Mardan Mamat, the successful Malay from Spore.

Congratulations to Mardan Mamat for his victory in the Phillipine Open Golf Tournament. An afable guy with a pleasant personality he virtually killed the field with his splendid display of skill and patience in the difficult Wack Wack course. To put his victory in perspective, only four players played sub par in the final score  and Mardan was a runaway winner wining the Open with five strokes.Mardan's win was the first for any singaporean to win on the asian tour.

A lesson to be learned from Mardan's victory. His victory at the ripe young age of 44 proves that a malay without any handicap can easily excel on a level playing field. Time our Malaysian malays learn a lesson from this Singaporean malay. You dont need any leg up fellows. Practice hard and you will be duly rewarded.

Rolls-Royce opens largest Asian facility in S'pore

Many asian countries would have been shocked to hear that Rolls-Royce have opened the largest Asian facility in Singapore aka the Red Dot.With land space hardly available for such a venture one would expect Rolls-Royce to scour for greener pastures like Thailand and Malaysia. The Rm$1.68 billion investment was the largest ever aerospace investment in Singapore. The 154,000 sq metres facility will' enable Singapore to play a key role in supplying aircraft engines for the latest jets such as the A380 and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner'.
Now why did the investors by passed Malaysia? The answer perhaps can be adequately given by CNN Fareed Zakaria. Singapore is one of the easiest place in the world to do business. They dont have such racist policies like allocating 30%of the shares to bumiputras. They dont have to grease the palms of  corrupt civil servants just to have licence approvals. That perhaps explains why Singapore was the choice of the Rolls-Royce investors.

Govt is Guilty of Breach of EPF Act 1991.

In accordance with the EPF Act of 1991,they are allowed to lend funds to the Federal and State govts including registered corporate bodies.However the Act prohibits the funds from lending to private individual home buyers. No matter how lucrative the profits may be, the Board cannot act contrary to the provisions of the Act. Board members have a fiduciary duty to ensure that they abide strictly to the provisions of the Act or face possible criminal prosecution should they act outside the ambit of their authority.
It is naive of the P.M to claim that the size of the $1.5 billion loan scheme was small relative to its fund size.What is pertinent is not the fund size but whether EPF is allowed under the Act to lend funds to private house owners which is contrary to the Act.
If the govt act is sincere in providing housing to the poor why is it only confined to the 20,000 PPR  tenants in Selangor? This only confirms the opposition claim that the Housing scheme has a political agenda. If not why then is it not open and applicable to all deserving house owners throughout Malaysia?After all the EPF funds are derived from contributors from all the state in Malaysia and not  from the 20,000 PPR tenants.only.
If the govt is  confident that  the scheme is safe , why dont the govt borrow the funds from EPF and used it as a social welfare program. This way if the houseowners default on their payments the fund is adequately protected since the govt will have to bear the brunt of any financial catastrophe. But the govt cannot have the cake and eat it.It wants to provide a conduit to obtain votes with such a populist act but at the same time has  passed the risk to another entity..EPF has once again being used to invest in a scheme that has no chance of making a decent profit.If they are. an attractive investment then why do commercial Banks reject all those houseowners loan?
Before making the decision of lending the $1.5 billion to this scheme, I strongly advice the Board of EPF to revisit their investment in MBSB in the 1990s where they lost nearly 1 billion in the same type of housing loans and development. I doubt very much they have recovered their loss in that investment till today.

Another Malaysian success story.

A Malaysian born  woman who hailed from Petaling Jaya was named dean of award wining engineering faculty of Canada's Waterloo university..Professor Pearl Lee Sullivan , a composite materials and aircraft structure expert would become the first female dean succeeding her predecessor, Professor Adel Setra whose nine year tenure would end on the 1st of July..
Once again it has proven that non malay Malaysians can only excel by going abroad where promotions are strictly based on merits and not on racists policies.One really wonder how many more Malaysians would have similarly climbed the ladder of success had they taken the plunge and venture abroad.
Perhaps it would also be timely to ask our govt why not even one single non malay have ever been appointed as Dean in any of our apex universities.How can any of our prime universities attain world recognition if we continue to adopt a policy of appointing intellectuals based on the colour of their skin and not based on the knowledge and intellect they possess.
The success of another Malaysian in the global stage is a timely reminder to our govt that we cannot remain myopic and that we need to focus on the larger picture of appointing Malaysians based on the knowledge and expertise they possess and not based on the Bumiputra policy .