Monday, November 3, 2008

PENANG GOVERNMENT SCANDAL - malaysiakini

by CHARLES HECTOR of http://charleshector.blogspot.com

Wasting the peoples' money is wrong. The quantum is immaterial. BN may have squandered billions, but it cannot justify Pakatan squandering even thousands.

A good question for Lim Guan Eng - Why send 52 persons for a 5 day 'trade-mission' to South Kora? How much did the State spend? Who were in this large delegation? How were they chosen? Were they Pakatan cronies? Did the wife pay for herself?

The state government came under fire from local BN leaders, especially from Umno and Gerakan, for allegedly wasting public funds in an unusually large 52-person trade delegation to South Korea for a five-day trip beginning Oct 27.

They also questioned the reasons for Lim to take along his wife, Betty Chew, Deputy Chief Minister Mohammad Fairus Khairuddin and parliamentarians Jeff Ooi, who is the state industrial relations coordinator and an InvestPenang director, Liew Chin Tong, to South Korea. - Malaysiakini, 2/11/2008 - Lim defends Korean trade mission

I read the Malaysiakini report entitled "Lim defends Korean trade mission" but alas, it looked very much like any other BN politician.

Distract-- he talked about "He said the critics, mainly Barisan Nasional politicians, should have instead saved their time and energy to scrutinise and criticise the RM23.7 billion wastage caused by three major scandals recently...."

Not really respond - Reading the report, I am sad to say that the questions have not been answered. When asked to divulge the BUDGET - he procrastinated, saying that some other will provide answers in a few days. Come now - is he not the Chief Minister. Are we not in an age when it is so easy to communicate and get necessary information?

And most shocking was that the trip had only managed to get some money to build a GOLF COURSE....
Lim said BN politicians should have criticised those scandals if they were serious and sincere to wiping out wastage and leakages of public funds, instead of disapproving his Far East delegation, which had secured a RM100 million Korean investment to construct a golf course in the Batu Kawan parliamentary constituency.- Malaysiakini, 2/11/2008 - Lim defends Korean trade mission
I think Kit Siang would also not be able to defend what Guan Eng did here....this nice 5 day trip to South Korea for 52 persons. I only hoped that they did not use State Money to pay for the 52.

Maybe the Malaysiakini report was not complete and accurate - BUT tell me where I can find out the truth about this 'scandal'

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Politicians are the same. Don't expect too much from PR.

The most important one is democratic power and people's education on democracy.

Anonymous said...

I think Lim would be better off to explain with great details the cost of the trip and who paid for it. It's all part of his CAT policies and he should be seen to practise it.

Anonymous said...

"A good question for Lim Guan Eng - Why send 52 persons for a 5 day 'trade-mission' to South Kora? How much did the State spend? Who were in this large delegation? How were they chosen? Were they Pakatan cronies? Did the wife pay for herself?"

1) How many of the delegation of 52 were govt. officials? How many from the private sector, who normally pay for their own expenses and form the majority? Any trade mission wld involve our local businessmen looking for trade opportunities with Korea.

2) Why no question about wives accompanying BN leaders around the world? How about wives accompanying people like Bush, Putin, Sarkozy? Think about the poor wives sitting at home whilst their husbands sacrifice their time working for the rakyat instead of being with the family. Who knows, maybe she paid out of her own pocket.

We do not know for sure, so we should not speculate.

ylcw

Anonymous said...

There were many hundred or thousands of official/unofficial trips made by the then BN officials using millions of ringgit of the people's money then, & yet little or non compliant about their abuse of state money during their reign of power in the state. The PR government has hardly ruled these states a year and yet people or should i say hypocrites are already complaining about their trip which their only intentions are to bring in FDI to boost the state economy. Don't u guys know that our federal government is not going to help these opposition held states in terms of monetary funds? Where do u supposed the state government to earn the revenue? Impose more taxes on the ordinary folks?! I guess it's just simply hard to please these few lots of hypocrites (especially the BN ggons!!)