Billions Misappropriated and George Chan Must Resign

For the billions of taxpayer money siphoned off, Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr George Chan can only have himself to blame, take full responsibility and resign immediately. Who else is responsible for the misappropriation of more than 60 percent of Government allocations for vital infrastructure projects between 2002 and 2008? Any person with a gram of intelligence knows that answer.

As reported in The Star, the Deputy Minister now wants to find out who was responsible and take appropriate action against them. Dr Chan, who is also State Industrial Development Minister and State Minister for Agriculture Modernisation must own up instead of ordering another internal investigation into the findings by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC). An investigation will be another waste of taxpayer money and undermine the work and independence of the MACC.

MACC Deputy Commissioner Datuk Zakaria Jaffar had earlier issued a statement that the MACC had uncovered cases in Sarawak where up to 60 percent of Government allocations had been ''diverted'' away from the projects for which the funds were meant. Zakaria claimed that such misappropriation of funds had happened between 2002 and last year and that MACC investigations had shown that only 40 percent of the money given by the Government for the projects was spent on the projects proper while the other 60 percent were leaked to elsewhere.

No wonder Sarawak’s rural population continue to live below the poverty line.

One question we need to ask now is, why is that MACC have not prosecuted any party?

Diverted Elsewhere - 60% of Development Funds

The revelation by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) that 60 percent of Government allocations for key infrastructure projects have been diverted elsewhere is most shocking.

MACC's investigation revealed that between 2002 and 2008, only 40 percent of the money given by the Government were spent on the projects proper.

Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr George Chan responded by wanting MACC to give full and detailed briefing on their findings.

If we learned from what happened to the Auditor General's report on abuses on the state administration, MACC will have to retract their report or revise to a milder version.

For as long as we continue to keep Taib Mahmud, PBB and Barisan Nasional in power, we Sarawakians will continue to lose out while the powerful few will continue to amass wealth.

Bakun Mega Scandal

This article is taken from Malaysiakini, written by Dr KUA KIA SOONG, director of Suaram. He was member of parliament for Petaling Jaya from 1990 to 1995.

Nearly 50 years after independence for Sarawak, we see a comparison with the 'Highland Clearances' in Scotland during the 18th century when the highlanders were driven off their lands for capitalistic sheep farming.

The English did it with brutality and thoroughness through “butcher” Lord Cumberland and even obliterated the 'wild' Celtic mode of life.

What we have seen in Sarawak recently has the same capitalist logic, namely, to drive the indigenous peoples out of their native customary lands so that these lands can be exploited for their commercial value and the indigenous people can be “freed” to become wage labourers.

Thus, even though the accursed Bakun dam had been suspended in 1997 due to the financial crisis, the government still went ahead to displace 10,000 indigenous peoples to the Sungai Asap resettlement camp in 1998.

Well, there is a reason for this - the contract for the Sungai Asap camp had already been given out to a multinational company. After all, the whole Bakun area, which is the size of the island of Singapore and home to the indigenous peoples, had already been thoroughly logged...

All this happened while Dr Mahathir Mahathir was the prime minister. Wasn't he a liability to the BN government then?

I was part of the fact-finding mission to Sungai Asap in 1999 and even then we could see the destruction of so many unique indigenous communities and their cultures, including the Ukit tribe.

There was only one word to describe what had been done to these indigenous peoples and their centuries-old cultures... wicked!

Banned from my own country

As a result of my concern for the indigenous peoples and the natural resources of Sarawak, I was told at Kuching airport in August 2007 that I could not enter Sarawak. So much for 1Malaysia! So much for national integration! So much for nearly 50 years of independence! I was not even welcome in my own country.

But the contracts for the resettlement scheme and the logging are chicken feed compared to the mega-bucks to be reaped from the mega-dams. Even before the Bakun dam ever got started, Malaysian taxpayers had to compensate dam builder Ekran Bhd and the other “stakeholders” close to RM1 billion in 1997.

How much does it cost to pay our 'mata-mata' (police) to investigate the alleged scandalous rape of our Penan women?

The contracts from building the Bakun dam and the undersea cable run in excess of RM20 billion. Malaysian taxpayers won't know the final cost until they are told the cost overruns when the projects have been completed.

But if the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal is anything to go by, the leaks and non-accountability all along the line will result in Malaysian taxpayers paying billions for the same kind of daylight robbery.

In the early 90s, when the government was trying to assure us that there would be no irresponsible logging in Sarawak, I pointed out in Parliament that if the government could not monitor the Bukit Sungai Putih permanent forest and wildlife reserve just 10 minutes from Kuala Lumpur, how did they expect us to believe they could monitor the forests in Bakun?

Likewise today, if the government cannot monitor a project in Port Klang just half an hour from Kuala Lumpur, how can they assure us that they can monitor a project deep in upriver Sarawak and through 650km of the South China Sea?

How can we be assured that we will get to the bottom of politically-linked scandals when the Sarawak police tell us they don't have the resources to investigate the rape of Penan women and girls?

How can we be assured that the Sarawak state government cares about its indigenous peoples and its natural resources when NGO activists are banned from entering Sarawak to investigate a part of their own country?

It makes no economic sense

In 1980, the Bakun dam was proposed with a power generating capacity of 2,400MW even though the projected energy needs for the whole of Sarawak was only 200MW for 1990.

The project was thus coupled with the proposal to build the world's longest (650km) undersea cable to transmit electricity to the peninsula. An aluminum smelter at Sarawak's coastal town of Bintulu was also proposed to take up the surplus energy.

In 1986, the project was abandoned because of the economic recession although the then PM Mahathir announced just before the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil that this was “proof of Malaysia's commitment to the environment”.

So what happened to that commitment, Mahathir?

In 1993, with the upturn in the Malaysian economy, the government once again announced the revival of the Bakun dam project. To cushion the expected protests, then Energy Minister S Samy Vellu gave Parliament a poetic description of a “series of cascading dams” and not one large dam as had been originally proposed.

Before long, it was announced that the Bakun dam would be a massive 205-metre high concrete face rockfill dam - one of the highest dams of its kind in the world - and it would flood an area the size of Singapore island.

The undersea cable was again part of the project. There was also a plan for an aluminum plant, a pulp and paper plant, the world's biggest steel plant and a high-tension and high-voltage wire industry.

Have feasibility studies been done to see if there will be adequate local, regional and international demand for all these products?

Six years later, after the economy was battered by the Asian Financial Crisis, the government again announced that the project would be resumed albeit on a smaller scale of 500MW capacity.

Before long in 2001, the 2,400MW scale was once again proposed although the submarine cable had been shelved. Today we read reports about the government and companies still contemplating this hare-brained undersea scheme which is now estimated to cost a whopping RM21 billion!

More mega-dams to be built

The recent announcement that the Sarawak government intends to build two more mega-dams in Sarawak apart from the ill-fated Bakun dam is cause for grave concern.

Malaysian taxpayers, Malaysian forests and Malaysian indigenous peoples will again be the main victims of this misconceived plan. We have been told that some 1,000 more indigenous peoples will have to be displaced from their ancestral lands to make way for these two dams.

Apart from the human cost, ultimately it will be the Malaysian consumers who pay for this expensive figment of Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud's wild imagination. Indeed, enough taxpayers' money has been wasted - Sarawak Hidro has already spent some RM1.5 billion on the Bakun dam project.

Right now, the country is being fed conflicting reports about energy demand. There is supposed to be a 43 percent oversupply of electricity capacity in peninsula Malaysia. Experienced Bakun dam watchers will tell you such conflicting and mutually contradictory assertions have been used by the dam proponents to justify every flip flop of this misconceived project.

Apart from the economic cost and the wastage, how are investors supposed to plan for the long-term and medium term? What is the long-term plan for Bakun? Can Bakun compete with the rest of the world or for that matter, Indonesia?

The suggestion for aluminum smelters to take up the bulk of Bakun electricity have been mentioned ever since the conception of the Bakun dam project because they are such a voracious consumer of energy. Even so, has there ever been any proper assessment of the market viability of such a project with the cheaper operating costs in China?

Does it matter that the co-owner of one of the smelters is none other than Cahaya Mata Sarawak (CMS) Bhd Group, a conglomerate controlled by Taib's family business interest?

Sarawak's tin-pot government.

Clearly, Bakun energy and Sarawak's tin-pot governance do not give confidence to investors. First it was Alcoa, and then Rio Tinto - both giant mining multinationals - had expressed second thoughts about investing in Sarawak.

Concerned NGOs have all along called for the abandonment of this monstrous Bakun dam project because it is economically ill-conceived, socially disruptive and environmentally disastrous.

The environmental destruction is evident many miles downstream since the whole Bakun area has been logged by those who have already been paid by Sarawak Hidro.

The social atrophy among the 10,000 displaced indigenous peoples at Sungai Asap resettlement scheme remains the wicked testimony of the Mahathir/Taib era. The empty promises and damned lives of the displaced peoples as forewarned by NGOs in 1999 have now been borne out.

The economic viability of the Bakun dam project has been in doubt from the beginning and the announcement to build two more dams merely reflects a cavalier disregard for the indigenous peoples, more desecration of Sarawak's natural resources and a blatant affront to sustainable development.

When will Malaysians ever learn?

Removing The Weakest Link In The Chain

Dr Jeffrey Kitingan is like a pampered boy who sulks each time he is unhappy with his parents or does not get what he wants from his mother. Like the pampered boy, his self-centered and narrow-minded tendencies makes him the weakest link in any chain of relationship.

Dr Jeffrey quit as PKR vice-president, citing his dissatisfaction over the party’s choice of state liaison chief. Oh really? More likely he resigned because he was not made the state liaison chief. So what if someone else gets to do the job? Sulk and quit? Or has he been paid by UMNO?

“I’m quitting as I’ve lost confidence in the party’s leadership decision-making process in terms of decisions affecting Sabah,” he said. “There appears to be no seriousness on the part of the party leadership in taking the views of Sabah PKR leaders. As such, I see no reason for me to remain in the party,” he added.

Isn't he part of the party leadership? With him leaving, one weak link in the Pakatan Rakyat is removed, thus further strengthening the coalition and PKR.

Here's Dr Jeffrey's legacy - no, he did nothing to save Sabahans from the grips of corrupt UMNO.

• Dr Jeffrey quit as PKR vice-president on Tuesday citing his dissatisfaction over the party’s choice of state liaison chief.

• Quit PBS in 1994 just before the collapse of the PBS-led state government.

• Following his resignation from PBS, joined the Parti Bersatu Rakyat Sabah, only to leave in less than 24 hours to sign up with the now defunct Parti Akar.

• Following a leadership tussle in Akar, Dr Jeffrey rejoined PBS just before the 1999 Sabah state election and contested, and won under the party’s symbol.

• In 2000, however, he quit PBS to rejoin PBRS but left after less than two years following a leadership tussle there as well.

• He joined PKR after the 2004 general election and was appointed a vice-president.

Wishing Dr Jeffrey greater success in his future party and political career.

Sarawak Government vs Minority Natives

As reported in The Star, the stand-off between Kenyah minority natives and an oil-palm giant in the Belaga district in central Sarawak is another case of the continued discrimination against Sarawak natives by the Sarawak state government. The Sarawak police continues to show its bias by providing protection for big oil palm companies to rob the natives of their land.

The oil-palm company, a subsidiary of a Miri-based land development consortium, had allegedly bulldozed its way into a plot of land to open up an access road into areas earmarked for an oil-palm plantation.

The natives claimed that the area targeted for clearing was their native customary rights land, inherited from their ancestors.

The company claimed that it has been given the concession right by the State Land and Survey Department to develop the land.

Workers from the company had ploughed their way through a plot of farmland adjacent to the native’s longhouse despite desperate attempts by the villagers to stop them.

The natives have lodged police reports against the workers for trespassing on their farms and uprooting their fruit trees, but they claimed that the police were siding with the company and were helping to provide security escort to its workers.

Letter to Marina Undau

The plight of Marina Undau, an 18-yr-old Iban-Chinese girl who was denied a place in the matriculation programme because she was deemed a “non-Bumiputera” was highlighted by the Borneo Post (Oct 29:

“KUCHING: Getting her Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) result was the best — and the worst — thing that could happen to Marina Undau.The 18-year-old science stream student of SMK Simanggang scored 9As and 1B in the SPM examination last year. She thought she was on her way to university, especially being a Bumiputera and all, but that was not to be. Born to an Iban father and a Chinese mother, Marina’s life was turned upside down when her application to undergo a university matriculation programme was rejected by the Ministry of Education. The ministry determined that she is not a ‘Bumiputera’...

“Seated between her parents, Undau Liap and Wong Pick Sing, the disappointment in the teenager was obvious. Speaking in Iban, she said: ‘Aku amai enda puas ati nadai olih nyambung sekula ngagai universiti (I’m very sad that I can’t pursue my university education).’ With no chance of entering a university for now, Marina has started Form 6 in her old school.

“Asked what she thought of everything that was happening, she replied: ‘What worries me is that will this happen again when I pass my STPM next year? If I get good results, what’s next?’

“In Sarawak, under the federal constitution, both parents must be ‘native’ in order for the offspring to be classified as a ‘Bumiputera’.”

The official definition used by the Student Intake Management Division, Higher Learning Department and Higher Education Ministry:

You are a Bumiputera if

• Semenanjung — “Jika salah seorang ibu atau bapa calon adalah seorang Melayu yang beragama Islam/Orang Asli seperti mana yang ditakrifkan dalam Perkara 160(2) Perlembagaan Persekutuan; maka anaknya adalah dianggap seorang Bumiputera.” (If either parent of a candidate is a Malay who is a Muslim/Orang Asli as defined in Article 160 (2) of the Federal Constitution, the child is considered a Bumiputera.)

• Sabah — “Jika bapa calon adalah seorang Melayu yang beragama Islam/Peribumi Sabah seperti yang ditakrifkan dalam Perkara 161A(6)(a) Perlembagaan Persekutuan; maka anaknya adalah dianggap seorang Bumiputera.” (If the father of the candidate is a Malay who is a Muslim/native of Sabah as defined by Article 161A(6)(a) of the Federal Constitution, the child is considered a Bumiputera.)

• Sarawak — “Jika bapa dan ibu adalah seorang Peribumi Sarawak seperti mana yang ditakrifkan dalam Perkara 161A(6)(b) Perlembagaan persekutuan; maka anaknya adalah dianggap seorang Bumiputera.” (If the father and mother is a native of Sarawak as defined under Article 161A(6)(b) of the Federal Constitution, the child is considered a Bumiputera.)

To Marina, it may be God's wish that you do your STPM, achieve oustanding results and get admitted into one of the world's top universities somewhere.

Matriculation is, after all, much easier than STPM. There's nothing more valuable than going through the challenge of STPM - challenges helps people mature with greater wisdom. You'll be a greater person.

May be you may not even want to consider those local private universities. The universities will make you pass your exams without having to work hard.