Malaysia’s next export corruption only:the government needs to put in place the right policies and structures to retain local talent. “Otherwise, we become a training ground for others,”
Changes small and corruption big, says Anwar
Sun, Nov 22, 2009
By YL Chong
SEREMBAN: Parti Keadilan Rakyat adviser Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim today acknowledged that the Barisan Nasional government was making changes but said these were being delivered in doses that were too small considering the “big scale corruption and leakages” that were continuing.
The government would implement programmes which bring only small benefits to the people and the local mainstream media would highlight these projects, but ignoring the wayward spending by the government ministers and the huge losses due to corruption, leakages and malpractices, he added.
“The BN-controlled media like Utusan Malaysia and RTM would play up the weaknesses of the Pakatan-Rakyat governments, especially in Selangor, as well as controversies involving PKR and its leaders,” Anwar said in his keynote address at the one-day PKR NS State Convention held at the Chung Hwa High School here.
Anwar stated that the party is committed to change the whole corrupt system represented by the BN throughout the nation. When he and other opposition leaders tried highlight to the people the present government’s wrongdoings and excesses, the mainstream press would completely black out their statements or continue to distort the messages.
Another big omission by the MSM is they would give scant or no coverage at all on the high-profile corruption cases like Port Klang Free Zone, wrongful or illegal acts by investigative agencies like the Police and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, including the lack of follow-up actions on the VK Lingam judicial scandal.
On the PKFZ, the MSM would report on action being taken against the lesser officials, but they don’t question why no action is being taken against ex-Transport Ministers like Dr Ling Liong Sik and other big guns, Anwar noted.
So the corruption and malpractices continue under the BN government, as indicated by its owned government agency Auditor-General’s annual reports the recent years. Putrajaya continue to plunder the public coffer, and the state’s riches as reaped by the national oil corporation, hence the many “multi-milliion-ringgit” leakages in government spendings as highlighted by the 2008 Auditor-General’s Report.
It’s because of the BN government’s systemic corruption including abusing Petronas’ huge muliti-billion dollar annual profits in bailing out non-performing government-linked companies (GLCs) that has led to the country’s decline achieving gross domestic product (GDP) growth, falling behind neighbouring countries including Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia, in the recent years.
One of the factors contributing to this worrying state of affairs is the lack of confidence of foreigners in Malaysia’s government leadership, leading to the fall in foreign direct investment (FDI) into Malaysia.
Anwar pointed out that the Goverrnment leaders could not even be consistent in giving out facts with regard to official GDP figure, with the Prime Minister citing GDP growth next year projected at 9.0 percent at one stage, amending it to 6.0 percent later, while Minister in the PM’s department Mohamed Nor Yaacob stating it as 4.0-5.0 percent, and yet another deputy minister putting it at 2.0-3.0 percent.
Anwar later spoke to reporters on his impending role in Selangor as economic adviser to the state government, and he promised he would go in to ensure party leaders concentrate their efforts on delivering a clean, accountable and responsible government.
On reservations about Menteri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim’s leadership expressed by many bloggers recently, including Raja Petra Kamarudin’s call that the MB be sacked for poor performance, Anwar said to be fair, the Auditor-General’s Report had given the highest rating to Selangor and Penang in terms of good governance since March 2008, scoring the highest level of four, which compared favourably against other states under BN control.
On the removal of civil servants alleged to be sabotaging the Selangor state government as encouraged by certain quarters including several bloggers, Anwar said to be fair, such measures could be taken only after thorough investigation, based on facts.
He agreed there could be “categorical instructions” by certain UMNO leaders to civil servants to sabotage the Selangor state government, but citing an example, if the State Secretary were to be “sacked”, Anwar asked: “What good would it do if the BN government continued to replace him with another federal officer of UMNO’s choice without PR input?”
“When I start there as economic adviser next week, I will ensure we embark on reforms as we are committed to cleaning up any weaknesses,. We will work out poverty eradication programmes to help the poor and needy, regardless of ethnicity, and expand on education and agriculture facilities to uplift the people’s standard of living in Selangor,” Anwar added.
Will Tsu Koon dare to urge in Cabinet for open tender for building-for-land deal involving 65 acres of prime land in KL with gross development value of RM15 billion for building a RM628 million Matrade expo centre, warning Najib of adverse KPI and NKRA in combating corruption?
In his first month as Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak received praise and applause for his assurance that he would cut down on direct negotiations for government procurement contracts and instead adopt the tender system on efforts to curb corruption and restore public confidence in the government.
The award of the building-for-land deal to Naza TTDI Sdn Bhd involving 65 acres of prime land in Kuala Lumpur with a gross development value of RM15 billion for building a RM628 million Matrade expo centre has dashed public hopes and expectations that Najib is serious about open tenders, accountability, transparency and the war against corruption.
As combating corruption is one of the six National Key Result Areas (NKRAs) announced by Najib, is the Key Performance Index (KPI) Minister, dare Tan Sri Dr. Koh Tsu Koon raise in Cabinet urging for a review and to ask for the Matrade building-for-land deal to be submitted to open tender to ensure that the government and the public obtains the best deal.
As KPI Minister, is Koh prepared to notify the Cabinet that the KPI and NKRA of the Najib administration for combating corruption would be adversely affected if the deal exchanging RM628 million Matrade centre for land worth RM15billion gross development value is pushed through without being submitted to open tender – as well as a review of the need for another convention centre when available convention centres like the RM600 million Putrajaya International Convention Centre is grossly underutilized?
I am not at all sanguine at all about our future as a nation if, by default, we look the other way when disaster is heading straight at us. We will slide further and will have for company those countries that we used to look down upon because we were cleaner. Yes, there was a time, when Tunku Abdul Rahman was prime minister, when corruption only happened in other countries and when ministers and senior Malayan Civil Service officers lived well, well within their means.
By TUNKU ABDUL AZIZ, MySinchew
About this time each year when Transparency International in Berlin releases its Corruption Perceptions Index, there are many in high places chewing their sticky, dirty fingers while keeping them crossed, hoping against hope, that the world would be kinder and Malaysia’s score on the corruption league table would come out more favourably than last year’s and all the previous years since the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index was first released in 1995. The prayers of the corrupt in government and politics have been ignored again. The predictability of it all is uncanny. The question is why are we continually perceived as corrupt, and are the perceptions justified?
The ambivalence of Tun Mahathir to corruption during his 22 year administration was never in dispute. In a perverse sort of way, he was charmingly honest and did not try to pretend that he was against corrupt practices. He was a great “in the national interest man” who saw corruption not in monochrome, but in glorious Technicolor which could even be made to look extremely attractive seen through his 20/20 Vision however sordid it is in reality.
I am sure the great visionary of all that is tallest, longest and biggest did not lose any sleep over the many shady deals involving Bank Negara and the Employees Provident Fund that, but for the grace of God and the beneficence of the milch cow that is Petronas, would have rendered us insolvent and a hostage of the IMF. He made no promises to fight corruption, and we did not expect anything from him in this respect. He was, by my definition, a corrupt man.
His successor, the one term wonder, affectionately known as Pak Lah of the “work with me and not for me” fame, was made from a different mould. A perfectly decent human being, he possessed impressive religious and moral credentials. When he declared that his top priority was to take the war against corruption into enemy territory, the country rejoiced, but it was to be short lived. A lot of white washing here and there, and a little tinkering around the edges did nothing to reduce corruption. If anything, the consensus was that corruption during Pak Lah’s watch was worse than when Mahathir held sway over us.
As Pak Lah himself admitted without saying so in so many words, there were other more pressing matters requiring his attention that it was only in the twilight of his stewardship that he woke up and realised that there was a little promise he had made that he had to fulfil. So in great haste, all he managed to do, bless the poor man, was to leave behind a less than useless legacy in the shape of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission which on present showing is useful neither to man nor beast. And that is being charitable.
The first anti-corruption public relations exercise was the setting up of the National Institute of Integrity Malaysia which, while trying its best to justify its existence, has achieved next to nothing because it is seen as being unable to focus on its mission. Institutions of themselves are not as important as what their people do inside their often magnificent buildings. Malaysia’s dismal failure to curb corruption as effectively as Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan, the cleanest in this region, has everything to do with the leadership in government, the Attorney-General’s chambers, the police and the MACC. It all comes down to people in the end. Mere institutions without people of honour and integrity to lead them do not amount to anything. Remember that saying about how you can fool some people some of the time, but not all people all of the time. It is a lesson that seems to have escaped our leadership.
With one scam after another swirling around their ankles on a daily basis, our leaders, no matter what tricks they try to come up with, have all but lost their high moral ground from which to sermonise on the evils of corruption. The country is mired in corruption and every level of the service has been touched by corruption, defined as the “abuse of entrusted power for personal gain, and official corruption in our country is escalating to enormous heights because there is no political will to begin with. The thing to remember about the Corruption Perceptions Index is that it reflects the views of the expatriate business community, resident in our country. They are the people who are sought to respond to questionnaires about corruption in our country. And they are not blind to what is going on in their dealings with the government. True, many have no direct experience of being subjected to official extortion, but they exchange stories which are the basis of their perceptions.
There were several countries that were written off as chronically and systemically corrupt and have succeeded remarkably in breaking out of the vicious cycle of corruption. Corruption is not part of our culture and yet we have allowed it to become our way of life. We are the product of our environment and the government has a responsibility for creating an environment that makes corruption a “high risk, low return business.” But to do that the Prime Minister must lead by example and must confront corruption in all its manifestation, no matter who commits it. A real challenge for Najib if he can find some time to drop his 1Malaysia and look at corruption in the face.
I am not at all sanguine at all about our future as a nation if, by default, we look the other way when disaster is heading straight at us. We will slide further and will have for company those countries that we used to look down upon because we were cleaner. Yes, there was a time, when Tunku Abdul Rahman was prime minister, when corruption only happened in other countries and when ministers and senior Malayan Civil Service officers lived well, well within their means.
Najib must shake off all traces of corruption within our system of governance if Malaysia is to reappear on the competitiveness radar screen of countries that foreign investors feel confident to park their money. Is Najib up to the challenge?
The nation’s mismanagement of talent could have serious repercussions not only on its ambitions to become a high income economy on par with that of developed nations but could also lead it to fall further behind even its counterparts in the region.There’s an easy way to plan for retirement. Find out how
Head of research at Corston-Smith Asset Management, Lim Tze Cheng, recently did a tour of South East Asian countries and came away sufficiently impressed that he feels Malaysia may soon be found lagging behind its neighbours that it was once ahead of.
He cited a recent visit to the Philippines, a current major supplier of maids, where he visited a company, International Container Terminal Services Inc (ICTSI) and he drew comparisons to local port champions Westport and Port of Tanjung Pelepas.
He said that ICTS now draws 50 per cent of its revenue from eight profitable ports outside the Philippines, and noted that no Malaysian port company can boast of similar achievements.
“I give it a 70 per cent chance that Malaysia will be exporting maids in 20 years. I wouldn’t be surprised if that happens unless we get our act together,” he said.
Lim says that the issues plaguing Malaysia includes its “problematic” education system and distressingly low ability to retain talent.
“Whoever manages to excel in our education system will be courted by Singapore,” he points out.
Lim is not the only one who is worried about Malaysia’s talent issues and there has been warnings from other parties as well including the World Bank and the Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF).
MEF executive director Haji Shamsuddin Bardan says that Malaysia is currently a net exporter of talent with outflows exceeding inflows.
According to Haji Shamsuddin, Malaysia has only about 38,000 expatriates as compared with seventy to eighty thousand in the 1990s even while some 785,000 Malaysians are working abroad, two out of three of which are professionals.
“Our ability to attract expatriates is quite challenged,” he said.
If Malaysia falls further behind our neighbours in the next twenty years, it wil be a case of history repeating itself.
Lim points out that Malaysia in the 1970’s was once economically on par with Korea.
“Electronics will be dominated by Thailand and Philippines, plantations by Indonesia, financial services by Singapore and our oil could be depleted in 20 years,” Lim predicts.
“The (Malaysian) economy seems to be caught in a middle-income trap – unable to remain competitive as a high-volume, low-cost producer, yet unable to move up the value chain and achieve rapid growth by breaking into fast growing markets for knowledge and innovation-based products and services,” the World Bank said recently.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak appears aware of the problem and has been stressing the need for the country to embrace innovation to escape the “middle-income trap” as well as attract overseas talent, Malaysian or otherwise.
He noted recently as an anecdote that half of the medical specialists working at the Mt Elizabeth hospital in Singapore were Malaysians and two weeks ago hosted a dinner for about 100 Malaysians in Singapore and told them that the government would make Malaysia a better place to live and work in, to bring back its citizens who are residing overseas and also attract global talent to the country.
“We will create more opportunities, more excitement and more buzz in Malaysia to attract the Malaysian diaspora and expatriates to the country,” said Najib.
Lim says that revamping the education system could take years and one fast way to lure talent was to open the Malaysia My Second Home programme to talented individuals such as scientists and researchers instead of limiting it to just retirees.
Haji Shamsuddin says that the government needs to put in place the right policies and structures to retain local talent.
“Otherwise, we become a training ground for others,” he said.
Need to restore investor confidence in Iskandar
KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 23 — Three chief executives in the space of three years. The attendant publicity that comes with such high-profile changes surely isn’t what Malaysia would have wished for its most ambitious development corridor.
But government officials, having earlier denied Harun Johari had resigned from the Iskandar Regional Development Authority (IRDA), confirmed last week a new man would be helming the federal statutory body next year. But whether Ismail Ibrahim — currently with the National Physical Planning Division and one of those involved in drawing up Iskandar’s comprehensive development plan — will have greater longevity at IRDA, remains to be seen.
But the frequent change in the person overseeing the project surely must be disconcerting for potential investors.
They might be prepared to shrug off talk of turf wars between federal executives under state investment agency Khazanah Nasional and parochial state officials who think they ought to be better consulted, but frequent changes at IRDA are particularly alarming since it was set up specifically to regulate and drive the project. Indeed, the government appeared to recognise that a key problem to drawing investments would be the bureaucratic red tape, and empowered IRDA to act as the conduit between potential investors and the various state and federal government agencies, and to facilitate investments as a one-stop agency.
Some measure of its success is perhaps evident in the RM46 billion in investments that Iskandar Investment, the project implementer, says it has obtained, half of which is from foreign investors and the balance local.
The bulk of investors are from the Middle East, Europe and Asia focusing on manufacturing, property and tourism projects. The largest investment to date is one amounting to some RM5 billion by Spain’s Acerinox SA and Japan’s Nisshin Steel to construct a stainless steel plant.
On the real estate front, Middle East companies have proposed RM4-5 billion of mixed development properties, while Khazanah is committed to funding tourism projects worth over RM1 billion.
Although Malaysia has made clear it wants to get out of its middle-income trap by getting out of low-value manufacturing where it is no longer competitive and into the services side where wages are better, it has yet to detail how it intends to effect that transformation.
Harun is expected to leave in January. — Picture courtesy of World Economic Forum
In Iskandar, it has dangled long tax holiday breaks and incentives at the service sector and in the last budget, slashed the income tax rate to 15 per cent for knowledge workers.
Such giveaways might not be sufficient. As the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research says, these are only “icing on the cake” as the ease of doing business matters more.
In this regard, Malaysia’s drop in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index by nine places to 56th position this year could do more to influence investors than huge tax breaks.
The influence of an advisory panel on Iskandar made up of eminent Johor-born personalities such as international tycoon Robert Kuok, former Deputy Prime Minister Tun Musa Hitam, ex-chairman of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission Andrew Sheng and businessman Kishu Tirathai also appears to be of little significance.
The announcement of the panel aside, little else is known as to what ideas and recommendations have been advanced by the panel.
Because of its location next to land-scarce Singapore, Iskandar is viewed as a no brainer by many who believe its development is inevitable. Maintaining confidence in the project, however, could lead to an earlier achieving of its so-called “tipping point”.
In mid-year, Dubai’s Damac group withdrew from a proposed RM400 million harbour front property development. The ostensible reason cited for its pullout was the global financial crisis although some suggested the group was not entirely happy with the pace of the project.
Many shrugged off the Damac withdrawal as just another casualty of the global crisis. But the exit of another investor could set the alarm bells ringing, which is why it must now urgently restore confidence in IRDA. — Business Times Singapore
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