Hype hype hooray

This from The Star:

PUTRAJAYA: Foreign tourist arrivals in Malaysia has surpassed the target of 20.1 million while earning the country RM45.7bil in receipts this year, said Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor.

And again:

Now the Government has set new targets – 21 million by next week and 21.5 million by Aug 31 next year as the VMY campaign has been extended to that date in conjunction with Malaysia’s 50th Merdeka.

Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said the country also earned RM45.7bil in foreign exchange.

Sigh, such fantastic numbers to make us happy. But oh really? As to be expected, missing details in the report don't lend much credence to the boast. And as to be expected, if you want the truth, you just have to dig further.

On the day before the media bugles blared our achievement, the Bangkok Post carried an article in the travel section. It provided a snapshot of Thailand's tourism numbers:

The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) is on course to attain its target of 14.8 million foreign tourists this year who are expected to generate 547.5 billion baht.

According to its Governor Phornsiri Manoharn, 10.4 million tourists visited the country in the first nine months this year which was up 3.2 percent over the same period of last year.

The biggest group of the international travelers were Japanese (one million), followed by South Koreans (760,000) and Chinese (705,000), while the number of visitors from Australia and India gradually increased.

Surprisingly, it also carries more details on Malaysia's numbers. And that's where it gets interesting:

Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board is confident it can achieve its target of 20 million visitors and 408 billion baht (US$12 billion) in tourism revenue by the end of this year.

At the half-way mark this year, the country had welcomed around 12.4 million international travelers, an increase of 23.9% compared to the same period of last year. The biggest groups of visitors were from Arab countries (around 300,000) such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Hmmm.... hmmm.......

Let's see:
By year end, 14.8 million foreign tourists would have visited Thailand, generating 547.5 billion baht (or RM 60.2 billion). That's 6,200,000 visitors fewer than Malaysia's purported figure. Fewer yes, but it will draw in RM14.5 billion more.

Breaking it down further to bite-sized numbers: Each tourist to Thailand on the average would have spent RM4,067.56. With Malaysia, it's almost half the value, or RM2,176.19. And to think we in Malaysia thumb our noses on budget traveler strategies, believing there's no money there.

Need proof? What's most curious is the report reveals that Malaysia claims the highest number of travelers entering the country in the first six months were the Arabs - 300,000 of them out of 12.4 million, or a mere 2.5 per cent. Imagine that. The 12.1 million remaining tourists must have been so thinly spread from different nationalities. Either that or more plausibly, they're ashamed to even admit that most tourists are short-trip visitors from the region (think Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand). Why malu? Why butter facts?

Here's a lesson on facing facts from our neighbour down south. It's all there in Wikipedia:
In 2006, 9.7 million international visitors entered Singapore, generating S$12.3 billion or RM28.5 billion. On a per visitor basis, that works out to an average of RM2,938.14.

Indonesians were the largest group of visitors followed by China. Altogether 996,000 Malaysians visited the island (and probably spent scant :), hence bringing the overall average down.) All that seems to jive with Thailand's figures.

As for ours, i really really don't know when the dongeng stories will end. Whether tourism or angkasawan, will we ever learn to quit the hype? We ought to, you know; we ought to in a hurry because there's is a lot of truth to the old saying: Masturbation makes us blind.

Assalamualaikum

i might like to greet you that way come the new year.

Can i still, do you think? And what would Johari Baharom say? Would it be construed as "confusing" some of my fellow citizens?


Background:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/12/21/asia/AS-REL-Malaysia-Catholic-God.php
http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=952&Itemid=31

Twisted history of Omar Hashim

Who is this jerk?

This man gives a frighteningly myopic account of how Indian Malaysians came to be citizens of this country. Omar categorises the entire group as 'convict labourers' invited to work in the estates and build the earliest infrastructure. (Part 2 is here.)

Omar Hashim, executive committee chairman of the Malaysian History Association, does not mention anything about the backbone of the civil service whose structure was modeled from British India. Who do you think trained our people, got us into the groove of running a public sector?

He does not mention the courts and the entire support network required to run it; the court clerks, lawyers, registrars.

He does not mention hospitals from early doctors to those who manned the emergency and ambulatory service.

He does not mention the first teachers, who helped implement an education system modeled on that of British India.

He does not mention the first organised army regiment, the sepoys in Penang; he does not even acknowledge the brave Indian soldiers who died standing their ground resisting the wave of Japanese forces on their way down south. These men were massacred fighting for the freedom of a land of which they held no citizenship.

And who do you think were the brave second-liners who marshaled the early police force?

Omar Hashim is not a historian. He is a political weed hoping to gain some prominence in spreading lies on behalf of the Umno agenda. And like countless other weedstock, he uses the racial line:

"The Malays have been left behind in the quest for the economic cake of the country. The situation can be described like this: For every Ringgit each of the Malays obtained for their household income, the Chinese gets two Ringgit while it is one and a quarter Ringgit for the Indians.

In 2004 the household income according to race showed that the Chinese earns RM4,426 per month, the Malays RM2,711 whilst the Indians RM3,456. The data proved that the New Economic Policy, which has been vehemently opposed by certain non-Malay parties, in actual fact had benefited the Chinese and the Indians."

History requires a wider lens than race, something the executive chairman of some hack history association seems to be besotted with. Then again, can you expect anything more from fungus? They shun from light.


p.s. i googled and yahooed to find out more about the Malaysian History Association, and this Omar guy. There's nothing. Like i said - fungus. (There is mention of the Malaysian Historical Society, which is well-known among people in the discipline)

p.p.s.: (1.03am) ahhh... found something on Omar Hashim. At least an Omar Hashim that's somewhat consistent with the credentials stated in the Bernama report. Very, very enlightening. See here. It's a transcript of an interview (Nov 30, 1999) conducted by Australia Broadcasting Corporation after the 1999 Malaysian General Elections. Omar was 'chairman of the Election Commission'. Notice how the interview ends.

Make no mistake, he's accountable

A group of Indian Malaysian leaders and academicians have been invited to meet Abdullah Ahmad Badawi tomorrow at his Putrajaya office. However, Malaysiakini quotes an unnamed observer as saying that the whole exercise is merely a PR gig orchestrated by the 'Fourth Floor' boys to soothe things over.

"The PM is being misled by those who organised the meeting by leaving out the majority of the Indian representation."

We've read this over and over by observers and experts, haven't we?

"The PM has been kept in the dark." "Survey results were skewed to make the PM feel he's well-liked." "Letters and memos addressed to the PM never reach him." "The IGP is hiding facts from him."

Guys, this is bullshit.

No man is that dumb. Or can afford to be. Ignorance is a very cheap reason coming from the highest govt official in the country; especially if it's about feedback and comments on the very administration he runs. If a person surrounds himself only with sycophants who fight to carry his balls, then that's because he CHOSE to be in denial. If he'd wanted the truth, he could've clicked on any one of the hundreds of blogs and electronic newspapers on the internet to get a good idea. It's that easy and i am sure he's done it; i'm sure he knows.

If Abdullah Ahmad Badawi had wanted to do something worthy of his position, for the genuine betterment of Malaysia, he could have done it. That's what the Seat is for.

Instead, he signed the approval for ISA detention of five Hindraf leaders today, further digging into the scab of our fracturing society. Mr Clean and Mr Nice is anything but.

Meanwhile his deputies and lieutenants continue to have free reign barking up seditious lines, even blatantly unconstitutional ones. i'll say this much: Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has single-handedly put this country into a fog of uncertainty that nobody can even foretell what would happen over the next few days. Between light and darkness, he chose the fouler end.

Stop making excuses for Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

He is the Prime Minister of Malaysia. He is accountable for every snot action and policy that's shredding this country apart. And, sleeping or not, he WILL be made accountable yet.

The amendment was unanimously passed at 4.50pm.

That's the ominous final line in Malaysiakini's report on the constitutional amendment bill to extend the retirement age of Election Commission members to 66 years.

Unanimous.

That came after all opposition MPs staged a walkout in protest of the arrests that took place in Parliament grounds today. That also tells you every single BN MP - MCA, Gerakan, MIC, PPP, SUPP etc - is in support of that amendment which speedily and conveniently skews the scales even more to suit the incumbent govt.

It also tells you this: It's that easy to muck around the Constitution if you give them such overwhelming power.

Just what have we done?

For that idiot Ali Rustam...

The Malaysian Constitution
Article 9, Clause 1

No citizen shall be banished or excluded from the Federation.

Ali asked for the use of the ISA on the eight citizens unjustly arrested at the human rights march in KL on Sunday. Either that or strip them of their citizenship.

There they go again spewing reckless pronouncements. For a high-ranking politician and a state Menteri Besar, he sure knows jack-shit about what really guides this country. The fact that the PM has consistently allowed ppl like him to get away with such hogwash, reflects the equally dim capacity of His Hollowness.

Guilty as charged

Given the govt's recent penchant for arrests and dubious charges, let's make life a whole lot easier.

Friends, shall we surrender ourselves at the police stations?

i'm dead serious. Surrender by the tens - maybe hundreds - of thousands; and insist on being charged, to be detained and be brought before a magistrate. Every single one of us who took the trouble to participate in the Walk for Justice, the Bersih Rally, the Hindraf Rally, we did 'wrong' and let's offer ourselves for indictment. If anyone of our comrades are sentenced, let us ask for a similar sentence. By the tens of thousands.

Let's set a date, fix a time and surrender at the Balai. Let us bombard the stations and ask to be locked up; fill the jails if we must.

After all, with so many thousands who allegedly did wrong, something must surely be right.