Pak Lah and his cronies screwed us again!

ECM Libra FInancial Group Berhad has a stake in Pos Malaysia Berhad (PMB) through it’s acquisition of Avenue Capital Resources in 2006. That deal left a bitter taste in the mouths of those knowledgeable in the financial world as it was a clear case of insider’s trading. Note that Khairy Jamaluddin was a Director of Investment in ECM Libra in 2004 before he tendered his resignation after this infamous debacle. However, Pak Lah’s closest crony, Dato’ Seri Kalimullah is currently the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ECM Libra.

Recently, PMB was given the job of giving out the cash rebates to replace of fuel subsidy. It is quite odd on why JPJ was not given this role but instead it was given to a postal service company. Instead of the more efficient and more relevant job function of the JPJ, these cash handouts responsibility were thrusted into the already mountainous variety of services PMB had to handle. The only defence that Pak Lah might see the appropriateness of this move is the many branches of post offices nationwide which the public can easily have access.

But now, let’s see how Pak Lah and his cronies get extra money out of this purportedly ‘for the rakyat’ act of selflessness.

For every transaction, PMB will get 10 sen commission on every RM10 of that RM625 and RM150 (for cars and motorcycles respectively). That means, for every transaction, PMB will get RM6.25 for cars and RM1.50 for motorcycles in the form of transaction fees.

There is about 11 million cars and 8 million motorcycles in this country at the moment. Let’s do the math :

RM6.25 x 11 millions = RM68.8 million (for cars)

RM1.50 x 8 millions = RM12 million (for motorcycles)

A cool total of RM81 million for the whole exercise per year. Even if we use pareto principle and apply the 80/20 ratio, RM65 million (80% out of RM82 million) would still fall in their hands. And this does not include the commission from RM200 subsidy to be given to each fishermen in the country!

With RM117 million already paid out during the first day, I wonder how much PMB will collect by March 2009. This role was given to PMB and not JPJ because PMB is a public listed company (read: profit oriented) while JPJ is government owned entity (read : no cost to public). It’s even funnier that those who own cars 2,000cc and above were told to claim their RM200 rebate from the JPJ, not PMB. Why is this? Well, there are not many people with cars above 2,000cc in Malaysia anyway. And JPJ do not impose any fees.

This cunning way of trying to ‘help’ the poor while at the same time enriching one self is very much prevalent in Pak Lah’s administration. What’s worse, they are emptying the nation’s coffers (from the Treasury) in the form of cash rebates and transfer a percentage of it into their own pockets (through fees paid into PMB and ultimately into ECM’s bank accounts).

And that my friends is how the poor get screwed to help the rich get even richer! (Orang kaya menjadi bertambah kaya kerana orang miskin).

These poor people did not realize that they had helped finance Pak Lah’s cronies indirectly