PEKERJA ASING

1. Kita kerap mendengar berkenaan pekerja asing menutup peluang pekerjaan pekerja Malaysia. Saya amat bersetuju pekerja asing tidak dibenarkan masuk negara kita supaya pekerja kita dapat cari makan dengan mengisi tempat-tempat yang dikosongkan oleh pekerja asing.

2. Memang benar pekerja asing menyebabkan wang Malaysia mengalir keluar. Katanya tiap bulan satu bilion ringgit Malaysia dihantar oleh pekerja asing ke negara mereka. Ini boleh menjejaskan kewangan kita. Kita dapat selamatkan wang ini jika pekerja kita yang mengisi semua jawatan-jawatan dalam negara.

3. Walaupun saya bersetuju dengan dasar Kerajaan tidak membenar pekerja asing masuk Malaysia lagi, saya telah didekati oleh peniaga dan pengusaha Malaysia dan asing supaya dilonggarkan sedikit dasar ini.

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BAKUN

1. The Bakun hydroelectric project promised to be the biggest power project with the cheapest electricity price. So I was told by the Sarawak Government when I made my first official visit to the State.

2. It could produce 2,400 megawatt, but Sabah and Sarawak needed just about 1,000 megawatts even in the 1990s. The question was what to do with so much electricity.

3. Bringing it to the Peninsular would need 600 miles of undersea cables. This has never been done anywhere . The longest was only 200 miles. It would cost as much as a power station in Peninsular Malaysia. To use in Sarawak we would have to have a power-hungry industry.

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RATING AGENCIES

1. We are not conscious of it but the rating agencies have apparently become a factor in the failures or success of businesses and even whole countries.

2. Their rating can make or break even big corporations. A huge European corporation finds itself unable to invest for fear that it would be downgraded and its shares would plunge. The losses would run into hundreds of millions.

3. Perhaps the rating agencies were only doing their job – letting the investing public know the situation the corporations are in. But they can be wrong or they can be influenced.

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DOW JONES

1. I don’t play the stock market but I cannot think of anything more silly than computer programmed buying and selling of shares.

2. The program can work if only a few players make use of it. But when the program is available to tens of thousands, then their concerted programmed buying and selling will surely affect the market.

3. Simultaneous buying by thousands of players will push up the prices very high while simultaneous selling by tens of thousands would push down the prices to extremely low levels.

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RACIST LABEL

1. I was asked by a Chinese reporter recently why I said the Chinese did not vote Barisan Nasional in Hulu Selangor. To avoid ballot boxes being tempered with or getting lost the counting is now done at the polling stations.

2. Obviously if the voters in a given station is overwhelmingly Malay and the votes are overwhelmingly for PAS then we can assume the Malays at that polling station did not vote for the BN. Similarly if the voters at a polling station are largely Chinese and the votes are largely for Pakatan, then it is obvious that the Chinese there did not vote for BN.

3. Perhaps it is because Perkasa appears to be racist that the Chinese are against BN. But Perkasa is not BN. Also the Chinese parties in BN are facing a crisis. What is happening now is that Malays are forming Non-Governmental Organisations because of Chinese attacks against the Malays and UMNO seems unable to defend them.

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NOT SO GENEROUS?


1. I am glad that Petronas is going to take part in the exploration and production of the two blocks we surrendered to Brunei. That still does not mean we will get much out of the deal.

2. Wisma Putra should make public the full contents of the agreement signed last year. When we give up what belongs to the people really, the people have a right to know. After all, Abdullah’s Government made a point about being transparent, implying of course that the previous Government was not transparent. So let us see transparency in this decision to surrender the peoples’ heritage. If as it is claimed we have not lost much, let us know how much is not much.

3. At the present price of USD83 per barrel (RM249.00), one billion barrels would yield USD 83 billion or RM249 billion. Forget the likelihood that the oil price would increase in future, how much would we get from Petronas’ involvement in the production.

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MALAYSIA'S GENEROSITY

1. The Edge Financial Daily, an article by Joseph Chin (The Edge, April 22nd) as well as Brunei Times reported a substantial oil producing offshore area in the South China Sea, namely Block L and Block M, were no longer a part of Malaysia.

2. Malaysians and the Malaysian media did not ask how this came about. It would seem that the loss of a huge oil producing area that had apparently belonged to Malaysia is okay.

3. Block L and Block M had been claimed by Malaysia based on historical facts. Accordingly, Petronas entered into a production sharing contract with Murphy Oil to start drilling to produce oil. It is estimated that the reserves amounted to almost 1 billion barrels.

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THE HULU SELANGOR BY-ELECTION

1. Barisan Nasional won the by-election by a majority of 1,725. It is a large constituency of 63,701. Although the BN garnered 24,997 votes, the opposition Pakatan managed to get 23,272 votes. Obviously Pakatan is still a force to reckon with.

2. Foreign observers and their local counterparts commenting on the results of the 2008 General Election asserted that the rejection of the BN was due to the electorate rejecting race-based parties i.e. rejection of racial politics. I had rejected this assumption. It was wishful thinking.

3. I believed that it was disenchantment with the leadership of the Prime Minister of that time that caused the BN to show such poor results. Malaysians still put race before even national interest.

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RACISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM

1. One of the most powerful political weapons is labelling. In one word a label can literally destroy the character of a person. After that anything he says or does would be tainted by the label he carries. He becomes no longer effective, politically.

2. He would be barred even from speaking the truth. The Jews won a great social and political battle when they were able to label anti-Semitism as defamatory. Even when what is said is absolutely true and is meant to correct wrong statements, it would be regarded as defamatory and rejected.

3. In Malaysia today the label that has effectively prevented the truth from being heard is “racism” and “racist”.

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