Initially, I didn’t get our politicians - both sides included.
On the corridors of power side, our PM announced in October 15th 2010 for the 2011 budget that there will be no increase in toll rates for four highways owned by PLUS for the subsequent 5 years. As 2014 is just around the corner, the Work Minister (possibly still in his festive mode after PAU) was reported to say that rates for 15 major highways expected to rise. Reason being it was impossible to stop toll rate hikes due to the concession agreement between the government and the highway concession companies. The minister clarified that this was never confirmed and agreed in the cabinet, he just mentioned what should take place based on the agreement. Fair enough….but now comes the question:
- Referring to the budget 2011 speech, this means that the promise holds until October 14th 2015. Unless I’ve been sleeping for 1 year, next year is still 2014 right?
- Why is the Minister saying something like this in the first place if it’s not yet decided by the Cabinet?
- In total we have 27 highways in our country. What are these 15 highways and does the 4 highways as announced by PM in 2010 being affected?
- What is the content of the concession agreement? How long will this “increase due to concession agreement” continue? When do we expect to see this increase come to an end? Can the people get more details about this agreement? Can someone give us at least a shred of clue?
Obviously the knight shining armour PR then comes to the rescue (after paying the toll on the way to the parliament of course). All the numbers and figures started to burst out like the bullets showering down from the helicopter in the Matrix movie scene (yes, you can imagine YB Rafizi as Neo if you like) showing how the concessionaire such as KESAS, Litrak and PLUS Berhad to name a few were already making profit of at least 50% annually and the highway maintenance cost is only 6% of the total toll collection. To add salt to the injury by making BN voters “menyesal undi BN”, the alternative online news portal headline proudly announced "Selangor orders PKNS to stop toll hike”. At first, I thought this is good and new….then reality started to sink in with the following questions:
- How does Selangor government actually stop the toll hike? Does that mean they could’ve help to reduce the toll rates for the past 5 years especially it’s reported that they have a lot of cash in their pockets due to good governance?
- At first, I thought it’s because they were the majority shareholders, however Selangor State Government apparently has only 30% shares of the KESAS highway and 20% shares in Sprint and Lebuhraya Damansara-Puchong which means they are actually minor shareholders. So, how do they stop the toll rates increase if they’re a minority in the first place?
- Will these 3 highways that Selangor has their shares be part of the 15 highways referred to by the Work Ministry?
- Does that also mean that all this while Selangor State government as the minority shareholder has access to the concession agreement details? If yes, why haven’t the concession agreement details being shared to the public in order to educate us what’s really the deal about the concessionaire and our Federal government?
After contemplating about this, I noticed that we’re probably barking at the wrong tree here. It’s not the politicians (a wishful thinking?) who were wrong, they were actually wronged. It’s not BN's (except for YB Kinabatangan who actually raised the issue about Musang King Durian in the parliament. Come on YB, really? Durian? ) or PR’s politicians fault. It’s the media fault.
It has always been both sides of the political oriented media. They’ve exaggerated
each issue that shows up by creating unnecessary friction amongst both sides of the political divide. As President Lyndon B Johnson’s once said, “if one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: President Can’t Swim”.
As a result, we’re “forced” to waste our time blaming our poor Work Minister who probably never literally said “ikut jalan biasa kalau tak nak bayar tol” and what he actually meant was taken out of context (unless somebody can clearly show me a video that clearly shows this). At the same time, the so called independent reporters from PR-friendly online media raises hope that the Selangor State government can really stop toll hikes when actually they should have said “As shareholder, Selangor oppose toll hikes” just to be accurate once in a while.
Today we’ll be arguing about the toll, tomorrow I’m a pretty sure they’ll find another way to entrap one of the not so innocent but naive Federal Minister by twisting their words into something sensational. More tension will start to build up between political supporters of both sides while non-partisan spectators sitting nonchalantly outside the fence and type a long FB status in the middle of the night hoping that this “misleading style” of reporting would one day end.
At the rate the things are going now, I don’t think this will ever stop but I still hope that our political oriented reporters and media will be more responsible in reporting issues and facts. Stop creating unnecessary friction. There are bigger and better ways to highlight issues. If the political oriented reporters and media still behave selfishly maybe then there is some wisdom to what Gandhi said, "I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers”.
