Shell Shedding Peanuts

Despite my disgust of the current entity that is Umno, its member Nur Jazlan Mohamed has earned my admiration and wholesome support.

The Pulai Member of Parliament and eldest son of the late Tok Mat hinted his integrity and mettle by quitting his post as TM’s audit committee chairman after the irregularities were found but was not investigated.

His latest interview in the Edge on both the so-called Bumiputera (or should this be Malay) Agenda and UDA Holding’s plans for its Pudu Jail landbank is both frank and hard hitting.

Reading the two articles in whole is a welcomed breath of fresh air in a country stinking of rotten rhetoric and racial chauvinistic statements, especially when taken in the context that Nur Jazlan was also taking about advancing a much maligned idea of a community’s re-engineering.

There was no denying what needs to be done to propel the Bumiputera agenda further, according to Nur Jazlan.

“We have to have a format or formula on how to define this cost of the bumiputera agenda. If it is going to be the government giving money all the time, think again….. We don’t want to leave the next generation with debts.”

It has been something like 40 years since the so-called Bumiputera Agenda came to the forefront with the NEP.

Has the community’s economic standing been advanced all this while?

A burgeoning middle-upper class Bumiputeras group aside, the trickling down of the distributed wealth courtesy of the Bumiputera Agenda policies is exactly in such a state: TRICKLING.

The bulk of this wealth goes god knows where.

We have our suspicions, of course.

In fact, there is actually another Umno member whom I, urm, agree (not always) with - Blogger SakMongkol AK47.

SakMongkol, you see, has equally been hard hitting in his assessment of his party’s current ways of doing things though his words (posts) has basically fallen on deaf ears.

I’ve always asked him this question: “Why are you still there?”

Datuk Sak has his reasons, I suppose.

What of Nur Jazlan?

Kacang lupakan kulit; will say his detractors. Would he be where he is now had he not been Tok Mat’s son and a party member, they will decry.

It will be interesting to see what happens next and if the Finance Ministry would accept UDA’s so-called Bumiputera-interest's sidelining proposal.

I doubt so going by the MRT JV criteria’s fiasco.

One way or the other, pockets just simply need (side)lining.