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The Super Bumiputra's Hot Iron: The Plot Chickens

The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is annoyed that pupils demonstrate to save their school, and accuses their parents of teaching them bad civic habits. Indeed. But the education minister, Tan Sri Musa Mohamed, decided after it the SRK (C) Chinese school in Damansara should not be relocated after all: if the 1,000 pupils who have moved to temporary premises cannot persuade the 100 who stay put, they would have to move back to the old school. Without it, would he have relented? After all, police guarded the locked gates of the school to prevent the 100 turning up.

In this school's relocation, the immediate beneficiaries are the "Super Bumiputra" aka international business man of unequestioned repute, one Tan Sri Vincent Tan, and his brother, Dato' Daniel Tan. This is how they built their empire of debt in Bolehland. This is how they ingratiated themselves into the establishment's cronies. The Super Bumiputra's role in the humiliation of He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost remains to be told. His continued "success" in Bolehland depends on such roles for which he occasionally has to take the fall. And so "successful" is he that every privatisation given him on the proverbial platter is in trouble, but, like Oliver Twist, comes seeking more. But, unlike Oliver Twist, gets it. He is propped up, and given continued government largesse even after he proved himself incapable of producing what he promised. Why?

Government policies are like an onion. On the surface, it looks one done in the public interest. But as one looks closely, one finds a personal involvement of those in office and power. As each layer of policy is checked, as one peels an onion, the rot and self interest of those in power, their cronies, siblings and courtiers becomes clearer. At one time, the government could ride roughshod over those who question it. Now it cannot. So official policy unravels into defeat with each challenge. The more the self-interest, the more mud eventually on the government's face.

The Super Bumiputra and other cronies, siblings, courtiers go along for a substantial fee in the form of projects and public ridicule so that others could make a great killing. So, he takes the fall for the SRK (C) school and laughs all the way to the bank to settle his debts. There is more. The school grounds comprise a mere 0.38 hectares. It is attached to a squatter settlement of about six hectares, an old new village of squatters resettled during the Emergency to cut off supplies to the communists. Like all new villages, they were on temporary leases which have since expired. The squatters, which is what they are in law, are not given their titles to the land. There is no interest in government to carry through their frequent promises when its favoured supporters can make millions of ringgit out of it. The land titles, I am told, are now held back. At RM300 a square foot, they would continue to be.

The transfer of the school was the first step to move out those who live there. Without it, and the added cost of sending their children to the new school which the government would build for them near the Tropicana resort a few kilometres ahead - owner: the Super Bumiputra's brother; who else did you think it was? -- those in the new village could be forced out. At least, that is how this has worked out in the past. Not this time. The Chinese press report this. The other language newspapers have other fish to fry, like shooting themselves in the foot, do not even attempt to report it. What becomes clear is that the education minister's intentions in the transferring the pupils are impure. As the other ministries involved. This is why everyone asked about it, the MCA, the Gerakan, ministers, suddenly are evasive or defensive.

If indeed the government had planned to transfer the school because the expanding highway made its location unsuitable, why was not the new school built when work on the highway and ancilliary works began so that the pupils would have moved to the new school now? As it is, it moves to temporary premises, in another overcrowded government chinese school, with the prospect of no school at all for years to come. The MGS school in Bukit Bintang, given to a crony business man for the land, still does not have a proper school promised it to transfer. As in every case, the crony, Tan Sri Francis Yeoh, needed the land immediately and took his time to build an indifferent school in Cheras. If, as the government regularly informs us, education is the "lifeblood of the nation", why is this lifeblood almost always infected with AIDS?

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