Most politicians, particularly some of our Barisan Nasional Ministers like Datuk Seri Samy Vellu, Datuk Mohd Johari Baharum or Datuk Zainuddin Maidin would like to tell you that they are the smart ones and you are the stupid ones.Well, it looks like the former Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad himself has gotten round to admitting that politicians can be quite stupid fairly often, with the specific reference to the toll concession agreements.
Mahathir admitted that toll concession agreements were not well-conceived during his tenure as prime minister and added that he "suspected the highway operators were now reaping huge profits from the toll hikes."
“The cabinet is not made up of experts. They are made up by politicians and some politicians like myself can be very stupid. What happens when you have an agreement is that the officers make the agreement and the agreement is sent to the cabinet and usually the small print is not there. Cabinet merely passes on the basis of principle. They do not really study the implication of some passages in the agreement,” he said.I'm not sure if Tun Dr M was trying to excuse his Cabinet and his own role in the entire exercise by placing the blame on incompetent officers who fails to highlight the small prints. If he was, then certainly that's no better than then Pak Lah's Ministers who blamed the civil service for poor delivery of "first class" policies.
The rakyat placed their trust in the Government and its leadership to protect and promote our interest. The fact that unbelievably lopsided toll concession agreements were signed by our government on our behalf, and without our knowledge or consultation, is clearly evidence of negligence and dereliction of duty.
Tun Dr M, while honest enough to admit that he had a cabinet full of stupid politicians which Pak Lah inherited, must accept the bulk of the blame without attempting to shift some of that responsibility to the civil service, however incompetent they may be.
The rot certainly starts at the top. The rakyat and I not stupid, you know.
7 comments:
Love the blog. You've got me hooked :^)
Trouble is Dr M speaks the 'truth' only after he stopped being the PM. Would he do the same if he is still in the position of power?
Watever, he knows all the ins and outs of the backroom boys
Yes, anyone with commonsense knew that the unbelievably lopsided toll concession agreements signed by TDM's cabinet was intentionally so. TDM and his gang appeared stupid, but they were really not stupid. They found the magic way or formula to unbelievably ridiculously easy wealth, by signing a piece of paper and protected by OSA and ISA.
We have allowed ourselves to fall. Most of us , including bloggers, start to forgive and "re-promote" Dr M .
He made two major mistakes that make us suffer :
a) by building all the tolls
b) by hand-picking Badawi as his successor
And now he looks so innocent
the beautiful thing about the toll. its the ideal foo; [roof mechanism that ensure success
even if everyone boycott the use of tolls, its stated that the govt must reimburse...
i wish i have such companies..i will be laughing going to the bank..
Does that mean, we the rakyat elected stupid politicians as our representatives?
I truly believe changes start with us from the bottom, not from the top.
...Just because they have the "YB" infront of their name, they think they are smart, clever etc. They are no better than us...
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