Jaundiced views or close approximations to the truth, your guess is as good as mine. I am surprised that people believe half the things they believe, some of which are true and others a wildly exaggerated version of somebody's experience heard via hearsay. The bottom line is that the Malaysian government's credibility is very low and this makes it all the harder for the government to do its job. How do you perform when people are so willing to believe the worst things about you? As i write this i believe that the government has just come up with the broad brush strokes of the New Economic Model. I hope that they get it right at the implementation level especially and make sure that state governments conform to the liberalised regime and not merely carry on with business as usual. By golly, one gets tired of hearing the same old hash over and over and over again.