ROMANCING THE RAILWAY

Train rides, as do journeys by ships evoke notions of romance and intrigues; something that does not happen with airplanes. The first (and last ) time I rode the Sabah train was more than 10 years ago. For those who have foregone that pleasure, I can assure them that it is as comfortable as sitting on the wooden bench in a pick-up truck.

I found no romance then. Probably it is just a conspiracy by western writers to sell their stuff. Or perhaps it’s just me. Anyway, the government is supposed to be spending RM300 million to upgrade the total train ride experience. It was meant to be completed in May this year but judging by what we can all see on the ground, the pace is exceedingly slow, or is this just how railway projects are supposed to be implemented?

I wonder why no one is complaining.

It is sad because we need good and sufficient infrastructure network to get us out of the poorest state status. A road engineer friend tells me that our road density index is only about 0.1 whereas the optimum should be 0.5, which has been attained by peninsular Malaysia ages ago.

This means that vast tracts of our state cannot be developed because of poor access. This hurts land owners, in this case mostly rural folks. Whatever they can manage to produce will never find the market. They are being marginalized even though they are important stakeholders of our statehood.

It also means having isolated schools where good teachers avoid going to. It means communities with stunted growth. It also means people not getting access to adequate health care. I have heard enough stories of a pregnant mother dying because there is no vehicle to take her to the hospital.

The ball park figure is that we are more than 20 years behind peninsular Malaysia in terms of economic development. 20 years of missed opportunities cannot be our legacy for the next generation.

The sheer size of our state is part of the problem, but therein also lies untold potentials to be realized. The 9th Malaysia Plan has lists of roads and bridges and schools waiting their turn to be funded, and to be completed. It’s a slow process and it’s OK if they are completed in due time. Sabahans are a patient lot.

Be that as it may, the primacy and urgency of economic development should be obvious. There must be something wrong when there are some of us who cannot see this urgency. At the stage of development we are in, completing projects on time is a moral imperative. We cannot wait a minute more.

Note: Published in the Daily Express on Aug 3, 2008

Oh So Sweet

Source: Digg

The Seeds of Terror

Here is a multiple-choice question from a recent edition of a Saudi fourth-grade textbook, "Monotheism and Jurisprudence," in a section that attempts to teach children to distinguish between "true" and "false" belief in God:

Q. "Is belief true in the following instances:

(a) A man prays but hates those who are virtuous.

(b) A man professes that there is no deity other than God but loves the unbelievers.

(c) A man worships God alone, loves the believers, and hates the unbelievers."

The correct answer, of course, is (c): According to the Wahhabi imams who wrote this textbook, it isn't enough to simply worship God or just to love other believers; it is important to hate unbelievers, too. By the same token, (b) is wrong as well: Even a man who worships God cannot be said to have "true belief" if he also loves unbelievers.

"Unbelievers," in this context, are Christians and Jews.

In fact, any child who attends Saudi schools until ninth grade will eventually be taught outright that "Jews and Christians are enemies of believers." They will also be taught that Jews conspire to "gain sole control over the world," that the Christian crusades never ended, and that on Judgment Day "the rocks or the trees" will call out to Muslims to kill Jews.

From A Saudi Guide to Piety, Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post, 22 July 2008

This is what Muslims have been taught, all over the world, I should say. That goes for Malaysia too. It is wrong. The Prophet was sent as a mercy for all mankind. If we carry on with the Saudi sort of teaching, who are we to say that Radovan Karadzic was an evil man, since we share the same evil logic.

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RM50,000 loan for moonlighters.

A Sure Way to Botch the Delivery System.

I totally oppose this new scheme. It's crazy.

We've heard of teachers playing truants because they want to concentrate on increasing their side income. Both their subsatantive job and their business need their full attention.

Now this. Its a sure way to the dog house for our country. How are the civil servants to be effective in their job if they have to worry about managing their business. If they can borrow 50K, they will make sure that they can pay it back. And their job will surely take the back seat.

The government has been introducing various measures to lighten the burden of the people after the nation was shocked with the 40% increase in fuel prices. We cannot continue introducing piece-meal solutions like this without considering the negative impacts it will cause.

The raising of fuel prices was a costly mistake. It would be even costlier if we had to destroy the civil service too.

150,000 at one swoop

How I wish that kicking out 150,000 illegals will do the trick. But you and I know that it’s not that simple. For a start, we know with absolute certainty that most of them will find their way back almost immediately. We don’t need any sophisticated amount of logic to reason out that their payoff for living here (illegally even) far outweigh the pains of coming here in the first place.

What’s a couple of canes across the butt.

Okay, so we have to do something quick because the SAPP is going to do their no confidence thing. And, wow!, it’s worth 50 million ringgit. I mean we can find better ways to spend that much money and get something positive out of it. How about spending 50 million to train 150 thousand Sabahans, to take the place of 150 thousand illegals.

How about giving that much to factories as incentives to employ locals. How about spending that much to improve the road to my kampung which we have been waiting for the past 40 odd years for. As for the 150,000 illegals, why, they can stay as long as they like; I beg your pardon, I mean let their employers send them back using their own money. That 50 million belongs to the rakyat.

What’s 150,000 when we have many many more “dubious” citizens in our midst. Now, that’s a real problem. If we had to spend 100 million Ringgit to solve it, I’d say that’s money well spent. Citizenship should not be something that suddenly drops from the sky, or like plucking leaves from trees.

We are challenged to be humane about these things, but the more humane thing should be caring about our immediate descendants. The way it looks at the moment is it’s everyone for himself. That is OK too; it’s a way to keep the stock sturdy, so that we’ll pass on a better gene. Then again, we come to the same crux; citizenship and by extension, the development of society, is not a game of chance.

Development is about managed change.

Many politicians do their coughing on the steps, ( it’s a Malay proverb). They think society will change for the better by simply dispensing advise for people to change their attitudes. People will change their attitudes when there is a good reason to. Like, people will cross seas, and climb mountains if there is a pot of gold at the end of the road.

Obviously there are pots and pots of gold in our country which attract people from across the seas to come over. How come we ourselves don’t see these pots.

The global worth of these pots of gold is estimated to be 300 billion USD a year. For those who still cannot see the pots for the plants, that’s the amount of money immigrants all over the world send back to their mother countries.

Some countries actually actively support the activities of their citizens in search of those pots of gold. The government of Mexico goes to the extent of providing maps and guidelines for would-be illegal cross-country hoppers.

Mexico shares a similarity with our nearest neighbours, in that their society has almost non-existent middle class. There are a few rich gringos and the rest are just – the masses.

To cut the story short, we are haven to these masses . And there are lessons to be learnt. The Phillipines has a literacy rate of over 92%, per capita income of USD 3,400 and 30% of its people live below the poverty line. Indonesia has a similar literacy rate, 3,700 per capita income and 17 % poverty.

Malaysia by contrast has a burgeoning middle class with per capita income of 13,300 and a poverty rate of only 5.1%. We are managing our economy well, and we can still do better.

In the end its not about getting rid of aliens. We will need labourers and skilled workers to make up for our own shortages, and we will need them well into the future. We need to pour in more resources to enhance managerial and technical skills. So our unemployed youths do not want to harvest palm oil fronds? So what. Challenge them to do better things. That’s our challenge.

There simply must be better ways to manage our “guests”. And I think Malaysians are up to it.

(Note: Published in Daily Express on 20 o7 08)

dead ideas every where

i hate to blog on malaysian politics. Maybe i should say i hate malaysian politics. And then maybe its the politicians; all of them. I hate anwar ibrahim most of all. He is mostly just hot air. If he was really good, as a politician, or a person, he would have been pm a long time ago. What baffles me most is how people, and there seem to be a lot of them about, who look up to him with religious devotion.

I think anwar is a pathological liar. That should be pretty apparent if we can begin to look beyond the man. Our naivety about politics is all too apparent. Why dont we merely debate ideas, without running others down.

Farish nor has a shining intellect. But he is no politician. What a loss. Perhaps it is just as well to have our intellectual sump not too near the combustion chamber of politics.

One day, the political dust will settle. Then i will know whether i have chosen rightly my moral high ground. Truths are self-evident. But not when we expect them to hang on a person.