Ku Li: Malaysia’s oil wealth squandered, BN has destroyed Malaysia’s future
(Free Malaysia Today) – Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah hit the nail on head, painting a bleak future for Malaysia under the Barisan Nasional government which has squandered the nation’s oil wealth of billions and billions of ringgit.
The former Finance Minister of Umno said that Petronas oil have been used “to bail out failing companies, buy arms, build grandiose cities amidst cleared palm oil estates”.
“Instead of helping eradicate poverty in the poorest states, our oil wealth came to be channeled into our political and politically-linked class,” the first Petronas chief and former Umno vice president said in his speech at a one-day summit for Young Corporate Malaysians today.
He said the Petronas money has been used as a slush fund to prop up authoritarian rule, corrupted the entire political and business elite and eroded constitutional democracy.
The Umno Gua Musang M P, who agreed to head the Parliamentary Caucus to look into the oil royalty issue proposed by Pakatan Rakyat leader Anwar Ibrahim earlier this month, told the summit that Petronas has contributed 40 percent of the national budget over the years.
But such a great relieance on oil income is getting untenable. “The oil that was meant to spur our transition to a more humane, educated society has instead become a narcotic that provides economic quick fixes and hollow symbols such as the Petronas Towers,” he said.
He said the future for Malaysians looks beak with the government seeking to broaden the tax base by introducing a goods and tax service (GST) where Malaysians are required to pay an additional tax on top of income tax.
Malaysia is now caught in a middle-income trap, stuck in the pattern of easy growth from low-value-added manufacturing and component assembly and unable to make the leap to a knowledge-intensive economy, Tengku Razaleigh added.
The text of Tengku Razaleigh’s speech reads:
