I haven’t really been following on the news lately, and when I read this article. It’s kinda made me wonder how Malaysia would be like if he was the Prime Minister 20 years ago. Anyway, here are some of his speech I extracted from his website. And oh yeah, I became one of his fans on facebook as well currently following him on twitter. And I have a feeling he’s playing Mafia Wars too.. Lol.. But anyway, I wouldn’t know until he add me as a friend on Facebook! Lol.
Revisiting the middle income trap
I would like to revisit the argument of that speech to develop it further.
We are stagnating. The signs of a low growth economy are all around us. Wages are stagnant and the cost of living is rising.
We have not made much progress in becoming a knowledge and services based economy.
According to the World Bank, Malaysia’s share of GDP contributed by services was 46.2% in 1987. Ten years later, that share had grown by a mere 0.2%
Between 1994 and 2007, real wages grew by 2.6% in the domestic sector and by 2.8% in the export sector, which is to say, they were flat over that thirteen year period.
Meanwhile our talent scenario is an example of perverse selection at its most ruinous. We are failing to retain our own young talent, people like yourselves, let alone attract international talent to relocate here, while we have had a massive influx of unskilled foreign labour. They now make up 30-40% of our workforce. Meanwhile, alone in East Asia, the number of expatriate professionals here has decreased. Alone in East Asia, private sector wage increases follow government sector increases, instead of the other way around. We are losing doctors and scientists and have become Southeast Asia’s haven for low cost labour.
I said that we are in a middle income trap, stuck in the pattern of easy growth from low-value-added manufacture and component assembly and unable to make the leap to a knowledge-intensive economy. Regional competitors with larger, cheaper and dare I say, hungrier labour forces have emerged. China and India have risen as both lower cost and higher technology producers, and with giant domestic markets.The manufacturing sector which propelled the growth we enjoyed in the nineties is being hollowed out. There is no going back, there is no staying where we are, and we do not have a map for the way forward.
Sorry to been very quiet on the latest by election, as I was extremely tired from all the politics. One must say, it’s very tiring trying to follow everything every single day. Anyway, on to the main agenda of today’s topic. When I first found out that Umno decided to field in Isa Samad, I quickly went and sms a friend of mine said that Umno will have a landslide victory of 4,000 votes. As I didn’t expect it was over 5,000. So the score now is 7-2.
Over the past few days, I’ve been getting a lot of input from people around me. As I continued to listen their view on what is happening in Malaysia especially in politics, is that opposition party will always cause problems for the country. One of them even said that, we shouldn’t let the opposition win because by then they will start to fill in their pockets first before giving out to the people. Since the current government pockets are full already, they will start to share the benefits with the people.
Congratulations to PAS candidate Mohd. Salleh Man for winning the by-election in Permatang Pasir yesterday with a majority of 4,551 people. Despite my forecast was way out as I didn’t expect a high turn out yesterday. But I’m very glad that people still decided to come out and vote despite of the weather. As UMNO probably need to go back to the drawing board and pretty much learn from their mistakes, they might need to use a different approach instead of continuing using race cards as it does not play any more significant role. And my best guess is that, maybe the people in Permatang Pasir had already long decided who they want to vote for long before the polling day, despite the claims of 
With less than 24 hours left to go, the battle of Permatang Pasir is heating up. As both parties fight tooth and nail to ensure voters to vote for them, but one could actually wonder who will win. Ok before I go on with my prediction, lets look back at the previous results back in 2004 & 2008, PAS has won this seat with a majority of 679 (2004) & 5433 (2008). So in conclusion we could say that PAS will surely win this time round as this is basically their home court. No doubt that BN had probably decided to field someone with unknown excessive baggage, which really makes you wonder how in the world did they decide to get him in the first place. Anyway, that’s probably beside the point. As 
My best guess would be PAS will still retain Permatang Pasir by 1-2000k votes. As my main reason behind it is that, as you know that tomorrow is Tuesday and of course it’s a working day. I doubt that people will take leave just to go back and vote for another by election. Even though now is school holidays, they might have other plans to go somewhere else already. But because this is the fasting month, the voters might not want to take a long journey back or travel. As someone once told me that they prefer not to travel during the fasting month as they would tempt them to buka puasa even before the official time. Some more this is the first week, so they might have problems with adjusting which gives them the more reason why they shouldn’t travel. Plus, I think by now people are tired with by election already. So probably they’ll go back to their mentality stating that my 1 vote will probably wouldn’t count, and if I did went back it would end up as a spoil vote.
When I heard the news that 
This made PKR effort to station its men at the construction site -
As history states that The Astana was built during 1870 by Charles Brooke as a gift for his wife, while Fort Margherita was also built by him in 1879 to pretty much fend off pirates during those time. When I googled up 
Maybe for Vyner Brooke back then could probably say to himself as these items did not belong to him and maybe it wasn’t any much of value anyway. So he could have left it there and not trouble himself to pack everything and go. But then again, who knows if these foundations are actually foundations to support the buildings. This is what I heard from my neighbors that, the shop is actually above the river which explains at times why the walls are always damp whenever we put a new fresh coat of paint. And also, when the flood came early this year the drain started to overflow.
