E Contrario

Parti Keadilan Rakyat Johor organized a talk on ISKANDAR in the evening of 24 March in the hall of Taiwan Graduates Association.

Although the PM launched the project recently, no many people know much about the plan. Even the functions and purposes of the project were no clearly articulated.

Yong Chin Tat, a young man who had just graduated from Sweden, analyzed the inconsistence of the project. In his view, in the future the prospect of the project does not look bright yet due to the lack of coordination and a well-thought planning.

Kim Quek, the famous writer on web and the author of “Where to, Malaysia?” spoke about cronyism and infighting in ruling BNputras. The agenda of BN leaders is nothing but distributing the spoils through projects.

To my surprise, Kim Quek was much more direct than me in calling on the listners to act firmly, i.e. to vote for the opposition in the next general election.

I was the last speaker. I told that ISKANDAR was conceived not out of economic consideration but political.

The launching of ISKANDAR was to ‘compensate’ Johor’s loss of the crooked bridge to Singapore. In the meantime, MB Ghani Othman lost power over a large chunk of land. The zone demarkated for ISKANDAR has the greatest economic potential. Now the development of this zone is overseen by a committee under the PM Office.

Land represents the most valueable source of income for the state. The zone is definitely a move to deny power and wealth for the MB.

I also discussed Musa Hitam’s suggestion that within the zone investors would be excepted from NEP conditions. I dismissed this suggestion impractical, and at the end mere propaganda.

Let’s take the example of land. Under this scheme, property values will certainly be inflated. However the land owners of Malay Reserve would definitely be left out of the development/investment boom if the Malay land remained prohibited from free transfer. I personally have great reservation on the total freeing of Malay Reserve for sale and purchase in open market. Musa Hitam said nothing on land.

I don’t think it is viable for the government to remove NEP conditionality in one zone. If the government is sincere with removing the weaknesses of the NEP, a new national policy should be introduced to replace the old NEP. Piecemeal solutions will not work.

A long time since its launched, the general public still have no clear what exactly ISKANDAR is. It is neither designed as a free trade zone, nor it is an investment haven like Labuan. At presently it looks to me more like a real estate investment hoax.

At the end of the day, the taxpayers will again be given a big fat white elephant for our safekeeping.