MGG Pillai Commentary View

<< Previous || Next >>

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

Repetition

MALAYSIA'S SATELLITE TV CHANNEL PROVIDER, ASTRO, is, as only to be expected, run and controlled by a crony of the Prime Minister. You have to be one to get a lucrative monopoly. Those who subscribe to it must face the gamut of problems one expects from monopolies. It is by no means the only one. Show me a monopoly in Malaysia, it has creative illegal means to separate consumers from their money. Despite it, every monopoly in Malaysia loses money hands over fist that the government must take over. Every single one has, or is about to be taken over, and the government steps in periodically to take over its unacceptably high debt, and hand it back to the management to make further losses. Each takes the consumer for a ride, illegally. Few bother to protest. Taking on a monopoly is, in Malaysia, Quixotic. Besides, one cannot get justice in the Malaysian courts, which favour the rich and the powerful. The corporate boardrooms know this only too well, and run berserk. Creative means are found to squeeze the poor consumer of his money.

Astro sent a letter to subscribers of its Dynasty package of this once-in-a-lifetime upgrade to its Emperor package for a mere RM30 more a month. They must reply by 21 April 2003 to upgrade. If they did not receive the offer, did not want it but did not tell Astro of it, you are then automatically upgraded. In other words, if you want the package, you must tell them; but if you did not, you would it anyway. The ministry of domestic trade and consumer affairs keeps quiet, as it does of every deliberate, illegal price gouging as Astro's latest scam. The monopolies get away with it for the long-suffering consumer just do not have the wherewithal, the time or the inclination to challenge it.

Astro as a satellite TV provider one would not write home about. It provides re-runs and third rate programmes, interspersed with a few current affairs programmes, like 24 hour news channels. It changes and replaces programmes at its whim and fancy. If you must complain, and many an Astro subscriber wants to, you must have the patience to sit through a rigamorale on the telephone and leave in frustration. To get someone to talk to you is all but impossible. But if you want a new service or anything that would have you pay them more money, your call is answered on the first ring.

So bad it is that the Klang Valley is full of under-the-counter TV satellite services that, on the face of it, looks legal, is far cheaper and you get all the latest programmes from the country of origin. You must put a few thousand ringgit upfront, and pay monthly fees of about half what a normal subscriber pays Astro. It began when Astro would not provide BBC News, not for commerical reasons but at the time because the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, thought it was devil incarnate. One enterprising fellow provided Thai satellite TV channels. And others have followed, as Astro regularly shot itself in the foot. Few talk of it, but it is a growth industry in the Klang Valley. How does Astro react to this competition. Anyone who cancels his Astro service can expect to be raided to search for illegal satellite TV connexions.

Despite it, more take to it, and are happy with it. One man, an Indian, would not opt for this service, worried he would not get the hopelessly third-rate Vaanavil Indian channel. until he realised he could have the pick of all satellite programmes in India. A Malayali gets the pick of Malayalam films and programmes in Kerala. As of other Indian language groups that are deliberately ignored for Tamil here. A Frenchman who wanted the pick of European programmes now watches his French programmes in his sitting room in Kuala Lumpur.

Astro got its break when the government decided it could keep Malaysians euphoria by giving him mindless round-the-clock entertainment so they would not be too bothered about how the government is run in his name. But Astro only wanted to enrich itself on the cheap. The public opposition that we now see frightens the government. Which is why is has quietly allowed the public to subscribe to these alternative TV satellite channels and services. But most Malaysians do nothing. A select few raise hackles. So they write to newspapers and otherwise make a nuiscance of themselves. Even the opposition Democratic Action Party (DAP) demands answers. Would it make any difference if individual consumers would not challenge Astro such that it must back down humiliatingly. Otherwise, it is hot air. Nothing more, nothing less.

The Malaysian government privatised sewage services to a now crippled international business man of unquestioned repute. He called it Indah Water Konsortium (IWK) and immediately decided all Malaysians must subscribe to it. It decided it did not need a contract to provide its sewage services, and promptle arrogated to itself muncipal powers. He got stuck, let go of it for a reported profit of RM1.2 billion, several groups took it over, made a mess of it, the government took it over, but IWK continues to insist it has muncipal powers. It has engaged a well known firm of advocates and solicitors to sue those who wilfully refuse to pay what it insists one must without a contract. It does not accept the argument that Telekoms would not provide you a telephone service, nor Tenaga Nasional electricity, if you do not not sign a contract with it. But IWK says it does not care.

But this is also official policy. Danaharta armed itself with powers that go against existing law. It confiscates companies which run into trouble, the shareholders deprived of their shares, a management team that owes no responsibility to them, then runs it down. No company Danaharta and its subsidiaries took over has survived, except as a pale shadow of what it once was. But it is Danaharta policy that if anyone challenges a takeover of his indebted company, they drop him, and look for more pliant companies to plunder.

Kuala Lumpur City Hall arbitrarily seizes illegally parked cars and tow them to a pound in Selayang. The owner finds his car missing and knows not where it is. By the time he finds it, in the police compound, he finds much of his valuables have disappeared. It is illegal. But does City Hall care? The parking meters in Kuala Lumpur are illegal? Does City Hall care? The RM300 fine the traffic police impose for summons issued is illegal, as the Road Transport Department's arbitrary suspension of driving licences. But who challenges it? There are literally hundreds of such illegal exactions by government departments, statutory bodies and favoured companies. It is all part of a huge government scam, there is no other word for it, in which it devalued itself so the cronies, courtiers and siblings benefit. The one area where this is most dangerous, is, for the moment, ignored, but could turn up as a election issue, is health. But that is another issue.

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