Petronas : The next "rape" victim?

When can there be an ultimate serenity in Malaysian politics? Can we ever achieve it or just continue on listening to rhetoric and pranks of the deceiving politicians of the day?

Or is there any serious intention in the first place to arrive at a political tranquility by any of the ruling politicians, as many politicians of late survive through political tribulation and misfortune?

There are questionable actions taken by our top leader which outcries the people of late. The appointment of Omar Ong, the so-called young economic savvy in the 4th floor at JPM to the Board of PETRONAS is another issue under serious public watchfulness.

Now, there are rumors circulating that Syed Hamid Albar is going to chair the Board of PETRONAS and if the rumors turns real than there is another flaw that DS Najib commits…and it is an absolute crab.

PETRONAS has never been touched by politician and all the while that petroleum company has been growing up on its own independently under direct supervision of the reigning Prime Minister.

If there is any politician sitting on the Board, we are at risk of facing another round of political misadventure and would be a tough issue to mitigate.

I pray that the rumor is unsubstantiated. It abhors if it is the real finality that had been decided.

What does Tengku Razaleigh (TR), the architect of PETRONAS has to say about this?

If Mahathir interminably gives comments to leaders who succeeded him, TR should come up with opinion on this issue as he is the living founder of PETRONAS which he built for free of charge…no salary. No allowances…no car. No nothing.

TR should come up with his voice upright because he was the one who went through the pains sweat, tears and hell in getting PETRONAS in existence and subsequently becomes one of the giants of the world.

TR is duty bound to tell the people on the endurances that he had to go through in setting up PETRONAS with everyone in the world were going against the forms and the fundamental motives of setting up this National Petroleum Company.

It was purely for the sake of the needful Malaysian and the generation there after and if current leaders are all out to fulfill their personal advantages, the doors are wide ajar for them to leave us.

He (TR) must tell us why politicians were not welcomed to the Board and why the company was totally given to professionals to manage.

This is his inheritance for the people and he must help us to protect this astute organization from going through shambles and muddle.

Tun Razak’s Cabinet gave him (TR) the task to set up our own National Petroleum Company, and TR was given very wide parameter within which he decided on every little thing as to how PETRONAS should be organized.

Malaysian of younger generation do not know all the hind side stories as to why PETRONAS was set up the way we make out today.

The unpatriotic leaders of the day are not able to actualize all the reasoning behind much stuff surrounding PETRONAS existence.

It is obligatory on the part of TR to recount detailed history of PETRONAS; it is for the generation after to understand the significance of its existence that no element of personal greed creeps in it.

We are in defense of the few left for the people and we wish not to see any further sordid, distasteful and squalid decisions by current leaders as we don’t want to bear witness for our leader’s wrong doings any further. We have had enough of it.

I would advocate everyone who has the platform to express views over this matter, and be vigilant of what is there to come for PETRONAS.

Let us put up defense for PETRONAS till the end from encroachment of unreliable persons with mischievous intent.

I hope what we heard; as I have said in a line above is just an unfounded rumor. No one should be blaming us for being so protective of PETRONAS, as that is the only one of the few left for us to have pride and to rest our laurels on…the rest have gone to the backyard.

Lastly may I repeat, I hope it is just an unsubstantiated rumor. I am dreadful if it is real.


Thanks……………………………………………..Aspan Alias

Carelessness of today is suffering of tomorrow

I was with a few friends in Petaling Jaya enjoying supper at about midnight last few days, most of them are of my age (between 55 to 62 years) and when friends of this age group together one of the main topics of discussion would be about health.

“Aspan, how’s your heart, lever and all? Do you have any problem with all or any of those?” one of them asked me. “So far so good, what about you?” I answered him with a question. “I have loads of sugar!” he quipped.

Quite a number of my classmates in school and in campus are no more living due to various health taxing problems; cancer, stroke, heart attacks and many other kinds of diseases.

Coincidently 3 among the 5 whom I invited to meet that night, in some way or another are facing to some extent health problems.

They are encumbered from going out freely at night and have to observe tight dietary program, and the three poor friends just ended in sipping just warm or sterilized water and a small portion of tosay.

I was concerned, and felt so sorry for them and I could see their basic characters changed after contracting these terminal diseases. Apparently their lives are not like what they were before.

As for me I am thankful to our merciful Creator for extending my life with averagely in good state of health but may be a good candidate for diabetics.

“Aspan, make no mistake like us bro. We were not careful and did not really care to live in proper ways for the last 2 or 3 decades. We ate everything that my teeth could chew without bothering what the consequence to that bad habit,” says Ramli (not his real name) seriously.

Apparently he was referring to his ill-eating habits in the younger days. “Since childhood days I took in red meats, crabs, squids, and other foods in category of silent killers in huge amount,” he continued. “Now I am paying hefty bills for the past 6 years for what I have done to myself,” he emphasized. "I now realize that we are what we eat" he moved on.

“Bro, I didn’t take all those in my younger days. Vegetable was my main diet everyday until my age of 19. It was not that I was too disciplined with food, but purely because I couldn’t afford it. I had meat only on Hari Raya days and that were the way poor people in remote areas like us were fed,” I said truth about myself.

The other friend is a cancer patient and still in the early stage and is under radio therapy in one of the government hospitals and the third friend is quite secretive about the disease he has.

That short dialog tells us a lot. It clearly tells us that the disease only surface after a long misjudgment about health and while they were enjoying wealthy food they didn’t realize that terminal diseases are just peeping to hop in us.

Sooner or later they will succeed in invading our body system and consequentially brings hazards to our lives. Subsequently we may have to treat and manage the disease we suffer very expensively and it contributes misery to our lives.

That applies to every specs of life. The most evident is in politics. The carelessness of leaders 20 odd years ago has contributed desolation to current political circumstances.

I vividly remember one of my in-laws said, "All diseases originate from the stomach; your personal health and politics alike. The political situation becomes bad when all its leaders are busy taking care of their stomachs. Not many can be trusted. They actually walk on their stomach". he said.

While they were enjoying the power attested to them, they misused, and abused it to the utmost. Many decisions were made to serve the need of their time without taking into account that the ill consequences will surface in decades to come.

They make decisions on ad-hoc basis, which only served for the need of that material time for personal glory and all the bad consequences now are all in our account.

The weak leaders who succeeded them just care to address the pains but are not able to address the actual disease because they themselves are suffering of the same miserable infection.

As long as the actual disease is not diagnosed and subsequently solved them we are not going to smell happiness and solace anytime soon.

The mistakes of past leaders coupled with the inappropriate leaders of the day, would contribute to dreadful state of lives.

Many may detest and hate me intensely for saying this, but I can’t find nicer way of telling the truth. Maybe others can.

Note: Above is the universal blue symbol for diabetes


Thanks…………………………………………………Aspan Alias.

DS Najib - Hopes & Aspirations - If there's any Final Part

What we do today shapes up the future, and the consequence whether is for the good or for the bad, it will surface in 1 or 2 decades after.

That is why there are many living Malaysians are missing the kind of life which they experienced 25 years ago.

The politics of divide and rule by Mahathir ever since he ascended to the Premiership in 1981 resulted in what we see today.

His pleasure is our anguish, and there are still many who are in denial that they were deceived far wayward to the extent of adoring him like dummy god.

I agree out rightly that Abdullah was too weak a Premier and he never had a material of a Prime Minister, but UMNO was in denial then and blindly accepted Mahathir’s choice to put him in Putrajaya, without knowing Mahathir had his own raison d'être for choosing Abdullah.

UMNO leaders then went all out supporting Abdullah even though many of them came to term that Abdullah being a PM was not at all a good deal for Malaysian.

Abdullah’s popularity was short lived as people found him a misfit for that position and one of those who was openly throwing hard shots at him was Mahathir himself.

I was so eager to know what was inside Mahathir as he was starting the whisperings and commenting negatively on Abdullah and for that purpose we agreed among some friends and various NGOs to organize a forum like, which was chaired by me.

We invited Mahathir to speak on an officially organized forum for everyone to hear why he was too crossed with Abdullah.

Eventually the forum took place at Century Club, Taman Melawati on the 24 June 2006 and Mahathir wasted no time and bashed his protégé to the optimum on the stage.

He touched on only 3 issues: the AP, crooked bridge and the 4th floor boys and of course in deliberating all the 3 issues he never missed mentioning the name of Khairy Jamaluddin.

One of the participants passed me a question to be handed to Mahathir asking why he chose Abdullah to be his successor when large portion of Malaysian have reservation on Abdullah even before he was selected to be the PM. This question was never answered.

But many among the participants were on the opinion that Mahathir wanted Abdullah to succeed him because Abdullah was weak. To him a weak Abdullah would give him the pleasure of having a PM who could turn and curve with him.

But much to his disappointment Abdullah did not give him that concession and that made him so annoyed and crossed with his weak successor.

As for DS Najib, if he works his politics the way Mahathir did, it would bring UMNO and BN to the yard.

He should not say or do anything on personal premise as each an individual leader however small have his followers.

Many people think that the only way for DS Najib to be afloat is to have unity participation within the divisive intra party like what advance countries which adopt democracy in real sense.

I want to quote one of my commentators, flyer168 wrote in my blog. He said “the strongest chain is only as strong as the weakest link”.

A strong government can ultimately goes in disarray if we have weak link with the people at large however weak they are.

The fundamental issue that Najib is facing is the inter-racial problem that makes up the basic pillar of perpetual harmonious living in the country.

To the minds of serious and caring citizen of the soil, no unity means there is no good life in this country.

I have to brave myself saying this, but the fact remains a fact. If the national unity is eroding we must submit that nothing can any leader do, let alone to talk about development of this nation.

For the past decades we have been listening to the pranks of leaders who talk in rhetoric about nation building but cared too little about this very pertinent point which no leader should ignore.

The unity among races went well until mid 80s. Everybody was working hand in hand to achieve the agreeable solution among races, that was to work for 30% Bimiputra equity, and there was no quarrel on inter-racial premise.

The Bumiputra equity went up to 18.2 % in 1984 from 2.7% in 1970. The jump was tremendous and we were quite positive to achieve the target.

But personal politics was above everything as such that this statistics became stagnant and circumvented the effort to achieve the target.

When somebody else came in to take charge of the economy the statistic became so blunted and the reality came to the open just a day before Mahathir stepped down when he gave his parting speech in Parliament.

You and me heard it very clearly that the Buniputra participation was just at 18.6%; meaning that Mahathir and Daim had only succeeded in adding a fractional percentage to the statistics of 0.4 % in almost 20 years.

As I have written in my last posting that the formula of National Unity has not been followed through and like in Mathematics if we don’t follow the formula there will be no right answer to it.

During that important period we were too focused on gigantic projects to show the world that we are having the tallest twin tower and all kind of that sort to impress the world.

To us having those biggest and the longest and the tallest in the world were our ultimate and we forget the development of good and reasonable middle class population.

In all the 11 Scandinavian countries, we don’t see skyscrapers, and we can’t find elaborate physical development of our sort, but these countries have the population of the highest income bracket, many percent higher than even the G7 or G8.

We can’t see tall buildings in these countries like Switzerland, Sweden, and Denmark and around the rest of the Scandinavian countries.

Their leaders develop their country for the sole purpose of enhancing their people’s lives and never in their mind to show off.

Their leaders are not known to the world like ours and let me ask everyone: who is the Prime Minister of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and other members of the Scandinavian Nations?. Bet you less than 10% of Malaysian knows them.

With all these in place right in front of DS Najib, can he emulate that kind of values for us in this beautiful nation?

DS Najib whether he likes it or not he has to be sure that all leaders including himself have no personal encumbering baggage in order to bring this country to greater height.

As long as there are Ministers having proxy companies in hand and are competing in business with the people they rule than let us forget about everything and for God sake no more rhetoric please.

If this important component does not exist, we let nature finds its course and the water finds its own level. I hope I won’t be reprimanded for disposing my true and honest opinion.

Do remember this country is also mine. Let us agree to disagree on some matters.

That is all for me to write on this topic; it may be short but to a person of no consequence like me, I think it covers most of the essentials.


Thanks……………………………………………………………Aspan Alias

DS Najib - Hopes & Aspirations - If there's any Part 2

As I have said in my last posting DS Najib is under watchfulness of every quarter both locally and internationally.

Apart of Malaysia being known by the world community as a fast developing nation, it is also known as a nation with very nice and forgiving people who allow their leaders in the past and present to commit pricey mistakes to the tens of billions of ringgit, by just watching in droopiness and exhaustion.

Malaysia is always in the glare of publicity for every big and tiny happenings, and the whole world know every development that happens here, as we are inimitable in many ways.

Out of 200 odd countries in the world with government and constitutions, we are the only country where her sons of the soil, which is the Malays, are strongly defined by the constitution and we should give warmest gratefulness to our fore fathers for the forwardness in their thinking.

Any attempt to obliterate that part of the constitution has proven fatal in consequence like what happened in May 13 1969, and no one in this country want that dark patch of our history to recur.

As from then, Malaysian learned that life with mutual respect over race, religion and culture as the way of life of every individual race is the only solution for guaranteed harmonious living.

The May 13th’69 incident even though despicable and contemptible, it also had some disguises of blessings for everyone.

Everyone of every race realized that there were some serious outstanding issues among the various races that were not addressed when we achieved independence, which was to find the insulation for interracial tolerances for perpetual harmony.

The National Operation Council (NOC) which was headed by Tun Abd Razak which was formed instantaneously after the dark incidence swiftly brought political leaders representing every major race together with high government implementers and astute personalities to the negotiating table.

After 3 years of tireless deliberation and thoughtfulness on problems in place, the solution was found and there came the New Economic Policy (NEP) which was agreeably formulated with only 1 motive, which was National Unity.

The prescription was well set and like in mathematics if one does not follow the formula there will be no correct answer to it.

To achieve the National Unity, there were few processes to this:-

1) To eradicate poverty irrespective of races
2) To eliminate the process of recognizing a race through their economic activities
3) Narrowing the gap between the haves and the haves not
4) Equitable distribution of wealth among races

We can clearly see that the solutions were pure and sincere as our leaders those days were focused without a breath of personal interest embedded in the resolutions of securing answers to problems.

They resigned to the actuality of needs, only one, that was National Unity as that was the real and actual problems that created animosities among the multi-racial population.

It was only after that discovery, those leaders sat in meetings after meetings to determine the most viable and practical processes of actions towards achieving the National Unity as mentioned earlier.

Apart from determining the manners and modes of achieving the one goal, Rukun Negara was introduced which was forgotten after Hussein Onn’s administration.

Rukun Negara was not given regards at all and big leaders had never appreciated that Rukun Negara was formulated out of blood and tears of the rakyat.

If DS Najib is serious about doing soul-searching, these few important elements of importance to the nation should not be neglected and ignored.

To the minds of many people who are serious in finding solutions, the leaders in place must be having a mind which is uninhabited with personal greed and gains.

Once their mind is distorted with personal greed, gain and vengeance, no decisions made will be proper and fitting in perpetuity and consequentially politics and government will be in jeopardy.

The result of the NEP was seen successful in a very short period. The 3 major races were working hand in hand with deep revere for each other and the implementations of the policy suited well.

The working of NEP was very well underway both in the government and in private sector.

In the private sector there were all out effort by non-Bumiputra and we witnessed speedy Bumiputra participation in the middle and high management level in big and small companies.

At the government level, the Cabinet had strong Cabinet Committees to implement the policy in achieving the target of 30% ownership of the nation’s wealth by the Bumiputra.

Bumiputra then just owned 2.7% of the nation’s wealth inclusive wealth owned by government agencies which were holding in trust for the Bumiputra.

The Cabinet Committee headed by Tengku Razaleigh was splendid in formulating and implementing the policy.

One of the policies that he and the government successfully implemented was the transfer of wealth to the Bumiputra and the committee chose to distribute the wealth through the concept of unit trust.

And that was nor easy to implement. As a tiny unit of the team, I was with many others before that to give ceramahs to each and individual JKKK to exercise massive elucidation to the people and getting feedbacks and studying the pulse of them as to their acceptance of the project.

We wanted to see no mistakes in the implementations, as this exercise touched the nerve and breath of the rakyat.

The Implementation and Co-ordination Unit (ICU) in the Prime Minister Department was very pushy to see that this exercise be implemented with zero umbrage from the people.

Part of the Trust Deeds was amended to allow these units to be sold to the Bumiputra in the denomination of RM10 instead of minimum of RM1000 to make every Bumiputra could participate in the exercise.

It was finally launched on the 1st day of June 1981 and the response was massive.

I am proud that I played a very tiny role in this successful exercise and the pulse of self satisfaction was felt at the highest when I saw Bumiputra grinning and smiling 6 months after earning 20% dividend within 6 months on the skim.

As an UMNO Divisional Committee member in Kuala Pilah I was requested to help around the General Election in the following year.

I went around to few places and I was too happy to see the same JKKK committee members and various NGO’s at the places I visited working hand in hand with me as they have been together with me for 2 years in preparation for the successful Sekim ASN.

This time around they rallied behind me working for the success of BN in the first General Election which Mahathir led in 1982 which BN won with landslide victory.

I am writing all these not just for the sake of writing, or to be an impressionist as one of the commentators put me or as another one put as nak tunjuk terror or anything of sorts.

My reason was to emphasize upon the current leadership that getting the rakyat involved in anything that the government wants to do is the utmost important ingredient of rallying support for the government. That is all.

DS Najib should take this as part of recipe for his administration, but he can only do it if he does it without having to pact in the personal interests of his cronies and acquaintances.

His acquaintances should be the rakyat and not the few who are experts in amusing him. Administration after Hussein Onn had been ignoring this point which they think they didn’t.

For instance the rakyat became very suspicious when the agreement between the concessionaires of the North South Highway and other highways and motorways with the government are put under Official Secret Act (OSA).

Why must it be put in under OSA? The suspicions of the people are unsurprising.

There is an automatic imaginary answer to the question in place: there are dubious deals pacts with the project and some are making unnecessary wealth at the expense of the highway users and the rakyat as a whole…and don’t blame the people for putting their back on to the government.

Honestly to-date, we are still waiting for a new facet of image from the new administration, as there is still no indication of serious changes taking its place.

If there is any, many people on the ground have the feel that he has to concede a lot to the demand of what we meagerly have to others in order to be up there.

If that is real, then he is weak. I hope he would find the striking balance and use the formula of pre-Mahathir which had worked well. I am sure everyone thinks that the propensity of we losing in the next General Election is more than winning it.

Okay, I guess that is all for now, and I shall prepare for my last posting on this topic in just days to come.


Thanks………………………………………………………………Aspan Alias