Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Anwar Ibrahim Versus Ahmad Shabery Cheek - Debate of The Century

Anwar Ibrahim and Ahmad Shabery Cheek went on stage for a debate of the century in Malaysia on July 15.

It was an eye-opener in Malaysia although in the Western and some other democratically more mature nations, an open debate between ruling and opposition fronts is a common scene.

The topic in question was the steamy oil which has turned the whole world frenzied economically and socially - and the wobbly situation is not expected to be over soon.

Let's come back to the debate - both Anwar and Shabery had all the wits to deal with the sizzling issue from their respective perspectives. Their views were therefore respectable.

Anwar thrashed out eloquently with his views on a managable subsidisation programme to keep the oil cheaper for the benefits of the rakyat. But one point particularly relevant to us was on the prevalent corruption.

In the words of Anwar, had our system of government been cleaner and more transparent, the nation would have saved huge wealth for the betterment of our welfare system including oil subsidisation. This point is truly valid with all thumbs up!

Ahmad Shabery Cheek made good sense economically in pointing out that the oil desubsidisation programme of the government of Pak Lah has been implmented in utmost good faith for the benefits of the nation on long-term perspective. Malaysia is fast turning into an oil net-importer, making it burdensome for the government to go on indefinitely providing cheap oil.

In short, Ahmad Shabery Cheek was calling on the rakyat to wake up to the global reality.

This nature of debate provides an excellent platform for both ruling and opposition fronts to address the nation on contemporary burning issues. We hope to see more to come!

3 comments:

eiling lim said...

But then again, Mr. Strawberry was attacking DSAI on personal grounds which was very unprofessional of him.

Well, if DSAI is made the PM, we would have seen the petrol pump meters at RM2.20 a litre. Government is having a big burden on the subsidization of petrol, but what happened to the profit from Petronas? Isn't it better that oil price went up and Petronas make more money?

Well the government can say they have to increase the price of oil to ease the burden, but in return now they have to subsidize the fleet, the public transport, this, that and all the rebates. What are they talking about?!!

Tony Hii said...

eiling, the system of rebate has been used to cushion Pak Lah against the shocks from the drastic increase in our petrol prices. It may be withdrawn any time after the impact has been subdued. Mark my words, our petrol prices would go in tandem with the international oil price, meaning to say we may face a new round of hike when the world oil price goes crazy.

Tony Hii said...
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