Najib made a rather blatant statement which shows political favoritism

Before you say i am making up stories or slandering people, *I AM ONLY REPEATING WHAT WAS PRINTED IN THE NEW STRAITS TIMES!!!*

And NST is directly quoting Najib himself. So, I am not accusing Najib of anything. I am just repeating what was said by Najib, Bernama, and NST.

http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Sunday/National/2517798/Article/index_html
Or, for those who want a physical copy of this, New Sunday Times, March 29, 2009, Page 5 of News Section. (under the picture of 2 cranes)

Having telephoned NST, they pointed out that they are only quoting Bernama, so they take no responsibility either.

Najib disclosed that a website to keep tabs on spending of the stimulus packages would be launched within the next two weeks.
He said RM1.5 billion would be spent up to the end of next month and RM2.5 billion by end of May.
"They involve about 32,000 projects, which would involve class F contractors, who are also loyal supporters of Umno."

Rm4 billion in 3 months. 32,000 projects.

And ALL OF IT IS GOING TO these *loyal supporters of UMNO*.


AFAIK, some of those projects have not even been tendered yet. And nonetheless, we already know the result beforehand. All of it is only going to loyal supporters of UMNO!

...

You're not really allowed to do such things. If you are going to be conducting such gross favoritism for UMNO supporters, that leaves all non-UMNO supporters 3 choices: convert to UMNO supporters, try to survive in a political and economic environment which is grossly skewed against you, or just give up on the country and leave.

It has been pretty much an open secret that there is a lot of money politics and government projects given based on political favoritism, so this is hardly anything new. In fact, when I called up NST and Bernama to investigate, the editorial staff informed me that "corruption is quite normal, so why do you sound so surprised?". Not my opinion, merely repeating what was said to me.

What is a bit much is the fact that Najib proudly admitted to this fact to our local media.

I mean, consider if the Obama made a statement that the bailout package was being given exclusively to Democrats. There'd be public, possibly international outcry!

At the very least, he would be forced to retract or amend his statement, but in a civilized country, any minister who made this sort of statement might end up having to step down.

...

It gives a poor impression of the country's transparency issues. And makes economic growth look rather difficult.

In a country where State Governments can change hands without reelections, and where billions can be assigned to party loyalists, with the PM to be boasting about it... this is all rather unethical. Not very good stuff at all.

All in all, I wouldn't advise anyone to hold any long term investments in Malaysia... sell and cabut. In any case, the drop here was much less than in other countries, so when the economy does rebound, you can expect other countries to post much bigger percentage gains than Malaysia.