Flip-Flop Malaysian Cabinet

Lately, we have seen some very bad decisions made by our cabinet which raised the question of whether the issues have been given a thorough study and serious deliberations by our members of cabinet. First with the proposed privatization of the National Heart Institute (IJN) by Sime Darby, which was at first given the green light by the cabinet. But due to the protests by various levels of rakyat, the cabinet has backtracked on the earlier decision.

Not too long after that, we have been jolted with the proposal by Sime Darby and Air Asia to build a private low cost terminal in Labu. This proposal has been given a rundown by various quarters due to various reasons; the proposed terminal is dangerously too close to KLIA, and also due to the fact that it would be against the National Airport Master Plan. The proposal was then deferred by our cabinet.

These cabinet 'decisions' are very disturbing and raised up the questions of whether the cabinet did really put the nation and its people's interests in making any decision. But it is quite obvious that a conglomerate which has 'eaten' other conglomerates comparable of its size is really in the mood of swallowing and grabbing every business opportunity available, and our cabinet seems to succumb to these 'business barons'.

As for the IJN, the cabinet's decision is clearly against the interest of the public. By taking over IJN and making it one of its subsidiaries, Sime Darby surely have foreseen profit from the venture despite its assurance that the interest of the public will be protected. No CEO of a subsidiary of any company will go to the board's meeting reporting only losses of the subsidiary, and the public will end up footing higher bills for the services provided.

It is a known fact that KLIA is very much under-utilized, and I fail to understand why we have constructed a 'temporary' LCCT costing more than RM100 million very far away from the main terminal, and now we have to spend another RM128 million for the 'permanent' LCCT. If we were to construct another private LCCT, I'm sure that it would contribute to further under-utilization of KLIA (which is presently very much behind Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi and Singapore's Changi), and our competitors would be very pleased with our bad decision-making.

These series of poor decisions have been ongoing for quite some time, even during the time of the last administration. We have seen how indecisive we were on the old Subang Airport after shifting the operation to Sepang. Tragically, we decided to demolish Terminal 1 for the proposed convention center, a plan which was subsequently scrapped.

Such a fine building with an aesthetically pleasing architecture was hurriedly demolished to make way for a project which failed to take off, and Terminal 2 and 3 which are of less values aestheticallly and historically have been left for further use. The government then proceeded with leasing Subang's Terminal 3 for 59 years to a private company for redevelopment. Was it a cabinet decision, again?

There is nothing consistent about government policies, and most of the decisions do not benefit the rakyat. We also see that some of the decisions are not in the interest of our nation, unlike the approach of our neighbour which always put its national interest above everything else. One of my friends who is working for Iskandar Development Region (IDR) used to tell me that when they were discussing about the proposal for a transportation system for IDR, our neighbour even offered to extend its MRT line into IDR. I leave it to you to interpret who would benefit more, and whose national interest will be safeguarded if we were to accept the offer.

It is time to change our rotten cabinet, just like we change our rotten kitchen cabinet. It is full with pests now.