Another Shot At The NEP

1Malaysia for business
Tony Fernandes
Apr 25, 2009

A lot has been said about 1Malaysia. My views on that are very clear. I hope one day there will be 1Asean.

So I won't dwell on it. What I would like to focus on are the reforms implemented in the commercial sector by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak's administration.

The removal of NEP requirements for 27 service sub-sectors represents a great start. I hope the rest of it will also wound down in time. But I hope more importantly, that the entire domestic economy is reformed.

My wish is that Datuk Seri Najib does a Margaret Thatcher. At present, there is too much vested interest, conflict and red tape that kill creativity, discourage innovation and provide little incentive for entrepreneurs to start and grow businesses. Before all of you jump on me and point to AirAsia's success, yes, we have survived and thrived, but AirAsia could be so, so much bigger and successful if we didn't have to deal with all these issues.

What are they?

1) Government-owned firms should be divested by the state. The government should facilitate the operations of businesses, not run them. I'm not saying GLC's should be sold to individuals like in the past but the public should own them. So instead of Khazanah owning 70 percent of several supposedly private entities, let the public own them. These companies should be put in charge and empowered, not led by civil servants. No matter how highly qualified, civil servants tend to have a singular mind-set which is that of regulators. When they are in charge of GLC's, they are likely to be conflicted in dealings with private firms such as AirAsia. Can Khazanah be really objective on issues regarding AirAsia when it owns MAS and Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad?

2) If GLC's are 70 percent owned by the public and overseen by professional boards of directors, it is much more likely that the senior management, including the CEO will consist of qualified and experienced professionals --- people seasoned in the private sector and who will come into the job knowing that they can't rely on government intervention and protectionism. This can only help nurture the building of stronger and better brands.

3) Monopolies stifle and strangle innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. They should be broken up. Look at our airports, almost all under the control of MAB. We have 40-odd airports. Have they been effectively developed? Are they contributing as much to the national and local economies as they should? AirAsia has been stubborn and fought all this every inch of the way, but it has taken a toll on us as well. As for the country, how many good businesses have we lost? How many great entrepreneurs have just given up, tied up in knots by the tangles of red tape and the regulator-mentality of GLC's determined to protect their own turf rather than consider the broader national interest?

4) Private industries coupled with efficient marketing-driven GLC's will get us out of this rut. And then we can have firms that can go out there and be the best in Asean and then in Asia.

Good luck to our new prime minister. He has started off well but as the Beatles once said, it's a "long and winding road." He is right to focus on the economy. Attracting foreign investment is great but he would do equally well, if not better, to remove the shackles that prevent local talent from soaring. It is a Malaysian (note Malaysian) who will grow and drive this country. There is so much talent among our people. Liberate it.

TV Is A Religion

TV is a powerful weapon of mass deception
A REPUBLIC OF VIRTUE
Azly Rahman

We are watching too much TV. We have way too many channels that disseminate a variety of propaganda, sell dreams and illusions, create false consciousness, discuss non-issues, fragment the self, and numb our creative and critical senses.

Our children are bombarded with thousands of images daily as they sit passively in front of the television set. Their brain cells are slowly being turned into miniature advertising billboards.

These billboards become field of dreams and consciousness, turning the self into whatever the producers of propaganda wish them to turn into. These brain cells are conditioned by the nano-technology in smart TV programming.

TV is a powerful weapon of mass deception. TV is the mother of inner battles in all human beings. It is slowly killing the mental capacity of our children to sustain reading and to engage in critical reflection. An uncritical mind is a fertile ground for mental colonisation. A mind, essentially, is a terrible thing to waste.

Print and broadcast media are powerful tools of propaganda. While many Malaysian parents struggle to have their children read well so that they may not be perpetually confused and brain dead, TV is rigorously producing more and more programmes that will make children have four eyes and no mouth. Their mind cannot sustain good reading.

How many TV channels are there in Malaysia to help baby-sit the children? How many hundreds of programmes are we watching weekly to turn us into scatterbrained people?
How many different lifestyles of the rich and famous are we exposed to, so that we may learn to become replicas of the stars of Hollywood and Bollywood? How many universities in Malaysia are teaching critical media analysis?

Selling them junk

The owners of the satellites are smiling from the heavens looking down at Malaysians opiated and stoned in front of the TV set. The mantra is this: Feed the masses with all the ads and sell them junk through TV programmes. Sell them dreams so that they will buy and buy and let the media control and create their lives.

Whoever controls TV gets to control storytelling. Whoever controls the station controls the means of producing mass propaganda. Whoever controls the government controls the means of controlling the minds of the people. It is a mind-control game.

We learn from TV programmes. We learn to have choices of what to buy and what to believe through the propaganda. One is made to have choices to believe what kind of information is to be funneled into one's brain and next what kind of reality to believe, based on those presented by TV.

Malaysians complain that they only read half a page of a book a year on average, but why not complain that more and more TV stations are sprouting racing with one another to produce more and more sophisticated junk.

Producers have their ideological biases in what they produce. They answer to profiteers. Whatever sells can and ought to be mass-produced. The more people watch the programme, the higher the ratings, the more expensive the advertising slot.

Producers are not interested in producing ‘truth’. They think they are depicting ‘reality’ and therefore we see ‘reality shows’ to exploit human gullibility.

What is Malaysian TV producing? Better programmes or better propaganda?

One is bombarded by split-second images that hits the brain and colonise the mind. Watch a 30-second commercial when you're tired, and you will discover that you are not watching TV, but the TV is watching you and washing your senses with subliminal messages that makes propaganda artsy and scientific.

Cruel choices

TV provides cruel choices. One is glued to the set, armed with the remote control. Especially with satellite TV with those many channels, children become glued to the idiot box. Observe what will happen to society when we have more and more channels.

The brain cells get excited at the end of every good TV programme. If it's a game show, the self glued to the TV gets transported in time and space to participate in the illusion of winning and losing. If it's a soap opera, the self becomes the actor or actress in the story in the process of the imitation of life.

TV programmes provide hundreds of choices daily for one to engage in alternate-reality games.

In TV-land, democracy is about creating more and more money selling advertisements that will turn all of us into TV freaks and addicts of the idiot box. It is not about developing one's skills in stepping outside of society and looking at it like a crystal ball.

TV-land is the land of make-believe that is created to turn viewers into bodies that consume and continue to be consumed. It is a land of cut-throat culture industry that first positions humanity in front of the TV, bombards it with trillions of sound bytes and multi-coloured electronic images, and transforms it into wide-eyed consumers that will consume conspicuously. This is the strategy of those who owns TV stations and cable broadcast satellites.

Brilliant! But the goal is to profit from advertising, in the name of having choices in a democratic world of mass consumption, TV provides such democratic choices. Cable TV provides the most choices in the presenting of propaganda.

‘TV is producing us’

TV creates human beings. American idols create idols to be worshipped. The Malaysian Idol, a transmutation of the American programme creates the human self that is to be made into an idol to be further worshipped via tabloid, radio, and TV.

TV can turn the kampung boy or girl into a demi-god who will then be transformed into an idol - an icon, a walking and talking billboard, a symbol of protest, a sign and symbol of this or that, a spokesperson for this and that organisation that will pay the most, a mascot for a political party. All these are creations of the well-trained media brains behind TV programming.

Want to be a famous politician? Control the media. Have it glorify you. Want to last long? Control it for more than 20 years. Have it make you into an idol or an icon. Learn from despotic rulers.

In the creation of Malaysian Idol, people love to see others humiliated in the name of creating that one particular idol. The nation enjoys that; like the Romans enjoying the gladiator thrown into the arena. Then the movie star or the music star is created, TV addicts and TV freaks read junk tabloids to keep up with news of the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

Children will forget the hero within themselves. Their hero will be outside of themselves. To be - is to be like somebody else.

One cannot live that lifestyle but one can certainly be identified with it. TV is thus watching what human beings watch and therefore recreates human beings that are consumed by these images controlled by people who want to turn us into consumers.

Politicians who control the media (print or broadcast media) are also controlling the process of producing propaganda. But first, the politician must buy the media so that he/she will be recreated, just like the Malaysian Idol is created.

See how the modern media works? Sublime and subversive. Imagine what 100 channels can do to the human mind. Imagine what they can do to society.

Those watching American Idol get stoned on other people's fame and fortune, just like those who watch Wheels of Fortune do not realise that they watch the game show to forget that they may be in a wheel of misfortune themselves.

TV is a clever mass producer of dreams. Dreams can be in English, Malay, Chinese, Tamil, Urdu or Arabic. Whoever is clever and has the skills to create, can become dream-merchants peddling dreams. Electronic dreams are sublime. They wash away sorrows of the real world.

Bollywood is an industry. Malaysians especially have been conditioned to love Hindustani movies because they have been around since the early days of TV. Many Malaysians are of the south Indian stock, and therefore Bollywood helps Malaysians get stoned glued to TV in the modern age.

Bollywood sells well. Soap operas are a great hit with Malaysian housewives because that's the time to be glued to advertisements. Soap operas make housewives and house-husbands cry a lot because of the power of subliminal seduction. Soap operas sell soaps so that consumers can have fresher dreams daily, in a world corrupted by realpolitik. But the best part is to turn viewers into happy and stoned consumers. While housewives and househusbands shed real tears, the producers and TV station owners shed crocodile tears.

Is this the meaning of life? Aren't we supposed to destroy idols and the Neon gods - and rediscover the ‘Self’ within?

Reality of TV

Without advertisements and governments there won't be media. Those who owns media gets to own the means of colonising other people's mind, including the minds of the producers.

Producers have to kowtow to the dictates of corporations and governments. Owners of TV stations have controlling interests in the government and vice versa. This is the picture of the interconnectivity of the production of truth and the truth of profit-making.

They are mental slaves in the production house of ideologies; whatever these ideologies may present themselves. They produce for environmental polluters, beer companies, credit card companies, electric companies, cartoon companies, and cigarette companies.

I am sure we know the relationship between advertising slots and TV programming. In the long run, these create good consumers and fewer good citizens that can think critically of the fate of society.

TV is can also be a good master and servant to governments; the more corrupt the government the more corrupt TV programming becomes.

All TV stations are ideological; they do not present the truth - they can never claim to present objective points of view, because these truths are funded by corporations and government. The biggest lie can get funded by the biggest corporate or governmental liars.

TV in a democratic country cannot necessarily be democratic. It is based on presenting seemingly democratic opinions but yet they are all well-crafted to make the audience feel that they are being presented with truth. Non-issues become issues. Villains become heroes. Anti-heroes die a million deaths. Reality is mediated by invented realities.

But is all TV useless?

Malaysian Reality Show

The best Malaysian TV is yet to come - full-length ‘live’ telecasts of the Malaysian parliamentary debates. This can be good for the nation. If we can have a machine to vote for the most presentable politician weekly, we would be on our way to teaching our children what political accountability means. Political accountability can contribute to higher levels of civic consciousness.

Weekly tallies of good intellectual performance, coupled with good track record to no-corrupt acts, and good non-tax-evasion record - all these will help TV viewers enjoy the political game-show and decide on which politician should stay or be axed out.

I think our elected officials are ready for Malaysian Parliamentary TV. It will be a good way to educate Malaysians, especially the younger generation, of the political process, of participatory democracy, of the ethics of politics, of the power of the political intellect, and of powerful rhetoric.

That will be the promising world of good TV. That will be reality TV, Unlike the news reporting we get these days. News reports are massaged truth. Documentaries are longer versions of massaged truth.

TV stations hire more and more good researchers to produce better and better massaged truths.

Al-Jazeera is a station of propaganda of the Qatar government. Fox News is the station of propaganda par excellence of corporate America. The same goes with Malaysian TV stations. They all produce massaged truths. They broadcast points of view that are politically correct. These are propaganda stations that destroy our journey through the stations of the soul.

The human mind is made to be fragmented by these alternate truths. In the long run, the mind creates the self that reproduces itself into a walking and talking "worldview that is shaped by propaganda".

With private and public TV, we are sucked into the world of false consciousness, of make-believe, and of other people's stories.

So essentially the human self cannot escape from being enslaved by ideologies. TV producers, owners, politicians, educators, parents and teenagers must learn how to recognise false consciousness and massaged truths.

But one must first switch off the idiot box and pull out the cable.

Parents, teachers, educators, TV producers, community leaders, politicians - I interrupt this essay with an important public announcement: read books, discuss big ideas, have meaningful conversations, destroys screen idols.

Buy books

To help children increase their capacity to think, I would suggest we unsubscribe to cable TV, switch off the channels, and begin a programme of TV-detoxification. This might be akin to a rehabilitation programme for TV addiction.

The new daily diet must be of books - good books of the various traditions and disciplines.

Reading is a special psycho-linguistic activity that helps the mind create images out of sounds, syllables, words, concepts, sentences, phrase, alliteration, personification, onomatopoeia, and other strategies designed to make the mind active - the very stuff that helps the brain create and imagine.

It trains the brain in a different way. It does not, like TV, make the brain docile and ready to be raped and subdued.

When the brain is subdued, the mind becomes colonised, and the body becomes a location for consumption. We become consuming bodies that are produced by TV advertising. Satellite owners will benefit. The aim of TV is to sell dreams, turning the life of economic beings into nightmares.

First tier media giants - AOL-Time Warner, Walt Disney, Bertelsmann, Viacom, AT&T, SONY, Vivendi Universal and Rupert Murdoch - will benefit. Hollywood and Bollywood will benefit.

Buy your child 100 books instead of subscribing to 100 channels. Have quiet reading times instead of living multiple realities created by TV. Get them to understand what it means to have their own stories, and to be makers of their own history rather that be turned into consumers manipulated by TV.

Kids grow smarter around books. Teach them what TV is trying to teach. Or better stilll -- teach them to speak up against injustices and how to transform the world. Teach them to become radical thinkers, armed with poetry and passion, reason and revolution.But first, turn off that TV. For, the world created by television is too much for our children. They will grow old having four eyes and no mouth.

We Own The Govt, Or The Govt Own Us

Missing The Concept
By Art Harun

In image building, it is good to have a concept. But the trouble with having a concept is that the concept should be followed up with or backed by a blueprinted plan to achieve whatever is set out to be achieved by the concept. It must be borne in mind however, having a concept is one thing, implementing a concept is another and of course, missing a concept, especially in Malaysia, is as easy as getting dead or into a coma in a police lock-up.

So, let us say we have a concept and our concept is "change". We should then have some ideas as to what change we want to achieve. Then we should have a plan on how to achieve that change which we want. After that, we should all go out and do whatever is being planned in order to achieve that change. That is how it works. Well, at least, that is how I think it should work.

1Malaysia, as a concept, is lovely, I think. It is like saying to all of us peaceful citizens of Malaysia, "my friends, lets be together and love this nation of ours; lets live work, eat, drink, joke and whatever together; lets all cari makan together, share whatever we have; lets make this beautiful country of ours a better place for us and for our children." That is how 1Malaysia could be "marketed" and "sold" to all of us by an honest Government which is passionate about this country pf ours and the people.

Well, that is as far as I understand it to be. Or rather, that is as far as I wish it should be. In so far as how our Government wishes it to be, I would not know. Because, so far, this concept has not been explained. Nor has it been said anywhere by anybody on what this concept is all about; what its objectives are and what are the plans to achieve its objectives.

Whatever this concept might entail, the signs and the body language are however not good. Yes. Not good at all. Why, you may ask me.

Well, just yesterday, our newly minted DPM was reported to have said that the Chinese are ungrateful for voting for PR and not for the BN Government. He further was quoted to have said that the Government felt deceived by the Chinese. Apparently, despite the Government's "assistance" to the various vernacular schools, the Chinese still did not vote for the BN and therefore they were not grateful. He also lamented the fact that the Chinese had failed to reciprocate after receiving various benefits from the Government.
That is what I call a classic - in the same vein as Si Luncai, Pak Pandir, Lebai Malang, well you get the idea - case of missing the blinking concept. If those statements are to be the norm from our DPM, then I must say 1Malaysia would be just another concept which soon will buy a one way ticket to junksville. Just like Islam Hadhari. Just like Bersih Cekap Amanah. Just like Gemilang Terbilang and Cemerlang. All will Hilang!

The people are entitled to developments. Regardless of whether they are Chinese, Indians, Malays or whatever. The schools are the responsibility of the Ministry of Education. Sufficient allocations to the schools are part and parcel of the administration of the education system in the country. And the people are entitled to a good education. Therefore, allocations to schools IS THE RESPONSIBILITY of the Government. And this responsibility is there ALL THE TIME. Not only during by-elections or General Elections time.

When the Government makes allocations to these schools, such allocations ARE NOT GIFTS to whoever. Such allocations constitute the Government's discharge of one of its duties to the people. The people therefore don't have to be grateful to the Government for that. They don't even have to thank the Government. They could even go out to out vote the Government because of whatever reason despite the fact that the Government had done its duty in making the allocations to the schools. That is the people's right. And what do you call that? It is called DEMOCRACY!

And quite what are the so called benefits which the Government has given the Chinese about which the DPM was lamenting? I want to know. What? And when? Are these vote buying exercise? What? Pray tell me. Because you have obviously tickled my curiosity.
To those who do not know the concept of Governmental duties, allow me to explain in simple language. I am even typing this real slowly in case you cannot read fast enough.

A Governmental position, such as a Ministry, is a position of trust. The Minister is a trustee. All the powers which the Minister has are held by the Minister on trust. For who? For the people. For the subject. The people/subject are the beneficiary of this trust.

As a trustee, the Minister has fiduciary duties to the people. Fiduciary duties demand that the Minister must AT ALL TIME execute his powers in the best interest of the beneficiaries of the trust, which in case you have already forgotten, are the people. The Minister therefore should avoid any position of conflict of interest in executing his Ministerial powers.

What is a conflict of interest? Well, that is easy. Basically, if the Minister is about to do something, he should avoid a position where his personal interest might benefit from whatever action he wants to take. Easy. For example, if a Minister wants to make allocations to schools to an area where a by-election is going on or about to go on, and a candidate from the Minister's party is also running in that by-election, the Minister should then postpone his decision. Why? Because the Minister would be in a position of a conflict of interest. Why is it a conflict of interest? Because in such circumstances, it could be argued that the reason for such allocation is to make the Minister's party popular thus ensuring a victory of the Minister's party in the by-election. It could also be argued that the Minister chose to make the allocation to the schools in the by-election areas because of the by-elections and not because of the needs of those schools.

That is the concept of Ministerial powers and their exercise in a Common Law-based democracy. Like the one in Malaysia.

People, lets not be conned by any other concept.

A Brand New Start With Old Ways

Najib's ploy
By Jacqueline Ann Surin

jaquelinesurin@thenutgraph.com

LEST we allow our new prime minister to get away with a slick public relations exercise, here are some cold hard statistics about previous prime ministers and the Internal Security Act (ISA).

In July 1981, two weeks into office as prime minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad released 21 ISA detainees. As he himself candidly admitted on 5 April 2009, he thought it would be good for him. It probably was for his public image then.

But what did Mahathir subsequently do during his 22 years in power? According to Suaram, under Mahathir's administration, 1,500 people were arrested under the ISA.

Most notable of these arrests were the 100-plus Malaysians who were arrested in 1987 under Operasi Lalang.

But Mahathir wasn't the only one to start off a premiership on such a good footing. In November 2003, after almost a month of being prime minister, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi released 15 detainees. Subsequently, however, under his administration between October 2003 and April 2009, there were 105 new arrests.

And so, Datuk Seri Najib Razak isn't really doing anything extraordinary as Malaysia's new and sixth prime minister. His release of 13 ISA detainees on 5 April follows a route Malaysians should now be familiar with.

The question, of course, is what will Najib do after this?

Let's be real

The ISA violates human rights. No matter what the rhetoric may be about national security and public order, no government should have the absolute power to detain someone without trial for an indefinite amount of time.

And while Najib has promised a review of the ISA, it has been made clear that abolishing it is not in his pack of cards. Worse, the new administration hasn't even committed to a specific timeframe about when this review will be concluded. Instead, it has assured the public that it will take time.

This begs the question about the government's sincerity in respecting civil liberties and putting people first. Proposals for amending and/or abolishing the ISA have, on countless occasions, been submitted to the government. Even if the government cannot trust human rights groups to have the nation's best interests at heart, they can at least trust the Malaysian Human Rights Commission (Suhakam).

Since 2003, Suhakam has been proposing to the government that the ISA should be abolished. Indeed, then Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar indicated on 8 April 2009 that Suhakam's report may be used as a basis for the government's review. Hence, since the government wouldn't need to start from scratch, it should be able to commit to a timeframe of when it will complete its review of the ISA. This, in fact, would be in line with part of Najib's slogan, "Performance Now".

Najib has also said that his move to release the 13 detainees was to demonstrate a caring government that was not repressive. Let's get real. To begin with, no "caring government" should detain people without trial. But the Malaysian government has, repeatedly, in clear abuse of human rights. And Najib was very much a part of both the Mahathir and Abdullah administrations when ISA detentions were executed. Unlike Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, who resigned in opposition to the ISA, Najib has through his years in government done nothing to oppose the detentions.

And yet the new premier is now asking us to view him as a leader with heart because he released 13 people. How about the remaining 27 detainees being held at the Kamunting detention centre? As it is, Najib has refused to comment about further releases. Surely his benevolence, if it were genuine, should extend to others who remain in detention, too?

No, Najib shouldn't be given brownie points for releasing 13 ISA detainees who shouldn't have been detained in the first place.

But brownie points are exactly what Najib expects, as evidenced by his statements surrounding his first act as prime minister. The subtext to Najib's message to the rakyat is: "I'm a good guy. I released the 13 detainees." It's no different from what an ex-boyfriend of a former classmate of mine once said to her: "You're lucky you're in a relationship with me. I don't beat you."

Apparently, Malaysians should be thankful we have Najib as our new prime minister because he has released 13 ISA detainees and is looking at reviewing, instead of abolishing, the colonial relic from the days of Malaya's Emergency.

But really, Najib should only be allowed to score brownie points if he didn't make this about him. Those detainees, and the ones remaining at Kamunting, deserve to be released, not because Najib is competing with Santa Claus for popularity, but because it was wrong to have detained them in the first place.

Now, if only Najib could say that, and act fully in accordance with that principle, he would deserve the brownie points he seeks from the rakyat.

What next?

What will Najib do in the months and years to come? There is no guarantee that he will not follow in the same footpaths as Mahathir and Abdullah by arresting and detaining others under the ISA.

For so long as the ISA is in place, Malaysians will have to live in the constant fear that anyone of us can be picked up by the government at a whim. That's what happened on 12 Sept 2008 to Teresa Kok, Raja Petra Kamarudin and Tan Hoon Cheng. Indeed, our history bears testimony to the countless times the government has used the ISA to silence dissidents and maintain their grip on power in the name of "national security".

All ISA detainees must be released. And the ISA itself abolished.

Not because Najib is a sweetheart of a prime minister, as he would also want us all to believe by walking about Kuala Lumpur and talking about a "vibrant, free and informed media". But because it is the right thing to do if Najib's "goodness" is for real. And until that happens, Malaysians should remain critical and vigilant of our new prime minister.