The Corruption of Mahathir

The corruption of Mahathir - George Soros reply to Mahathir. The article adapted from Bangkok Post which is not published locally.

I have always said Dr Mahathir is a menace to his own people. Now only you can see the effects of his foolishness when the ringgit has halved its value overnight and your economy goes kaput. Single handedly you have caused hardship to millions of your own people. You have built useless mega projects at tremendous cost to the country.

The telecoms tower in Kuala Lumpur and the highest building in the world show how stupid you are. Not only does it cause massive traffic jam, it has totally no purpose. If you need high ground for telecoms antennae, a nearby mountain is there for free. This tower has no purpose from the ground up to 300 metres. The satellites make this totally unnecessary. A fool and his money are soon parted. The only thing is you are the fool and the money belongs to Malaysians.

You make 20% in every project, you have real estate in Japan and billions of shares corruptly acquired. Your 3 sons are worth 8 billion US$. Where do they get this money? Of course, corruption.

You are known as the Marcos of Malaysia, having enriched yourself to the tune of billions. You dare to shed crocodile tears during UMNO delegates meeting about the ills of corruption. Yet you are the most corrupt of all the prime ministers before you. A thief is crying thief and hopes people look the other way. Who dares to say anything when the chief is caught with his hands in the candy jar?

You said wisdom is not the monopoly of the West. So is foolishness. You have more foolishness than most people would believe. Billions are used to build two high rise Petronas buildings that benefit nobody. They now stand tall, a symbol of stupidity and irresponsibility. Instead they just add on to traffic jams. What is this reclamation of 10 islands off Kedah? Totally absurd and stupid. Of course your benefit is 20%. And the bridge across from Malacca to Sumatra across international waters? Why not build a bridge to the moon? I am sure you still can get your 20%. You called me a Moron. How can a Moron make so much money. By allowing short selling and borrowing millions of shares from your banks we fund managers made millions out of your inexperience and poor regulations.

You lose all Malaysians' money, therefore you are the Moron. Now you know too late and start crying over spill milk. In Australia you are known as the recalcitrant ego maniac; in UK the corrupt bastard because of your stupid purchase of our movie studio and the 290 million ringgit Lotus racing car plant and the shady Pergau dam loans from the UK. They are useless to us and you still want to buy them.

What about buying British reject submarines through your agent, of course. The agent/ broker is designed to make millions out of the Malaysian government. Your purchase of our battleships is at least 50% more than others are paying. Your purchase of 9 hospitals from UK lock, stock and barrel does not support your local architects or your industry and the British send you obsolete medical equipment. The design is atrocious, one end to the other is half a kilometer and there is no CT-scan, an absolute necessity.

In the UK your face appears in no less than 17 newspapers as a corrupt dictator. In Malaysia you are known as the (IBM) International Big Mouth. In Japan they call you the 'smallest one' (brain size). In Pacific islands, the Santa Claus (giving advice left and right). In south America they call you the parrot (he talks a lot but does not know what it is about). In Manila the living Marcos.

In Malaysia they are spending millions to lure tourists and you talk rubbish scaring every foreigner away. When he is dumb he is doubted a fool, when he opens his mouth it removes all doubt.

While I agree the West does not have the monopoly to wisdom, your actions are not the wisest either. Your EAEC has totally no support even in Asean. Your South-South dialogue meets with the same fate and what is this I hear of the Bridge from Peninsula Malaysia to Sumatra covering 20 miles across International shipping lane?

How crazy can one get? Even the Japanese don't have the money. This world's stupidity seems to be concentrated in one man's mind - yours.

The multimedia super corridor - MSC. Well in USA its Most Stupid Concept because we Americans, would have thought of it light years before. Even if it makes money, we can copy this concept can't we?

Why do you want to spend your hard-earned money doing questionable projects? It will be like the Bakun project. Abandoned fund wasted and another white elephant. I always say politicians should not be involved in business. Your ministers are also businessmen and almost every official is enriching himself. Look at Rafidah Aziz, selling thousands of Approved Permits (APs) for cars each worth 20-30 thousand Malaysian dollars. Why not your government sell them and make the money? She has acquired millions of shares meant for bumis for free before she agrees to list them.

Look at your Selangor Chief Minister collecting millions for approving high rise buildings from businessman. He is worth a few billions. Unfortunately he was caught with a few million pocket money in Australia. Every Chief minister is awarding useless projects to his cronies then collecting secret pay offs on the side. The Land Development Boards and the Economic Development Boards are used to bail out any loses suffered by politicians. The profits they keep, the loses they force the Government bodies to absorb. How can your poor ever close the gap when every good deal is snatched by your politicians? How can your country get out of poverty if all the billions of corruption money is taken out of the country?

Look at the Sarawak Chief Minister selling billions worth of timber concessions under the table; selling every piece of state land to businessmen without tender; using his own companies to obtain lucrative government contracts; selling approval signatures for a fee 'you pay I approve'. He has 8 billion US stashed overseas. Thousands of acres of land are given to one or two companies while thousands of poor people still live in cardboard makeshift homes; have no water and shit into the river.

Thousands of acres of land are sold to companies for plantations while the natives do not have even one acre to their name. He is selling sand near the beaches to one company for earth filling and then ask the government to spend millions to protect the coastline when erosion occurs.

He lost 300 million of the Sarawak government money trying to make computer chips. He has built a port in Northern Sarawak town in water so shallow it needs dredging every year. The Prime Minister built highways without tender, your cronies get the deal and the price double. Your Langkawi airport runway was built double the cost by your own company, Ekran.

The Malaysian nation has lost at least 30 billions during your last 10 years of corrupt rule. One billion lost from the purchase of phantom Skyhawk war planes nobody has ever seen (are they still in the Nevada desert, USA?). 3 billion lost from the London tin scandal (you thought you could corner the London tin market without knowing the Americans have a stockpile! Stupidity at its best. 6 billion Perwaja steel mill where nobody even knows where the money goes, 3 billion bank Bumiputra scandal when George Tan bribed all the bank officials to lend him the money. 6 billion forex lost by Bank Negara (the fool and his money are soon parted) and 6 billion to build three of the world's tallest buildings (built by Japanese and Koreans and furniture imported from France - not Malaysia ) and 1 billion lost from purchase of British warships including fees paid to the broker and under the table. Add the 10 billion you stole and 5 billion taken by Ministers.

In the 1997 the World Journalists meeting voted Dr Mahathir the Prime Minister of the Decade. It sounded strange to everybody until it was revealed those who voted against are threatened by IRD officers and with losing their jobs. In New York the United Nations 1997 meeting, the most corrupt Prime Minister of the decade is President Suharto and second Dr Mahathir (Actually Dr Mahathir should take first place but bribed the Indonesians to take honour of Number One.)

There are fifty thousand of your university students not given places in Malaysia but are good enough for places overseas resulting in billions of dollars lost. The British and the Australians are thinking how stupid. Your best students are sent overseas raising their standards while as in most countries the best are kept in local universities and the rejects sent overseas.. A university student in Hong Kong is much more prestigious than any Australian counterpart. You have been colonised by the British so long you cannot even educate your own people. Look at Hong Kong or Singapore, less than 5% study overseas. All the money saved. Your country could save billions if every student overseas is recalled to a local university, and at the same time raising your own standards.

Your people are still without shoes, without land to farm, without homes, bathing in rivers shitting in holes in the ground, without water and electricity. Your cities are concrete jungles without greenery and open spaces. Your KL is jammed with traffic. Yet you still keep on building high rises. You should come down from the clouds and stop daydreaming and firmly plant your feet in the ground. Your schools are cramped 500 students to an acre and thousands of acres are given free to some politicians who leave them idle. Your parks are being taken by politicians to build shop houses and every cabinet minister is a land-grabbing businessman who builds roads only to their cronies' land.

The Malaysians' Prayer, "Ya Allah, we thank you for your gifts of timber, oil and grain. But then the devil sent us corrupt Mahathir without a Brain and look we are back to square one again. So just take Dr Mahathir back to Hell and we will be alive and well."

In China people have been shot for embezzling one thousand dollars. With 8 billion you have stolen, therefore you would be shot 80 thousand times. Now you are leading an anti-corruption campaign. We all know what you should do. Look yourself in the mirror. You see the crooked you. Then use your left hand and handcuff your right hand. You have put the opposition leader and his son in jail when they said in parliament you are the richest PM in the world. And his colleague Mr Karpal Singh too for 2 years.

So I get a reward or bribe if I now say you are the poorest PM in this world? Your 3 sons are sitting on the board of directors of more than 200 companies. They must have been educated in Harvard school of business and obtained distinctions? Or is it "you don't know me, you don't do business in Malaysia" law that applies. Billions of ringgit of Employee's Provident Fund and public Petronas funds are used to bail out your sons who make losses investing in every venture you thought you could make money. How unethical and corrupt. Every one of your politicians is sitting on the board of tens of companies making thousands without any effort, lending their VIP names to borrow millions from local banks without collateral. Now these have become non- performing loans. Now you want 20 million Malaysians to sacrifice for the folly of ONE man? Why not the fool resign and admit he wasted and took most of the money. I could teach you how to put your economy on track but first you must apologize to the Malaysian people.