Proton will cease to continue covering up a glaring mistake when Mahathir dies

Umar Mukhtar

In the university, we learnt about the realities of economies of scale, about market economies, and we were mindful that in developmental economics it is believed that wherever appropriate, a government-led giant industrial project might be the impetus to spawn the perforation of small- and medium-scale industries to be the backbone of a country’s industrialisation program. That’s Economics 101.

So in our bid to buttress the latter and at the same time prove that the former as not applicable to us because Mahathir is bigger than any economy theories, we embarked on building PERWAJA and PROTON at the cost of billions of Ringgit. It’s now thirty-three years since, more than any gestation period of an economic theory, so we are safe from any theoretical discourse. Just look at the results with honesty and humility and call a spade a spade. Or is that non-patriotic?

PERWAJA is effectively closed after a loss of billions of Ringgit. Even without being duped into buying a prototype that didn’t work well, PERWAJA was a dismal failure at everything else too. It took us a long time to admit the truth. So it is obvious that entry into heavy industries need not just money and nuts and bolts but also an ‘industrialised’ mind, not a ‘goreng pisang’ mentality of try and try again at billions of Ringgit per try.

Then came PROTON. We were the smallest country with the smallest economy with the smallest home market to want to build cars (editor: and Mahathir even suggested that Malaysian couples have five children per family so that the population can increase to 70 million to create a bigger domestic market). Others were laughing their heads off. But never mind. We had the money.

With a tiny home market, we had to depend on the export market to be able to sell enough cars to meet the breakeven point. We never did; sold enough cars or meet the breakeven point. PROTON made lousy cars. Let’s face it. We protect it in the home market by high import tax of foreign cars.

So, either we pay through our noses for decent foreign cars or we buy lousy PROTON cars whose electric windows didn’t even work. Now that it is a private company why we are still bending backwards, pouring much-needed money to bail it out? It is good for our economy?

Bah! Humbug! Or is it because Dr. Mahathir is putting PROTON on life-support with our money just so his hare-brained scheme to prove that the economists were wrong is now an embarrassing failure?

I reckon if we add all the money spent on PROTON and put it to non-megalomaniac use, we would be better off building a fantastic network of highways without tolls. Even if the prices of PROTON are low, the prices of PROTON abroad are cheaper! Cheap sale stuff is normally of low-quality. So let’s bail out PROTON so that it can continue to make lousy cars and be proud of it.

What’s the mystery about keeping lousy vendors? Corruption. Middle level corruption in PROTON production factories is endemic. It seems that vendors visit the plant with briefcases of cash in hand, and installed machineries are not at their optimum operational level. I am generalising, of course. But then Malaysian workers can be skilled. So if the curves of the graphs don’t meet, must be corruption or wrong arithmetic and wrong economics are applied. Mahathir is a joke and it’s costing us money.

When we advocate for PROTON to be closed down, some people are annoyed that they will lose their jobs. So let’s do this properly; sell the plants and assets plus whatever bailout money and divide them out to these workers, since the government is an employer of the last resort, like the unnecessarily fat Civil Service. We would still lose less money than if the plants continue operating. Maybe they can work for the new buyers, but sorry, no corruption.

What are the vendors going to do? Do what the good ones are doing now. Export their products to the car industries in Thailand and Indonesia, which had chosen to be assemblers of foreign makes with as much local content as possible. No glamour in that but these industries are thriving. We are in the moneymaking game not Mahathir’s game of syiok sendiri for show.

So, after thirty-three years, PROTON cars are not cars of choice even in its home market. PERODUA, the second national carmaker with strong Japanese input in management and product synergies is making money. But Mahathir refers to its cars as Japanese cars. It’s okay, Mahathir, we want the better cars, Malaysian or not. If you believe in this pipedream of going against economic realities, use your own money. Don’t be a stubborn asshole at our expense.

Mahathir’s cyber-dreams are also coming to nothing. Good ideas, poor implementation and postponing the day of reckoning in the mode of the emperor’s new clothes. Enough is enough, just fook off and let us deal with just one devil by ourselves. Mahathirism is dead.

By the way, has anybody done a study on whether the APs racket has produced Bumiputra automobile entrepreneurial worthy of the billions that Mahathir took from us? West Star and Naza and Mofaz. Only? After thirty-three years! Should have just handed them the money, they have diversified anyway.