YOURSAY | ‘They continue to play the same game, only with a name change.’
Yoursay: Dr M's GLC reforms appear to benefit Bersatu, study finds
Shovelnose: Not a total surprise, is it? For those who thought a wholesale change was coming after GE14, they just have unrealistic expectation.
From the word go, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad's justification for Bersatu was solely to capture the Malay votes. They continue to play the same game, only with a name change.
Our urgent, immediate intent was to dislodge the irritant that was Najib Abdul Razak and Umno. There has always been this niggling itch that Bersatu will be a handful. Let's resolve that next.
Kim Quek: Najib’s oversized power over the national purse strings that almost bankrupted the nation is now replicated in Mahathir.
Though the latter has split the PM’s former dual role of PM and finance minister in fulfilment of Pakatan Harapan’s reform pledge, he has craftily re-distributed the government-linked companies (GLCs) and statutory bodies to various ministries to ensure he has personal grip on them through his loyalist ministers and his loyalist political appointees to these entities.
We can see that the Umno political and corporate culture is still intact, except that Umno is now replaced by Mahathir and his political cronies, thus making a mockery of Harapan’s much-touted reforms.
Is it any wonder why the handing over of the reins to PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim is such a painful and dreadful thought?
Proarte: The same old kleptocronyism which Mahathir instituted in Malaysian governance is alive and kicking.
Mahathir was Najib's mentor, but the problem was that Najib was killing the goose which laid the golden eggs, which is why he had to go.
Mahathir believes in 'sustainable' kleptocracy in order that the elite 'Malay' gravy train keeps happily chugging along.
Of course, this means Malaysia can never be a fully developed nation with the majority of Malays forever being in a state of victimhood and with a begging bowl.
Kleptocrats like Mahathir have devised a political philosophy which is immoral, which gives unjust privileges to people who do not deserve it by relying on a perverted interpretation of the Constitution and amending it at the drop of a hat to suit their kleptocratic agenda.
FairMalaysian: This report reaffirms what everyone knows.
While the non-Malays have been at the receiving end of an almost daily bashing from the Malays on the assumed "grab" by the non-Malays, the non-Malays are essentially and effectively "office boys" or peons.
Even the PKR leadership raised their eyebrows when Azmin Ali was appointed the economic affairs minister. Lim Guan Eng is a lame duck sitting in a stripped-off Finance Ministry.
It looks like it is better to have lost GE14 rather than this phoney win. The win is meaningless. It is a raw feeling that we have been taken for a ride.
Many of us were upset with PKR leader Rafizi Ramli's caution about the prime minister deciding the candidates for cabinet positions when it should have been the Harapan presidential council's prerogative. How true he was.
OMG!: It would more instructive if we can see the total market capitalisation (of the listed entities) as a percentage of Bursa Malaysia. That would bring into sharp relief the relative weight of the bumiputera sector listed on Bursa Malaysia.
Article 153 of our supreme law, the Federal Constitution, was specific as to the "reasonable proportion" (that is, weighted by population) of scholarships, jobs in the federal government, licences and so on.
The Reid Commission made what they thought, in 1957, to be an equitable gesture to the Malays, to recognise their economic backwardness and give them a public helping hand.
But after 1969, and thanks to blatant "communalists" within Umno, in particular Mahathir, that has morphed into a pervasive bumiputeraism and a sense of entitlement.
The racialists have used a stealthy approach to encroach on the business activities of entrepreneurs and surreptitiously taken over large swathes of the economy that way.
By introducing race-based laws supporting Malays in 1957, the well-intentioned but flawed approach cemented racism.
The Reid Commission did recommend that such differential treatment be reviewed in 1972, but that clause was omitted by the Legislative Assembly of 1957 that adopted the Federal Constitution.
Then Razak Hussein post-1969 and Mahathir from 1981 and again from 2018, have continued the stealthy state capture of Malaysia by well-connected Malays.
It is clear who gets the cream and who gets the crumbs. Meanwhile, Singapore passed us years ago, and now Vietnam (with 16 percent GDP growth last year) is soon going to be looking at us through their rear window.
Appum: All these moves are nothing but to protect the ‘Malay’ GLCs as if other Malaysians don't own anything in them and their taxes are not used to form and capitalise them.
But I want to look at it this way. Let them do it. One day it will turn out to be another episode of 1MDB 2.0.
We are so exposed to such methods of running the country for so many decades that we are all numb now. So the best message to Bersatu and the racist masters is to show them in the Tanjong Piai by-election - vote anyone but Bersatu.
Anonymous_1544340881: I thought DAP controls everything.
United Examination Certificate (UEC) still not accepted. Finance Ministry hollowed out. DAP assemblypersons arrested for links to Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
While PAS and Umno racists still walking free despite stirring up racist and bigoted divisive feelings through numerous official "channels". I am still waiting for Malaysia Baru.
Newday: Yes, this just goes to show how much influence DAP has in these matters. Will this make any difference to the far right who spout a completely different story? Probably not.
MS: But even if you hit the rural folks with facts exposing the thieving by their patrons, nothing will change.
They will simply dismiss it all by saying that it is the "rezeki" (good fortune) of the thieves. That is why so many of them voted for Najib and gang, despite knowing just a bit of what the rest of the world knew.
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