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Thursday, January 8, 2015

Open letter to Najib: So HOW MUCH do we need to cough up for your family's round-the-world trip on our govt jet

Open letter to Najib: So HOW MUCH do we need to cough up for your family's round-the-world trip on our govt jet
Dear Mr Najib:
How are you, old boy?
Now, before I come to the question in mind, let me say I don’t know whether to wish you a Happy New Year or just let it slide. Because I get this great sense that 2015 is going to be the same as 2014 in terms of you displaying your remarkable leadership skills.
I suppose Malaysians made you their prime minister because of your par excellence not only as prime minister and finance minister but, I’m sure, your flag-waving brigade which classes you as a world statesman too. That’s quite an honour. After all, you seem to be flying all over the world week in and week out on Malaysian taxpayers’ “government jet”.
Which, naturally, leads me to ask you that question I had in mind. By the way, nice of you to drop back in to Malaysia after your world tour. One day in Kelantan, one day in Pahang, next day in Bangkok. Your jet – pardon, Malaysian taxpayers’ jet – seems to have come home too after its whirlwind tour. Rather like rock stars, you lot.
Even the Rolling Stones don’t get as much mileage in their old rocking age travelling from one gig to the next in one year as much as you and your good wife do. Some of us were wondering over some hot teh tarik if you were alone on board that aircraft from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur.
We also wondered if the plane landed in Subang, KLIA or on a special airstrip in Putrajaya that re-surfaces like a submarine to land and take-off your jet – pardon, taxpayers’ jet – at the push of a button before going back down underground.
That’s not the real question I wanted to ask you. I digress, and I apologise. How remiss of me to digress. Tut, tut! (Quiet wrap on my knuckles with a steel ruler on my desk. Ouch!) That previous question came to mind because one year, when I was still a graduate research student from the US in Singapore, a Singaporean cabbie, whose mouth wouldn’t stop yapping from the moment I got into his cab at Changi, told me something quite spectacular.
He told me that the trees along the motorway from Changi airport to the edge of the CBD, and all along its median-strip, were false trees. That in case of a war, say with Indonesia or Malaysia, the trees would collapse. Plonk. Flat to the ground. The median strip and the trees would be sucked underground and the entire motorway transformed into a mega airstrip for the Singapore Air Force. Wah! I went.
So I thought maybe you took that idea and built one for yourself and your wife in Putrajaya itself. You know… for personal convenience. Oh, by the way, as I alighted from the Singapore taxi, I didn’t tip the driver because he charged me enough by the metre (unlike Malaysian taxi drivers who charged according to their whims and fancies or trip-wire their metres).
But I did tell him I liked his long, long tale, that I may be able to use it one day in some way. Voila! I am sure you have long, long tales to tell your fellow Malaysians, too. I’d love to hear one or two more, having heard all the others since you returned to Malaysia in 1976. Nothing like long, long stories. We can do this over a teh tarik this Sunday if you’re not too busy trying to whack a little white hard ball into a gopher-hole.
OK, no more digression. Prime minister: will you tell all Malaysians, your countrymen, countrywomen and countrykiddos – irrespective of their political affiliation, colour of skin, religion and class status – just what has your most recent whirlwind tour and your jet’s of course (pardon, the people’s jet) cost Malaysian taxpayers – all up?
Let’s start with that question. I may well have others as follow-up. Oh, I hope you have kept receipts so we can acquit all funds. Don’t worry: as a foreigner in your country, I do pay my share of taxes and I do contribute to the country’s GDP and aggregate demand and supply.
I am sure all Malaysians would love to know that their hard-earned money has been well-spent in sending you, with their blessings, to all corners of the world. Among the tales, you could entertain us as to what the government jet (sorry, people’s jet) was doing in Indianapolis, London, Dubai, Hong Kong (if I’m not mistaken), then Bangkok.
Oh, please, please, one more demokratik question. Small one, I promise! How did you get from Pahang to Bangkok: bus, train or did you fly, and if you flew, on whose plane? See: simple, small question.
Please do not disappoint me again. You did not answer my previous three questions from last week. I waited and waited and waited and then I fell asleep in my chair, and my snoring woke me up in the dead of night and I didn’t know where in the world I was.
Oh, please answer by 5pm today, because I have to catch a flight to Bombay (sorry, Mumbai) tonight. Bijnus, see! Not money-making bijnus but important bijnus all the same.
See you on Friday. Be good.
Your good pal,
Rip van Winkle (who also reads The Malaysian Insider). – TMI

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