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AIMST or More Indian Labourers?

I wrote this for the Malaysian Indian website, Vetti Pechu (www.vettipechu.org)

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POLITICS | AIMST or Tamil Schools? Posted on Saturday, August 24 @ 20:53:00 EDT by eS

By M.G.G. Pillai | pillai@mgg.pc.my

THE MALAYSIAN INDIAN CONGRESS president, Dato' Seri (Dr) S. Samy Vellu, continues to peddle half-truths and half-lies over the Asian Institute of Medicine, Science and Technology (AIMST). The AIMST has nothing to do with the MIC -- its shareholders being two Samy Vellu cronies with 60 per cent of the sharecapital and a Malay with 40 per cent -- yet, he says MIC initiated it. In his mind, that is as good an MIC project as there can be -- especially when there is money to be made in the hundreds of millions of ringgit in constructing it.

The Indian community, apparently, cannot be trusted to handle projects like these, so he puts his trusted cronies in charge. But since he promotes it, it is the bounden duty of every Indian, in MIC and out, to ensure its success. As in the Telekom share scandal, when three Samy Vellu cronies, including one who is now an MP and parliamentary secretary who could, if the stars shine in his favour, be the next MIC president, hijacked nine million shares meant for Maika Holdings.

But trifles like these, in which Samy Vellu shortchanges the Indian community at will, are irrelevant and forgotten if there is money to be made and speeches to be given. Twenty four years as MIC president gives him, in his considered opinion, Godly attributes -- what he says is what matters, not what he does. When the Ministry of Education orders AIMST to stop classes because the laboratories are not ready, he spins a story of why. The simple fact is there is no main contractor yet for the AIMST campus in Sungai Patani. The company he appointed did not, in the best Bolehland tradition, know how to construct a hospital; it failed to deliver. After clearing the ground and letting it idle for months, it walked away.

This does not faze the Great Man. He now demands 1,500 foreign workers to construct the "RM425 million state-of-the-art college" in Semiling, Kedah. "I am appealing to (Deputy Prime Minister) Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to allow us to recruit 1,500 foreign workers to expedite the construction process," he said. It is contractors who apply for the permits. AIMST has no contractors yet, so it does not know if whoever is selected would have enough workers. But he assumes they would not have, and so he wants the law constricted because he is Dato' Seri Samy Vellu, and he cannot be challenged. Clearly there is a problem. All he had to do was to sidle up to Pak Lah after a cabinet meeting, tell him his problem, and walk away with it. That he has to make a public admission like this is proof he does not have the clout and power he tells all and sundry he has. He must beg in public what should have been as a matter of right.

Since he cannot get his way with what he wants, he vents his anger at those he can: "certain quarters" who continue to question the need for AIMST, and who had claimed AIMST should be replaced with Tamil schools. "These people had no right to question us. Instead they should help us to set up the college, which is built for them," he said, and insinuates that if AIMST is replaced with Tamil schools, "I am sure we will be able to provide more workers in Kuala Lumpur City Hall and the other local councils as well." In other words, you disagree with his plans, which benefits only those Indians who have RM300,000 and more to send a child to medical school, you are to be labeled irrational or backward.

If many Tamil schools are in a parlous state, it is only because of MIC, or its failure to fight hard, or initiate meaningful projects, for them. Yet, he has the gumption to suggest Tamil schools supply only cheap labourers in abundance. The question remains, however, how would the almost hundred thousand Indian students who now study in Tamil schools will benefit from AIMST, and improve dramatically? To this question Samy Vellu has no answer.

He is to the Indian community what Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed is to UMNO, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik is to MCA, Dato' Seri Lim Kheng Yaik is to Gerakan, Dato' Amar James Wong Kim Minn to SNAP: a leader who has outlived his usefulness to the community he represents but who insists he is in absolute control, and dismiss any party member who thinks otherwise. The result is the community each represents is out of kilter with the leader. The leader is so intent on clinging to office that he does not care what happens to the community. He dictates what the community needs or wants, and since it cannot run what it wants, he asks his cronies to do so. He decides how it will run, and runs it. Anyone who questions is one who should be dispatched to kingdom come in the shortest time possible. Meanwhile, if the Indian community do not want AIMST, the labour market would have more Indian labourers than was ever thought possible. With logic like this, it is quite evident that Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu has finally reached Godhood in the Patheon of Bolehland's Brightest and the Best.

M.G.G. Pillai, a veteran journalist and a columnist, runs the popular discussion group, Sankancil.