8/5/11 WHERE ARE THOSE NOISES?

(In Canada and even USA, they will burn this dead forest, harvest and turned into timber-based products. In Malaysia, they see this logging act as distruction to the environment. Our NGOs buy this idea. What a blind act of us?)

Last two months, everybody seem busy. Among the politicians in particular, for those who were in the incumbent position, they worked like mad to defend their status, while the opposition, they even turned crazy to win by all means to the extend of willing to promise to the electorate as if they is no limit in whatever they want to give to the people. The civil servants, as usual, at such period of 'shaky' political situation were always caught in dilema. Nonetheless, they seem to be the most hard working, efficient and productive at that point in time. Everything seem to be able to be delivered even at a very 'immpossible' circumstances.

(2) Last night, I have a nice dinner with my old friend from Bario. He is now a Medical Specialist in Miri. We talked about the last State General Election (PRU10) and try to figure how thing will be moving into the future. His interest subject was about "Powering the People".

(3) He tried to get my view of solving this local and international environmental destruction critic over the need for Sarawak to develop our Hydro Power Sub-sector. His idea was that we should give a dam fight to such a short sighted view and we must just work be working dam hard to realise the idea. He also suggest let all the effected population be given the opportunity to be 'powered' ie lighted.

(4) In fact if one closely follow and examine the Development Policies and Strategies of the Sarawak State Government over the past 30 years especially under the leadership of Taib Mahmud (Taib), I would say he in fact implemented State Develoment Agendas in accordance to the affordability of the Sarawak population.

(5) When the State Coffer was still in luxury, he has not much problem to throw a welfare type of development initiatives. Thus in the first 10 years (1980s) of his administration, he spent so much monies in subsidies and developments alike. Nonetheless, realising the fast thinning of the state's resources, he then modified the way development should be speared by mean of introducinng a much private sector driven. Industry, especially going down stream of the state's natural resources becaming his main attention. This happened especially during his second 10 years administration period. That was the reason why he made a series of drastic changes to the way the state's natural resources being managed, be it in the forestry, land, and water. These are the state's endowments that need to be carefully administer to ensure the long term economic survial of the state.

(6) In the 1990s, we in fact should be wise enough to see how Taib had been struggling to push all those big timber tawkeys to process most of their harvest locally rather exporting as raw logs. In the whole country, I believe Taib had made a much bold stand on this, thus he had designated few areas as the main timber processing zone.

(7) In fact his move was not well accepted. The phasing of smaller timber componies had created grumble among many. Issue of cronism and favoritism began to crop up. But one thing for sure, Taib is dam brave to implement what is right though it hurt. I believe he had noticed the weaknesses of the previous Abdul Rahman Yakub (Tun) in focussing to help the smaller one. He nurtured the birth of giant timber companies (about seven of them), that not only will harvest the timbers, but must also be going into serious processing and reafforestation. Everybody know, this is not a simple cheap investment. To this day, even these big boys are still struggling.

(8) At the same time, he realised the 'uselessness' of the vast state's land area. Leaving those area as forest would give us a very limiting choice of the future. Accordingly, without every one understanding, our native customary agriculture practices would one day wipe-out our frorest if immediate alternative measure not being taken fast. Thus he embarked on the promotion of the oil palm plantation development. First he attacked the State land, and later (to now), he embarks on the NCR land, leaving much of the left over State Land as Forest Plantation. These forested areas are not only to sustain our timber-based industry but as well as to enable us to have plentiful sources of clean renewal energy. The mooting of the SCORE is the clear manifestation of such a wiseful thought.

(9) The embarkment on oil palm plantation had in fact created another problem to Taib. Now that the people especially the native could see the benefit of vast economic transformation through better usage of land, they began to be confused between the NCR as seen by the law and NCR as per their adat. The State land Code have definite time limit of the practices but not with the Adat. This difference in interpretation by the Law and Adat had now created a very intimidating atmosphere between both the Government and the people. The private investors are now in limbo. The fear of coming to invest in Sarawak is mounting.

(10) The international NGOs whom having trade interest in cooking oil and timber take this conflict as an opportunity, thus influencing the local NGOs, whom among them unfortunately are political bigots. Thus, there seem to exist the symbiosis of "you scratch my back, I scratch yours" among these NGOs. The question, what do the people and the state gain from these dramas?

(11) SCORE is a gigantic Plan that Taib is very ambitious about. The Project not only will enable Sarawak to be at the forefront of the industrialisation need, but most important, this is his macro-economic policy that would cater for the younger generation of the future. In the years 2000s, Taib had move fast in adjusting his development policy with the changes of the State demographic. He had ever since embarked on an intensive Human Resource Development. Thus both public and private education and skill development facilities had been well established. Now, he is facing the ever growing much educated and skilled population, thus his answer to this is the establishement of SCORE.

(12) SCORE is not only to further advance the usage of the state timber and oil palm resources but as well as to capitalised on the state vast inland hydro potential. With the possible sustainable cheap and clean energy supplies, Sarawak would be the regional hub for energy intensive industrial development. Accordingly the vast potential of the state agriculture and fisheries sector could be further advanced into less labor but highly productive. Under the low population situation, all this fit into Sarawak human resource scenario.

(13) Even the opposition know how best all these could bring to Sarawak, but they turned blind on those. The issue in hand is that on how both parties ie the Government and Opposition could now balance the immediate needs of the rakyat over the macro-needs of the States. I would say, Taib had been much biased toward the macro-need of the state to the extend the micro-need of the people seem experiencing a set back. With such a gap, the opposition have all the silver bullet to shot him down.

(14) Worst, due to fire fighting approach by the government machineries, this issue had not been well analyse and communicated well into the system. I could see, the micro matters that concern the rakyat need immediate attention if the state want the macro matter to be achieve smoothly. The change of government with divergence of policy would not be good for the long term gain of the State.

(15) We should have learnt enough from the mistake of Mahathir to realise such a macro-micro development gaps, that when Abdullah Badawi try to make a u-turn, he then created a nother disaster to the nation; a weakening overall economic environment. A balance is the best, and all those noises prior and during the election should now focus to anlayse those macro-micro gaps.

Miri, Sarawak
9 May, 2011