Malaysiakini :: Letters
Malaysiakini :: Letters |
| BN wasting our money on their spinmasters Posted: 02 Sep 2011 03:56 AM PDT Just before the war on Iraq when the Bush administration was warning the world of the weapons of mass destruction we saw many theatrics from his assistants like Collin Powell's convincing speech to the UN. There were many who were itching for war with Iraq and proceeded with much spin doctoring, chief of whom was Prime Minister Tony Blair who had spun a web of questions that eventually led to his ouster and that of many Bush allies who supported the war against Iraq. Spin or spin doctoring refers to all the public relations schmooze and dressing up of a story which serves the purpose of those in power. The art of spin has finally arrived on our Malaysian shores and this does no come cheap. At least not to the Malaysian rakyat. Many forget that our hard earned money is taxed by the government and this money is spent on various projects of which the government must be held accountable. In the last two years alone it was recorded that the Malaysian government had spent almost 60 million ringgit on PR consultants (ie. people who make you and what you do look good). Their job is to spin a bad story or issue into a good one. For example intensive logging in Sarawak or the building of useless dams could be spun in a way that looks good to the people of Malaysia and the world. Another example could be a governments transformation plan or policy which needs frills and dressing to make it look good or saleable. One wonders how previous prime ministers like Tunku Abdul Rahman or Razak or Hussein Onn had put forth their policies for Malaysian without the help of PR consultants. Are these truly necessary if a government is not profit or market driven, but is there to ensure a level playing field and conducive environment for business and investment? What is the need of looking good when your KPIa are the figures that come out of Bank Negara or the statistics department with regard to GDP or poverty levels etc? In a time when governments are going bankrupt in Europe and when the rakyat in Malaysia are struggling to make ends meet due to increases in electricity bills, food bills, rent and transportation, spending 60 million of public relations for the government is simply not acceptable. The government of the day has to be held accountable. |
| Were the communist party members 'bandits'? Posted: 02 Sep 2011 02:18 AM PDT It is funny how when people like Mat Sabu utter something that goes against the grain and generally held belief and everyone sets upon him like as if they are the authorities, that there would be some who might want to venture a little deeper to find out a little more about the contentious subject matter. And so, I went on my merry way and this snippet is a footnote that I took from this article by Philip Deery on Malaya, 1948: Britain's 'Asian Cold War' : "Although it bore many of the characteristics of a colonial war, the misnomer 'emergency' was used throughout the twelve years. It was employed not for 'public relations' purposes (Frank Farudi, 'Creating a Breathing Space: The Political Management of Colonial Emergencies', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 21(2), September 1993, p.94). "The real reason was economic: property damage to the Malayan rubber and tin estates was covered by London insurance companies only during 'riot and civil commotion' in an emergency. Under this clause of their policies, insurance companies could repudiate their liability for losses of stocks and equipment for civil war or ongoing armed conflict. A cash-strapped British government would then have to pick up the tab. "It was primarily for this fiscal reason, too, that MCP guerrillas were labelled, for the first three years, 'bandits', and the British counter-insurgency was termed 'The Anti-Bandit Campaign'. According to the British High Commissioner in Malaya, 'these considerations lie behind the preference for such names as 'bandits', 'thugs', and 'terrorists' which have not the same significance for insurance companies." (Public Record Office, Kew [henceforth PRO], PRO CO 537/4773, no.3, despatch no.5 from H. Gurney to A. Creech Jones, 30 May 1949). But as one Foreign Office official noted, "it seems to me largely nonsense to refer to the guerrillas as 'bandits, pure and simple, a motley band of ruffians'...There is an extremely high degree of political training and organisation and to refer to them as bandits is to misunderstand the whole problem which they present.' (PRO FO371/84478, Minute, A.E. Franklin to Malaya Committee, minutes of 3rd Meeting of the Malaya Committee, 7 May 1950). "Moreover, the British belatedly discovered that 'bandit' was the identical term used by the Japanese occupiers during WW2 and, instead of de-legitimising the MCP, as intended, it led some Malayan Chinese to equate the British re-occupation with the Japanese occupation. On 20 May 1952 the hybrid term 'communist terrorist' or, simply, 'CT' replaced 'bandit' - presumably without jeopardising insurance cover." Over to you Prof Khoo and the others who claim to be historians! |
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