DAP Sarawak lowers the bar

Thus far, I have observed that DAP is staying very cool on the issue of lompat parti. The only party leader/representative to overtly voice support for lompat parti was Jeff Ooi. But today, another own-goal was conceded:

Bandar Kuching MP Chong Chieng Jen said in a statement today that “as the largest opposition party in Sarawak, the DAP is openly inviting all Barisan MPs and state assembly representatives to join us in our struggle for the betterment of Sarawakians.’

“They can either join our party as members or join us on a party-party basis as equal partners to form a new alliance front,” he added

Okla, at least he did say they can work together across the isle, but the part that really get my panties in a bunch is his proposed agenda:

Good oil hunting

To those of you who don’t know, I am presently pursuing a PhD in computer engineering, and one area that my work overlaps with is supercomputing, i.e. the design and use of massive computers to perform tasks like weather prediction, molecular science, nuclear blast simulations, disease spreading prediction (e.g. Singapore uses supercomputers to track the spread of dengue so they can fumigate an area BEFORE someone there catches dengue), predicting the spreading of wild fires (Australia does some of this…), molecular science (… and a lot of this), genetics, and many others.

Now, here is something interesting (and yes, it is related to Malaysia)…

PAS the Sultan some Panadol please…

I would like to congratulate PAS for joining DAP on the Sultanate’s shitlist hahahahahahahahahaha… welcome to the club. Political expediency is so much easier when you don’t suffer the inconvenience of convictions and core ideological beliefs.

/me high-fives PAS.

PSM registered! How nice……………?

Let the good times roll! Hishamuddin apologised (assuming it’s not too late to-pologiiizzee…). An ISA review is mooted. Chinese vernacular schools have been approved all over the place (a father of a friend was quoted as saying “it took DAP 20 days to do what MCA couldn’t do in 20 years”). Religious school funding has been increased. And now PSM has been granted registration as a political party, after 10 years of waiting.

But the thing that makes me a bit uncomfortable is PSM’s recent conduct. In their just-concluded general assembly, some decidedly anti-PR attitudes were paraded. PSM’s attitude towards PR is the same as BN, more or less. PSM views itself as the socialist opposition against the capitalist PR and BN. PSM’s delegates even went so far as to consider the prospect of 3-way contests in the next elections, although that measure was not included in the final resolution.

Novel approaches to reducing the price at the petrol kiosk

Much has been said recently about how oil-exporting countries have much cheaper pump prices than Malaysia. But did you know that some NON oil-exporting countries also have cheap pump prices?! WOW! BN must REALLY suck balls then, eh…

If a picture tells a thousand words, what is KLPos saying?

Note the headline and the accompanying image. Khalid has to “insaf”, and the accompanying image is of him with three DAP leaders. I find myself wondering what is the “makna tersirat”…

low expectations

Re: oil prices (was: “Fair Wage & Malaysia Bonus”)

This is a response to a comment by anonymous at 11am on Tony Pua’s blog entry. I was tempted to reply directly on his blog, but because this issue is not really directly topical to Tony’s thread, I decided against that in order to maintain that thread of discussion for the proposed economic policies (where the implicit assumption is that oil subsidies had to go). So here we go…

Anonymous said…

IN CASE YOU DIDN’T KNOW…….

Our “piggy brain” govt always compared our petrol to NON
oil-producing countries like Singapore and Thailand but got
no balls to do the comparison with other oil producing countries
like below. Check for yourself:-

UAE – RM1.19/litre
Eygpt – RM1.03/litre
Bahrain – RM0.87/litre
Qatar – RM0.68/litre
Kuwait – RM0.67/litre
Saudi Arabia – RM0.38/litre
Iran – RM0.35/litre
Brunei – RM1.10/litre
Nigeria – RM0.32/litre
Turkmenistan – RM0.25/litre
Venezuela – RM0.16/litre

MALAYSIA – RM2.70/litre

11:00 AM

My response…

anon 11am,

Maybe it would be wise to consider some other numbers along side the price tag:
This analysis is of course very rough la, I don’t plan to get a masters in econs out of this, but just for the sake of a mamak stall quality discussion…

(and another disclaimer: I am assuming the numbers I got are correct… and I am boldly assuming that I didn’t make any arithmetic mistakes!)

UAE – 97.8B barrels left, uses 1.8M barrels a day, so the ratio is 54k
Eygpt – 3.7B, 590k, 6.2k
Bahrain – 124M, 27k, 4.5k
Qatar – 15.2B, 80k, 190k
Kuwait – 104B, 335k, 310k
Saudi Arabia – 266.8B, 1.8M, 147k
Iran – 132B, 1.5M, 88k
Brunei – 1.3B, 15k, 86k
Nigeria – 35B, 290k, 120k
Turkmenistan – 500M, 95k, 5k
Venezuela – 79B, 560k, 141k

MALAYSIA – 3 billion barrels left, 515 barrels used a day. Our ratio… 5.8k

The ratio describes the number of days until we consume more oil than we have under our feet: barrels divided by barrels per day = number of days. If we want to compare Malaysia, we should only compare against those countries that are in a similar position to us in terms of how much we have and how fast we use it. Therefore, I suggest that comparison is only valid between Malaysia and the following countries:

Turkmenistan – 500M, 95k, 5k
Eygpt – 3.7B, 590k, 6.2k
Bahrain – 124M, 27k, 4.5k

All the other countries listed have MUCH healthier ratios.
So now, if you please, consider the geopolitical and economic situations in these countries and compare to Malaysia, then see what the situation is.

References:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2178rank.html
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_con-energy-oil-consumption

Aiseh, Anwar…

Two things I hate about Anwar:

1. Lompat parti.
2. “Turun harga minyak esok”. WTF moment. Witty durian quips don’t make up for a bad promise.

Two things I like about DAP:

1. Karpal Singh has strong language on lompat parti. The rest are less overt about it, but IMHO, probably leaning to the same direction, except for Jeff Ooi.
2. On a policy level, they recognise the removal of oil subsidies to be necessary, although they are trying to have it both ways.

Ambiguity is no problem, but clarity is, so Anwar had to deal with Karpal…

Anwar said that Karpal was was “taken out of context” in media reports, adding that he (Anwar) always shared the concerns on the defecting MPs with other Pakatan leaders.

“They accept the fact and would consider applications of anyone who subscribes to the agenda of Pakatan,” said Anwar.

“If people endorse (our) agenda and policies, Karpal does not have problems with the (crossover),” he said.

ROFLMAO!!! Well done Persian, you chose your words wisely. So wisely that they mean absolutely nothing if you read it closely.

Aaaanyway, I think I’ve had just about enough arguing over this party hopping issue. Neither side is budging. Both sides mean well. But the judgment of one side is suspect. I think that side is the other side. But hey, what do I know, I didn’t expect we would be in this position to begin with!

Right then, I’ve got to get back to bread-and-butter issues, and will be nose-to-the-grind till September… right in time to witness the fireworks or fiddlesticks of Anwar Ibrahim’s ascension to meet what many call his destiny.

fueling the rage against the machine

Fulamak, another round of demonstrations?

Organisers Coalition Against Inflation (Protes) hopes to gather 100,000 people to call on the government to reduce fuel prices to its original levels before the hike today.

How insensitive. While the demonstration is running, cars will be stuck in traffic jams, thus wasting petrol. Ok-lah, in all seriousness, yes this stings but what you are asking for is not going to happen. So what is the point of this? I don’t think it is just to vent frustration. If you want to vent frustration, now is the time to do so. But the slated date for this demonstration is more than a month away. What’s the agenda, eh?

I’m in agreement with Tony Pua and the Puanation. The price hike is necessary, but it is imperative that the savings are used to improve public transport. However… quite frankly… I’m not sure if there is very much that can be done to improve public transport, at least not within a 5 year period. I think it’s more likely that private companies will have to get creative about this… more staggered/flexible hours to facilitate off-peak use of existing public transport infratructure… work-from-home… satellite offices… telecommuting… I know in many instances these are not possible, but quite frankly I think we need to start scraping the barrel and make these things happen wherever possible. I think the first companies to implement such measures will be ahead of the curve and reap the rewards later

Also, I am amused that DAP is the one most unambiguously supportive of this move on a policy-level, yet  at the same time they are the first mover in organizing a bunch of small-scale protests. Talk about having your kueh and eating it too.