Friday, March 16, 2012

Najib, Close Down MAS And F.O The Union.

Hantu Laut

I still remember the day Lee Kuan Yew threatened to close down SIA.That was in 1980 when I still lived in Singapore.

Lee's fiery speech telling the Singapore Airlines' Pilot Association, in no uncertain term, what he intends to do if they continue with their 'work to rule' action that have disrupted several of the airline flight's schedule.The pilots were asking for higher salaries and greater benefits.


At that time SIA had many expatriate pilots.



Lee personally confronted the pilot and told them he would close down the airline, sack all of them, if he had to, and start a new airline.


As a consequent, the association was de-registered and its officials prosecuted and SIA continued to soar into the blue yonder.

Lee has shown how tough he can get when facing a threat.This is what true leader should do when confronted with threat from a small group of people, too selfish to care about the nation's interests.



The great Mr. Lee taking on the Americans.

In 2004, Lee, this time not as PM, but as minister mentor had head-on collision with the SIA pilot union again.Taking up a personal charge to clean up the problem posed by the SIA pilot union Lee warned of "cracking head" if the pilot union moved toward a strike.His concern is two of Singapore's biggest assets, SIA and Changi Airport, which is already facing severe challenges from budget airlines and long-haul air crafts which could bypass Singapore as stopover point.


As they say 'the rest is history' and without me saying, you should know who  the winner was?

I must say, I am disappointed with Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak.He succumbed to too many demands made by the oppositions, his own party belligerents and now he seemed to have succumbed to the MAS employees union and the root of the matter is not even over wages and benefits for the union workers but about who can buy into MAS and who can't.



The union is now interfering in the business and management of the company.

Obviously, Najib is listening to the wrong people advising him how to deal with MAS woes.

MAS massive losses of MR2.5 billion incurred last years has nothing to do with the share swap.The share swap was done in August 2011 which is slightly over six months now.


Any nincompoop would know there are gestation periods involved before the company can show profitability. To say MAS is at the losing end of the deal is preposterous.If you replaced one shitty management with another one of the same standing should you expect any better?

Like the carpenter who blame the tools for his shoddy work, MAS management keep harping on increased cost of fuel as the gremlin of their problem. 


What about SIA and other profitable airlines, are their planes running on water? What about Air Asia, the cheapo airline, how the hell they can show profits for the same period? Maybe, their planes are running on sugarcane juice?

It's a shame that this bunch of Malay technocrats never seemed to get their act together, more attune to playing the blame game than getting down to serious work of saving the airline.

Instead of looking into cost cutting, redundancy, retrenchment and boosting sales, they found a new rat on board that may be cutting the ground under their feet.


The rat is no other than Tony Fernandez, whom they see as a threat.

It was reported that officials of MAS union went to see the PM to state their displeasure and opposition to the share swap with Air Asia.The PM should have showed them the door and tell them it is not their business to tell him how to run the government, their business is to look after the welfare of their members.If MAS goes down, they all be out of a job, anyway.

Would 20000 MAS employees scare him into breaching the MAS/Air Asia tie-up? Would a new government entity taking over the airline makes it profitable? I cast my doubt.

Quote
(The Malaysian Insider has learnt that Putrajaya officials are working on a plan for Khazanah to divest its stake in MAS first before a general offer is made for the remaining shares from other shareholders, including tycoon Tan Sri Tony Fernandes’ Tune Air, which owns a 20.5 per cent stake in the national airline. In the August 2011 deal, Khazanah got a 10 per cent stake in Asia’s biggest budget carrier AirAsia.) Unquote.

Food for thought!What happened if Tony Fernandez refused to sell after the restructuring. What you do? Shoot him,ISA him or sent him to Ceylon?

Najib should make business decision, not political decision.He should not entertain the MAS union's demand.It absurd that 20000 MAS employees can save his premiership and he sacrificing more taxpayer's money to appease them.

Najib is moving in the right direction but he must show that he is control, he is the boss, not swayed by people who are harbingers of doom.

Quote (
Failing to placate the union could turn into a political hot potato for Najib as MAS operations are centred in Selangor, an important industrial state Najib wants to wrest back from the opposition in elections that could be held within months. MI) Unquote.

Close down the damned airline and F.O the MAS union.It's the people money that's going down the drain.

Alternatively, sell MAS to Tony Fernandez for a song.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Rotten Cheese By Any Other Name Is Still Rotten.


Hantu Laut

Raja Petra wrote "The East Malaysians are not concerned about transparency, accountability, good governance, human rights, civil liberties, etc. Those are values and notions of those in West Malaysia, in particular the urbanites. In East Malaysia it is about nationalism and self-rule. And they do not feel by voting PKR or DAP they will achieve that."

Wrong! We do care and much more. However, we don't want to suffer a fate worse than death............... from the frying pan into the fire.We are not about to replace the devil we know with the devil in sheep clothing.

So, we are likely to vote BN again.

Anwar Ibrahim does not impress us at all. His slate is not as clean as what he projects himself to be.We still remember what he did to Sabah before.He was DPM and No.2 most powerful man in the government that he now accused of massive corruptions.What was he doing then, sleeping or participating ?

The unfortunate things about West Malaysians, when it comes to politics, they are emotional and irrational, they can't separate the wheat from the chaff.They want to change just for the sake of change without looking at the replacement government under the microscope,
blinded by the opposition's rhetoric, they missed seeing the very same kind of germs they wanted to get rid off .

In the case of RPK, East Malaysia is a lost horizon to him, he may know the Malays and West Malaysians' psyche well but he knows little of East Malaysians.

RPK has forgotten the fact that Sabahans are politically more savvy and practical, we have been through four different governments, we don't make as much noise as the West Malaysians, we don't scream, shout, drum the empty cans or throw insults, we quietly wait for polling day and quietly cast our votes and when the results came out the following evening. Shabas!, Sabahans have exercised their democratic rights wisely, we sent the incumbents off to the twilight zone.

We have changed wayward government at least three times in the past.We sent USNO to the dustbin of history, Berjaya to the grave, both never recovered, USNO was de-registered, Berjaya was dissolved and someone pocketed the money from sale of the Berjaya building.The same ex-Berjaya leaders are now in SAPP screaming their heads off calling for clean government and Sabah for Sabahans.These political eunuchs think Sabahans are stupid.What good is Sabah in the hands of uncaring and corrupt leaders like them.

Than came Anwar Ibrahim with his politics of federalism, culture of fear, threatened a few PBS leaders with prosecution for corruptions and, unashamedly, engineered a coup, offering the few PBS kataks money and positions to jump ship that brought down the thin-majority PBS government.

Today, the same PBS turncoats are either in SAPP or BN, also screaming their heads off against corruptions and Sabah for Sabahans.

Why should Pakatan leaders complain about Najib and the Perak coup when their de facto leader was as guilty as sin in the Sabah coup.
The three dinguses in Perak must have been offered attractive packages using the Anwar's well tested formula, accept the red package or prosecution for corruptions .

Sabah and Sarawak will again be the kingmakers and let hope this time around, unlike the ungrateful Pak Lah, our PM Najib Tun Razak give more credits to Sabahans and the Sabah CM for delivering the seats.I am positive Sabah and Sarawak would deliver a comfortable majority.

We are likely to lose a few state and parliamentary Chinese seats to DAP .The others, PKR, PAS and local parties SAPP, Star and the one suffering the same malady as Anwar of wanting to be NO.1 and Huguan Siou of the KDM people would be severely trounced.Yong of SAPP and Jeffery Kitingan of UBF have lost credibility with the people.

West Malaysian politicians learned a lot about dirty money politics from East Malaysians, particularly Sabahans.

There were no money politics and "politik katak" (strangely, some Malaysian writers are confused between frog and frogging, they are not the same, frogging is a coat fastening consisting a loop and a button and leapfrogging has nothing to do with politics either) in Peninsula Malaysia before.

Nothing to be proud of, Sabahans do it all the times, as they strongly believe in democracy and no one should be deprived of the freedom of association, which kind of the same as the First Amendment of the Constitution of the U.S.To protect their backside and to stop elected representatives from leaving the party for another, PBS during its tenure, introduced anti-hop law in Sabah

The only difference, in Malaysia, freedom come, freedom go, with the dirty hands of politics.

PBS "anti-katak" law passed in the Sabah state assembly was later abrogated by the BN, reason being it was against Article 10 of the Federal constitution.The irony is, the same article also made it illegal for the government to stop peaceful assembly and they did, everytime without fail, forcefully stopped such assembly, knowing it was against the constitution.

Even more ironic when Anwar Ibrahim blow his trumpet of an impending coup in the BN, where he claimed to have enough support of BN MPs to topple the BN, one clown in UMNO, a minister with very short memory, one Zaid Ibrahim said he would proposed to the cabinet to pass an anti-hop law.This same man later joined Anwar Ibrahim's PKR.

What happened to Article 10? Isn't it supposed to be"What sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander?

Can you trust politicians?Aren't they all the same. A bunch of liars and lawbreakers.

Money politics has become a way of life for our politicians.It has nothing to with principle or conscience, it's all about money and position.Unfortunately, in UMNO some are made sacrificial lambs to appease the opposition when everyone in the party, including the top echelon are rotten to the core.

In Malaysia those who joined politics are out to make money, don't kid yourself that they are out to serve the people.

Sabahans have learned a bitter lesson, changing government in the hope of getting better leaders and better administration of the state is like chasing the receding horizon, you can see it but never able to reach it.

Every succeeding government do exactly the same as the one you gotten rid off.

So, we may, again stay with the devil we know, not, as RPK says, we don't care about good governance, human rights and civil liberties, we do, but we are just fed up with every leader that came along with empty promises and lies.

Rotten cheese called by any other name is still rotten.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Shahrizat Coming Home To Roost

Hantu Laut

Shahrizat sacrificed herself says the PM. She should have in the first instance when the scandal was exposed to the public tendered her resignation voluntarily.

She rejected the clarion call for her to step down gracefully.She ignored ignominious public opinion against her. Sad to say a little too late, the damage is done, her resignation has lost its value.

Though the PM tried to save her the embarrassment and soften the blow to her pride, it's obvious she was under pressure to resign.As they say pride comes before a fall.

UMNO leaders should discard their politics of arrogant if they want to win the coming election.

Najib should also drop half of his cabinet ministers from contesting the elections.I will not name who are the deadwoods as the PM should himself know who they are.

Story here.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Karpal, Letter Of The Law or Spirit Of The Law?

Hantu Laut

Find fault with the judge if you can't find fault with the judgement.It's a trend among opposition leaders to ridicule judges when they couldn't find flaw in the judgement.

Anwar did it many times, asking judges to be removed from his case accusing them of being bias, his tactic to delay the trial.His Sodomy II trail ended with him off the hook more out of incompetent evidence provided the police rather than anything else.The prosecution appealed the case.

In his sedition case Karpal the nutty as a fruitcake lawyer couldn't find any flaw in the Court Of Appeal's judgement decided to insult one of the three judges, Datuk Clement Skinner for not being fluent in Malay and implied he couldn't have understood the written judgement in Malay because of his poor understanding of the language.It's obvious he is scrapping the bottom of the barrel.There were two Malay judges on the panel,there must have been discourse among the three judges before they reach a consensus.The written judgement is just academic.

Here, he politicised punishment by the court for contempt of a crazy imam who threw his shoes at the judges because he was not happy with the judgement.He was sentenced to a year imprisonment which Karpal and a few other half-past six lawyers say too excessive.If the imam were an UMNO man they would say the opposite, too lenient.

Throwing shoes at people is the biggest insult in any culture and are not taken very lightly in the Malay culture.

This ex-imam and ex-Mat Rempit is lucky, if I were the judge I would give him one for each shoe, two years in prison and five stroke of the cane.

One year is not enough deterrent, particularly, for 'kurang ajar' imam.