Bleepping Kitty Dipping

"The EPF is assisting the rakyat to own houses; it is commendable that EPF is doing a public service."

Please. The EPF fund is not a Tabung Sosial for all and sundry.

It is OUR Simpanan Hari Tua, and we expect the fund to be managed for OUR BENEFIT and the way I see it, the huge RM402 billion fund is nowadays the Main Kitty for the government.

No wonder PMNTR was so smug with his declaration that Malaysia does not need to borrow from the IMF, bla bla bla..

Of course. Not when there’s a huge Piggy Bank with an almost open access to its content to be dipped into.

Assisting the Rakyat to own houses? Yeah, right...

It took me a long and often financially painful journey to be able to finally afford a home which a chunk of my hard-earned savings plonked into the EPF helped purchase.

Now, it seems that some Rakyats will get their loans to Perumahan Murah from the same EPF fund.

A small portion, I must concede, but the dipping into the kitty has been going on for years now like nobody’s business.

Who know what else the EPF fund has been subsidizing of late.

According to the Big Kahuna who seems to be popping out everywhere these days, (Side comment: A bid to propel him as THE MAN in view of an upcoming GE13 battle against Nurul Izzah perhaps?) there is nothing to worry.

"If the buyer does not repay the loan, then action will be taken. The house will be forfeited and sold to some 30,000 other housebuyers who are eagerly waiting for a chance"

Funny Ha Ha.

And where - pray tell - will these other 30,000 house buyers – whom I assumed will similarly come from the poor and down trodden to qualify for this – get their funding from?

Together now: THE SAME BLIPPING EPF-CREATED FUND.

As the Malays are fond to say: Gali lobang tutup lobang.

Stop dipping your greasy palms in the kitty as one fine day, it will dry up.

All it needs is like some 400 similarly-conceived schemes to supposedly HELP the RAKYAT.

KUNUNNYA.

Stenched Rotten

“There is also a failure of leadership over the whole NFC debacle. Najib should have taken decisive action when it first erupted, and demanded Shahrizat’s resignation.”

“Not doing so would mean that he condoned what she did, no?”

Farah Fahmy asked a very pertinent question in her column , and I am pretty sure that many of us will say “Yes” to that.

At least I hope so.

There seems to be an information explosion on previously hush hushed public funds' misfeasance and utter corrupt acts that is as if a floodgate had opened from way too much accumulated crap and sludge that the silent walls just gave way.

Not a week passes these days without us discovering of yet another pillaging act, another act of abhorrence by the very people entrusted with managing our national wealth.

Everything is/was out in the open but the perpetrators – alleged or otherwise – seemed to be utterly shameless of their greed in (Still alleged? After all the expose?) siphoning the nation’s wealth into their and their likes own pockets.

Much has been written on this by more astute bloggers, including SakMongkolAK47 , Aspian Alias and others that about sums the utter disgust we should be feeling towards these modern day pirates garbed in an elitist, executive cloak that hides little of the stench emanating from within them.

They see nothing wrong in all the wrong things that they are doing.

Some are beyond saving, methinks but then....

Should the General Election be called soon while NOTHING is done and the same bunch are again propped up smirking on the political stage – this seems to be where the god awful rot starts – what does that say about us in the society?

That we are blind? That we are deaf? That we CONDONED their cheating and pillaging ways? That we find NOTHING wrong with such acts?

Or that we couldn’t care less so long as we get our teh tarik-roti canai / nasi lemak-kopi O / Jom Hebohing and EPL games weekend etc etc etc combo?

Gerrymandering can only do so much without voters who put a cross, a tick on the piece of ballot paper come Election Day on the very same Suspect Yahoos.

Ghost (and alleged-hastily created instant citizen) voters shouldn’t overwhelmed the millions of – dare I say – God fearing ordinary folks who should know what is right and what is not?

So what kind of a society are we if we allow these same swindlers to cheat us again and again and again?

Rather disturbing, isn’t it?

Imagined Stupor

Should I care
That the moon shuns a cloudless night sky
Should the sun cools a breezy afternoon
When a river trickles through a land parched
If the wind skips a sail held limp

Do I dare
Mouth words written silently in my mind
Capture images floating in a imagined album
Deny a memoir sketch from memory
Cast gloom on a dreamy fantasy

Don’t we fear
When children are adults too fast
Where rulers and peasants crowd the market selling
(Who’s buying we say as we turn away)
Of trusts treated like a private cask
Since liars masquerade as heralds born

Are we to enjoy
A hearty laughter from a stomach empty
At salesmen selling imagination for a fee
The measured trusts of dueling racial rapiers
When piled the land’s riches on barges
(Traversing the sea to destinations unknown)

My frame slouches
As the mind doubts
Of feigned interests
And caring, hyped

So we leave things be
Figuring somebody else
Will carry the burden of ascendency
A life in a stupor of faked serenity…

Buccaneers Canon

Keira "Swashbucking" Knightley

They may be scums, but rude to them the judiciary must not be.

Well, much ruder than rude, actually.

Something along the lines of saying: “was turned loose to burgle the stores of Canberra with false credit cards” and “turned loose with instructions to rape and pillage the stores of Canberra” when describing the offence committed by a fake credit card-bearing fraud.

Come on, now... this isn’t the swashbuckling era of buccaneers anymore, mind you..

Rape, plunder and pillage. Arr!!!

These days pirates and their buccaneering canons have been much diluted thanks to Hollywood (and mostly Disney) - that the above three words are hardly ever associated with the seafaring (ahem) “adventurers”.

(Gotta go re-read R.L. Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” to get some ideas of what it means to be pirates of old and rid this image of the toothy Captain Jack Sparrow as the definitive “Arr!!” rep.)

In allowing an appeal against a Magistrate’s sentencing, Supreme Court Justice Richard Refshauge said: “It’s important that a judicial officer, in sentencing, describes the offences and their criminality with fairness and measured accuracy”.

Hmm... Measured accuracy. Nice words.

Anyway, the above article is one of two reported court cases which are worthy reads, the other one being the “land taken away by crony in Zimbabwe” case.

You are bound to be taken on a (though admittedly brief) emotional rollercoaster ride reading this article.

There's bound to be disgust, anger, pity, shock, bewilderment and shame.

This is, after all, the same country whose leader wants to be the “Malaysia of Southern Africa”.

The case was newsworthy because of the Malaysian ownership equation, but then again, the country (Zimbabwe) did embark on a "confiscate from the White minorities to give to the Black poor" a not-too-distant memory ago.

If there’s ever a sticky issue in Zimbabwe, it’s their Land Reform movement bit.

Arr...

Sergio Aragones' Groo