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The Super Bumiputra Strikes Again

The Government had the police guard the locked gates of the SRJK Chinese school in Damansara, threatened the pupils with expulsion, would not say why the 70-year-old school must be moved. The school must shift to temporary quarters in another school a few kilometres away near a completed project of that internationally known business man of unquestioned repute and "Super Bumiputra", Tan Sri Vincent Tan and his brother, Dato' Daniel Tan. But the pressure refused to die down. The government's mishandling of the affair turned into a question of Chinese education, and Chinese educationists entered the fray. The parents and students demonstrated in front of the education ministry two days ago.

The flexible and, and true to style, unbending minister, Tan Sri Musa Mohamed, flip flopped when he met the parents yesterday (16 January 01) and decreed the school would remain open. The official spin is different, of course. He told the press if the SRJK (C) board of governors could not persuade pupils to move to new schools, the school remains it is. But is it the storm in a tea cup he says it is now? Is it? The government inexplicably raised the ante in the run-up to the move, riding roughshod over the needs of the community. Its argument that the board of governors had agreed to move is neither here nor there. The board of governors, in this instance, has much to answer for. This hidden motive is hinted of in news reports of the confrontation.

The school has to be removed, we are told, to realign the area once the tolled highway nearby comes on stream. The school stood in the way and had to move. Were it that, it ould not have been a problem. It is more sinister. The development plans of Super Bumiputra and brother around the school would not be profitable without the schoolgrounds betwixt their properties. Indeed, a Super Bumiputra company builds an office block and needs the school grounds for added value. Since the government gives them what they want, it ordered the school moved out even before its new school is built. Would it be constructed? I am sure it would, but at the pace of the monorail project, another Super Bumiputra project, which was to have been completed in 1998 but would now be, we are told, next year.

The government's black eye, self-inflicted unlike Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim's, it gets so soon messing up its Vision Schools plans, an elaborate smokescreen to divest schools of valuable land for indifferently built schools in distant suburbs. It insists Malaysians should not object when its cronies, siblings and courtiers get what they covet, however inconvenient to those consequently deprived of services. When it goes out to bat for them, it is resisted, as now, and it must back down. It is an incontrovertible fact that all privatisation of government assets went to them, even one of them. Every one is mishandled. Some have returned to the government for re-privatisation.

The Lunas typhoon, the MAS bailout, the Malay rights fiasco are markers in this arrogance. The Super Bumiputra aka the internationally known business man of unquestioned repute made a mess of every privatised project the government gave him, including the cash-cow Sports Toto. With every failure, he gets large parcels of land, including forest reserve of a few thousand hectares in several states, and yet he stumbles and helped again and again.

Did Tan Sri Vincent Tan and his brother pay for the land at market rates? Not on your life. Was the school given an option to convert the land first from that for use as a school to commercial use, so that it could have ample funds to keep it well-funded with facilities? Not on your life. When he wanted to develop his golf club in Damansara, the Universiti Malaya was forced to give up its land for the highway that would otherwise have gone through his land. Why? He continues to rack up losses and is picked up every time he stumbles. Why? And more important why is he allowed to prevent the growth of education for personal gain? His shares on the KLSE are but a fraction of its par value. Yet he is rescued, again and again. Why?

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