YOURSAY | Odour of corruption taints handsome pay our ministers get

YOURSAY | ‘By the way, what will a RM100m house roughly look like?’

COMMENT | Houses for former PMs - are they homeless?

Mano: Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said, “The amendment (to the Members of Parliament (Remuneration) Act) was for the government to consider giving former prime ministers a small reward to appreciate their contributions.”

Why even a “small reward”? Every day they are paid exorbitantly, why do they need even more rewards?

All the salaries and perks of the prime minister, MPs, ministers and House speakers must be examined with a fine-toothed comb. I remember reading the salary and perks that the deceitful Dewan Rakyat speaker Azhar Azizan Harun receives and I was shaken.

All excessive amounts should be trimmed. They should only be eligible for Employees Provident Fund (EPF) contributions. No more pensions! Or only one pension. They should not be allowed to claim multiple pensions.

This is open pilfering. These politicians come to us, saying they want to serve. The idiots are serving themselves instead! We are the bigger idiots to allow this to happen.

The Wakandan: By the way, what will a RM100 million house roughly look like?

My little nephew would say, maybe one with 100 rooms. To ordinary folks, they are probably unable to even imagine how it will be but certainly RM100 million will be more than enough to build a palatial mansion.

And why does a former PM need such a mansion? Isn’t he just a human being, like all of us? Was he not paid as a PM, with salary, perks, and privileges? Why does his child need 10 rooms to sleep in or maybe 10 cars to drive? Why such a big sum like RM100 million?

Sanakyan: @The Wakandan, their greed cannot be fathomed. They are so divorced from the ‘kais pagi makan pagi, kais petang makan petang’ (hand-to-mouth) life of the B40 (bottom 40 percent of income earners) and the hardcore poor.

These greedy leaders want to flaunt their ill-gotten wealth to the world. They have no shame or morality. And all of them claim to be more pious than the next joker.

Scarecrow: Our former prime ministers are all servants of the people. When we give them a decent house after they retire, it is not just a roof over the head for them. It is more to show our appreciation to them for all the sacrifices they made when they served us.

We should make Singapore’s former prime ministers jealous of our former prime ministers.

GrayDove8171: @Scarecrow, yes, I'm sure the former Singaporean prime ministers are all very jealous of their Malaysian counterparts. Thinking about it, I am inclined to believe all current and future Singaporean prime ministers would be green with envy.

Our politicians are world renown for corrupt practices, backward policies, and low-to-zero competencies. Yet, they are still worshipped like demigods.

And if they didn't manage to fleece enough of the rakyat's money during their tenure, we will happily surrender more of our hard-earned tax money to them to ensure they have a retirement fit for a king.

As a matter of fact, the current prime minister is doing a fabulous job. He's going to make Bahasa Malaysia a global language. This will be a fantastic achievement.

But you see, in Singapore, their ministers have to work very hard. And it's not easy to qualify as their requirements are set pretty high.

I'm sure they are jealous indeed of our Malaysian prime ministers.

OCT: Compared to Singapore, Malaysia scored dismally on the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2021. We were placed 62nd out of 180 countries compared to Singapore’s fourth placing.

When there is no accountability and responsibility by Malaysian ministers, everything and anything goes. Historically, just because not many Malaysian ministers were convicted for corruption doesn’t mean corruption isn’t rampant.

It means insufficient effort has been made to prosecute the culprits who tarnish the country’s name.

Meanwhile, Malaysian ministers are given positions as rewards for their loyalty to the party or coalition.

Hmmmmmmmm: All of us here, when we talk about Singapore, we think of their clean city, advanced development, strong currency, etc.

Try talking to somebody in the rural area here and I bet most don't even know where Singapore is or may not have heard of the place.

Their lives is one of going to sleep early before setting out at the crack of dawn to tap rubber, tend to their farms, fish, etc, before coming back at dusk to eat and then sleep. They go through this cycle for the rest of their lives and so do their children and grandchildren.

That is why they are very grateful for a small gift just to put a cross against the giver's name during elections. I doubt they know or care about 1MDB, corruption, etc, and are unable to link corruption with their miseries.

Due to the nature of my work, I have travelled quite extensively to the rural areas and that is what I noticed about their lives.

Our only hope is that with the advent of the internet and smartphones, many of the younger generations are able to see more of what is happening around them and hopefully be able to vote wisely for the good of the country.

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