Ku Li: BN has destroyed Malaysia’s future

KUALA LUMPUR: Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah (picture) today painted a bleak future for Malaysia under the Barisan Nasional government, saying it had squandered the nation’s oil wealth to the tune of billions of ringgit.

The former Finance Minister said Petronas’s oil profits had been used “to bail out failing companies, buy arms, build grandiose cities amidst cleared palm oil estates.”

“Instead of helping eradicate poverty in the poorest states, our oil wealth came to be channeled into our political and politically-linked class,” the first Petronas chief and former Umno vice president said in a speech at the Young Corporate Malaysians Summit.

He said Petronas money had been used as a slush fund to prop up authoritarian rule, to corrupt the entire political and business elite and to erode constitutional democracy.

The Gua Musang MP told the conference that Petronas had contributed 40 percent to the national budget over the years.

But such a great reliance on oil income was getting untenable, he said. “The oil that was meant to spur our transition to a more humane, educated society has instead become a narcotic that provides economic quick fixes and hollow symbols such as the Petronas Towers.”

Read the rest of this article at FreeMalaysiaToday.