Vision 2020 achieved

This is getting ridiculous.

Happened to read this on Elizabeth Wong's blogsite and it just made me snap.

“Santa must have had trouble getting to this part of the world, since it was only today he came a-calling at Sapura with a surveillance contract worth RM 1 billion.

Bernama’s Tengku Noor Shamsiah Tengku Abdullah reported late this afternoon on the likelihood of Sapura securing a Federal government contract to supply 3,000 cameras in major cities in the Peninsular, in anticipation of Visit Malaysia Year 2007, as well as for ‘security’.”

Work that out: You have a RM1 billion contract for 3,000 cameras. That's RM333,333 per camera installed. Sure, you need command posts and monitors etc to run the equipment, but c'mon guys, that's a freakin' semi-d for a camera. And is there a toll concessionaire-type contract after the fact to maintain it over the years?

Elizabeth also reveals in that same post that Sapura had earlier won a RM500 million contract to supply 3,000 field radios to the armed forces. That's RM166,666 per radio set.

We have 23 self-cleaning toilets installed throughout KL for a contract of RM9.2 million. That's RM400,000 a toilet.

Outrageous. Vision 2020 has been achieved 14 years early.

We must be a rich country, among the most developed in the world, to acquire these fancy machines at such prices. Correction...among the delusional in the world. This country has yet to reach its more basic targets - boats during floods, grade A infrastructure, 0% poverty, 100% literacy, the best universities and libaries, a well-paid and well-oiled civil service, a transportation system that works, a caring society - before it thinks fancy-shmancy.

Instead money being spent by this govt to acquire hi-tech products and services which are over-specified is reaching epic proportions.

It appears as pithy news for a day – 5 paragraphs max? – and the whole thing blows quietly away. No facts and figures breakdown, no tender, no dialogue, no explanations. Perhaps a titanium handshake to signify a bloated contract between devils.

In a culture bleeding with the liberal use of the Official Secrets Act, these conniving bastards have virtually a blank check to fatten their wallets. It is a closed loop; you and I are irrelevant in the scheme of things. You and I can gripe, but they’ll plain ignore. You and I are mere subordinates... peasant-folk in a feudal system cloaked as a democracy.

AAB may have crooned the sweetest promises of accountability and transparency in the 2004 elections, but he has failed miserably. If anything, as Prime Minister – a very powerful but increasingly-despised position – Sleepy Hollow is at the very least guilty of abetting this crippling culture.

What does one do with rot? Answer: You remove it.