Jimmy Wong Weblog

Dewan Undangan Negeri Ke 13 (Ucapan/Speech) November 9, 2012

Dewan Undangan Negeri Ke 13
Mesyuarat Ketiga
Penggal Ke 5
19 Okt 2012- 25 Okt 2012

Speech by:
YB Wong Sze Phin @ Jimmy ADUN N.57 Sri Tanjong

Tuan Speaker

Terima kasih kerana memberi saya peluang untuk membahaskan Pembentangan Rang Undang-undang Perbekalan (2013) yang disampaikan oleh Yang Amat Berhormat Ketua Menteri pada 19 Oktober 2012.

Salam Bersih, Salam Ubah dan salam bersidang kepada semua Ahli Dewan Undangan Negeri Sabah. Ini kalilah.

Tuan Speaker

Saya akan membaca ucapan saya dalam Bahasa Inggeris.

Tuan Speaker,

Before I begin my debate on the proposed State Budget 2013, I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate our Chief Minister YAB Datuk Seri Musa Aman. He is the best ever Chief Minister since BN took control of the Sabah state government in 1994 for two reasons.

1. The Sabah Development Corridor (SDC) has achieved its best performance by receiving RM10 billion in the first half of this year, the highest amount of private investments among all the states in Malaysia.

2. Sabah has yet again earned praise from Auditor-General Tan Sri Ambrin Buang for demonstrating sound financial management in 2011 in terms of maintaining its record of efficient and prudent financial management over the past few years.

But at the same time, I cannot help but feel sorry for our CM. After doing such a good job for the state of Sabah, his approval rating among the rakyat has droped from 60% to only 45%, according to the latest polls by Merdeka Center earlier this month. This means that less than half of all Sabahans approve of his performance despite the heavy drumming up of his many achievements in the mainstream media.

CM Datuk Musa, if I was in your position, I would immediately dissolve the state assembly and call for the state elections to prove that a majority of Sabahans still support your leadership. There is no need to wait for Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib, to decide when to call the next general election. Our dear CM, I hereby challenge you to dissolve the state assembly after the tabling of this budget in order to prove your reputation is the best ever CM of Sabah!

However, I don’t think you dare accept my challenge. You are still dreaming and placing false hopes on this newly tabled, so called the best ever budget, to regain the support from the people. For now, we bring the focus back on the budget which you tabled last Friday.

What is about BN state budget?

The CM cum Minister of Finance in his budget speech said Sabah is grateful to Federal Government for the allocation for Sabah. In fact, I feel nothing to be grateful about, due to the very fact that 2013 Federal Budget is one of the worst for Sabah in the last 10 years, receiving only RM3 billion which is 6.5% out of total development expenditure, whereas our population is 11.6% of this country’s population.

CM’s logic that there is a lot of development or that Sabahans have benefitted just because he has been and is going to spend large amount of the state money or how quickly he can spend it! This is all worng!!! Most of the money in previous budgets has  produced little benefit for the people of Sabah. Judging from the poor records of the BN Sabah government, Pakatan is confident that the 2013 state budget will have nothing to shout about.

……Bad management and corruption have continued to keep many Sabahan’s under the poverty line.

Sabah is still the poorest state in Malaysia, hundreds of thousands of Sabahans are working in poorly paid jobs in the Klang Valley, Johor and Penang. Poverty can be seen everywhere within 5km from the centre of Kota Kinabalu! Datuk CM’s own constituency has many poverty stricken Sabahans! What have all the so called good budgets of Datuk Musa done for his own constituents?

Datuk Musa has made too many boosts on the comments from the Auditor General. Behind the façade of so called good management of certain departments, he needs to be reminded of the rampant corruption, deep rooted poverty, bad delivery service, high cost of living and—- his inability to abolish the Cabotage Policy.

Auditor General Report on Sabah concerning old folks home where residents at these homes were sleeping with mosquitoes, bathing with cold water, not fed beyond 5pm and made to eat food that they could not chew or were bad for them. Is this the practice of a government who claim —-“Rakyat didahulukan?”

Therefore, the few departments that have received praises from the Auditor General have done nothing for Sabahans.

–**-Failed Objectives and No Strategy-**

Sabah is an under developed state. We need to improve our very outdated and inadequate infrastructure. Some BN politicians have said, I won Sri Tanjung with the help of the incompetent SESB, Jabatan Air, JKR and Majlis Perbandaran Tawau. Yes, this is indeed true.

What has government done in this regard? Of the 6 objectives of this and previous budgets, the Sabah Bn government, 5 have failed to miserably:
1.   Improve infrastructure – Sabah still has the worst;

2.   Acceleration of achievement of Halatuju – no result as the 2012/2013 Economic Report pointed out, the cumulative committed investment from launch date of the SDC until end of June this year is RM112.0 billion but the actual realised investment amount adds up to only RM12.0 billion, only 10.7% of committed investments in the SDC have been realized. Where is the rest 90% of the committed investors?

3. Development of valuable and high quality youth and human capital – Where the well paid jobs in Sabah? Even pay jobs are not available. This is why so many young Sabahans are working in the Klang Valley and Johor.

4. Eradication of poverty and improve quality of life – Visit CM’s constituency to see plenty of poverty and only his cronies have a good life!

5. Achieved balanced regional development. Except Kota Kinabalu, there is hardly any development. Balanced development does not exist at all!

Not only 5 objectives of this budget doomed to fail. Datuk Musa has no strategy to accelerate economic development for Sabahans, expedite the growth of higher income for Sabahans and innovate the economy of Sabah.

Datuk CM has been too long as the Minister of Finance – the style of his budget is the same every year. There is absolutely no innovation. The worse is that there is no diversification of sources of revenue.

The BN Sabah 2013 budget is boring and has nothing for Sabahans nathing to be happy about becouse……

Datuk speaker
Even though Sabah received praise from the Auditor General, there is no denying that Sabah’s state debt has increased significantly over the past years and now stands at a worryingly high level. Even though state revenue has increased by 236% from RM1.78b in 2005 to RM4.20b in 2010, …..state debt has increased by an even higher rate from RM1b in 2005.. to… RM3.1 in 2010, an increase of 310%.

This prompted the following statement from the Malaysian Ratings Agency at the end of 2011:

‘Despite Sabah’s favorable financial standing in 2010, the state’s public debt was rising at a faster clip of 30.6% in 2010, owing to bond issuances amounting to RM544 million as well as new loans granted by the federal government totaling RM168.0 million during the year. As a result, public debt stock as a percentage of total revenue remained elevated at 73.9% in 2010 (2009: 77.9%).

However, the rapid rise in the debt level may yield legitimate concerns on the state’s ability to repay its liabilities, particularly when the amount of cash balances available in smaller than the size of public debt.

As a result of this rapid increase in debt, debt servicing charges has also increased significantly. For example, debt serving charges amounted to RM92m in 2010 but was projected to increase to RM145m in 2012, an increase of 57.6% in just two years. As a basis for comparison, government revenue was projected to increase by only 22.5% from RM3304m in 2010 to RM4048m in 2012.

Furthermore, according to the 2011 Auditor General Report, Sabah experienced the largest absolute fall in its Consolidated Funds, from RM2.82b to RM2.66b, a fall of RM156.7m, among all the states in Malaysia!

The fact that much of this debt and reduction of Consolidated Funds shows that:

(i) the state government was not prudent in using its budget surpluses for development expenditure;

(ii) the state government was not prudent in minimizing the costs of  projects by open tender…

(iii) the federal government has not played its part in properly funding development projects in the state.

*****Development Benefits Cronies***

Yes, there is GDP growth every year, but the average Sabahan continues to suffer more and more due to cost of living increases. For example, the people of Tawau suffers every day due to traffic jams in Jalan Apas, one of the major routes into and out of the town but the government still has no plans or allocations set aside to construct an outer ring road or a coastal highway.

But a new investment in Sg Burung, Balung, Sipadan Mangrove Resort, located 25km from the junction, has been approved by the Public Private Partnership Unit or UKAS (Urussetia Kerjasama Awam Swasta) and this involves an allocation of RM47 Million to build a tar road for the purposes of benefitting a single resort!

Let us pick another nearer example, the new 1km road to this assembly hall. JKR has announced that the cost was RM14.9 million just for 1km distance! can the minister of Infrastructure explain what make it so expensive to construct this 1 km 2 hala rd which normally costs 2 million?

This highlights the true meaning of what the BN means by Janji Ditepati … tetapi untuk kroni. In the 80’s the government promise to build 4 mile (10 KM) of coastal highway in Tawau but until now is still not fulfilled

And now the government promise to build a coastal highway to Kudat. believve me.. I don’t think this promise will be ever  fulfilled ….even in 100 years of BN ruling.

Tuan speaker,

Concentration of power tends to corrupt

The Ministry of Finance’s allocation has skyrocketed from RM737m in 2008 to RM1.87b in next year, a 263% increase. The combined expenditure of the Chief Minister’s Department and the Ministry of Finance is RM2.59b, constituting 63.4% of the 2013 budget.

Well, thanks to position as Huguan Siou, Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Pairin still holds the second highest allocation through his portfolio as Minister of Infrastructure Development with RM560.6m allocated in the 2013 budget. Yet we are not seeing any significant improvement in terms of the overall infrastructure in the state, most notable the road infrastructure especially in the rural areas. The Merdeka Center poll results show that the perception of poor infrastructure is the prevailing point of view among a majority of Sabahans. I am confident that if a approval ratings were to be taken for Tan Sri Pairin, it would not be too different with that of his boss, CM Musa.

The over concentration of the allocations in the hands of the two ministries controlled by the Chief Minister is a reflection of the over concentration of power in the hands of certain UMNO leaders in the state government. The low approval ratings currently enjoyed by the CM is testament that much of this money has not been spent in a way which has benefitted the people of Sabah but instead has enriched a few cronies, mostly those who are closely associated with CM .

Datuk CM  enough is enough. We want real development for our state and real infrastructure improvement. We do not want to have development that only benefits a select few and high allocations given for infrastructure projects, many of which seldom see the light of day.

***Comparing the PR and BN budget***

Even though we in the opposition do not have the same kind of political financing that UMNO receives, of which RM40m of smuggled cash in Hong Kong is just the tip of the iceberg, we are still able to contribute in proposing an exciting alternative budget for the state.

Just to remind the state representatives gathered here today, we in PR Sabah have prepared an alternative budget that promotes financial transparency and accountability, that decentralizes power from CM to the other ministry and local government, that reallocates expenditure away from the Ministry of Finance, that targets social assistance towards the marginalized and which channels much of the increase in oil royalties to infrastructure improvement as well as long term development projects that will distribute wealth and opportunities much more equitably. This is a clear demonstration that the resources of the state government can be allocated equitably, efficiently, effectively and transparently without jeopardizing the state’s financial standing.

As the Pakatan Rakyat budget, which was announced on 17 October, has shown, there is little chance that the BN’s budget can compare with ours, on the simple basis that PR has pledged to increase the oil royalty allocated to Sabah from the current 5% to 20%!

Dear ketuan Mentri  you should perhaps go and seek an appointment with PM Najib in Putrajaya to review the oil royalty and copy PR Sabah’s policy proposals in our budget since there is little chance the BN can come up with a better one.

We will not stop the BN state government from copying our proposals since this will benefit the people of Sabah. I know it is not easy for CM Musa to admit that he needs to learn from us. But at the very least he should consider my following recommendations.

And if you do not want to become the next opposition leader in this Dewan, please follow my advice and take these actions, most notably by asking for more oil royalties from BN federal government in order to compete with us in PR Sabah. If not, you will no doubt regret your lack of actions taken.

****Loss of Compensation

We want to draw attention to a failed promise of the BN government in seeking just compensation from the Federal government for the loss of revenue from revoking the import and excise duties on petroleum products.

This was carried out in 2001 and as promised by the then CM, Datuk Osu Sukam, the Sabah state government would seek RM250m compensation from the Federal Government. But according to the budgets in the previous years as well as the latest 2013 budget, the compensation paid by the Federal government is only RM120m! This means that the Sabah state government has effectively lost RM130m in revenue a year and total RM1.56 billion over the past 12 years!

Not only is the Sabah State government powerless in increasing the oil royalty, they cannot even get the Federal government to pay us Sabahans the proper compensation from lost revenue from the lifting of the excise and import taxes for petroleum products. Perhaps CM  proves me wrong by his actions given his close relationship with Prime Minister Najib and his wife, Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor.

Conclusion

Lastly, my two cents advice for our CM is, please stop practicing corruption! We Pakatan Rakyat confident to cut down 24% out of non fixed operational expenditure once we are voted in government.

If Sabah BN government has been free of corruption, like PR states of Penang and Selangor, Sabah will have higher income, more job opportunities, and zero poverty!

But now, our Chief Minister, Musa Aman, who has been the focus of an international investigation involving allegations of money laundering via Swiss bank accounts in Hong Kong and Switzerland.
This matter has been raised in parliament and was confirmed by the Minister of Prime Minister Department that investigation is done which found that “no elements of corruption” involved and all the RM40 million is the donation to Sabah UMNO.
As you can ask any ordinary man in the street, nobody will be
so stupid to believe it. I hereby urge the CM to clarify on this serious issue:
1. Why did the money brought in or smuggled in Hong Kong airport in Singapore Dollar?
2. Why can’t Michael Chia just TT the money to Sabah UMNO’s account?
3. How can you CM pretend not knowing Mr Michael if he is your donor?

Dear CM, can you swear that the money received is not illegal and you tell the honorable hall today. I know you do not dare to do so. But I am sincere to help to clear your name, by signing Power of Attorney letter, endorsing the criminal complaint by the Bruno Manser Fund (BMF) to allow the Swiss government to investigate UBS AG Bank over the alleged money-laundering on behalf of sabah chief minister.

Thank you

Datuk Speaker,

Sekali lagi saya mohon tidak sokong Rang Undang-undang Perbekalan (2013) kerana ia langsung tidak dapat membantu rakyat Sabah.

Sekian, terima kasih.

YB Wong Sze Phin @ Jimmy
ADUN N.57 Sri Tanjong