LAWATAN VAJPAYEE MEMBUKA SKANDAL NGERI

Saya tidak berhasrat untuk menterjemahkan rencana di bawah ini kerana ia lebih tertumpu kepada negara India. Ia memaparkan kegagalan misi lawatan Vajpayee ke Malaysia kerana ia ditulis dari sana. Tetapi kesannya akan menjalar ke sini. Rakyat India yang banyak miskin dan hidup melata itu sanggup membunuh diri atau memotong tangan anak sendiri agar dapat meminta sedekah yang lebih lebih banyak lagi. Mereka mungkin bangkit untuk menelanjangkan semua skandal yang merugikan negara mereka sendiri dan pemimpin Malaysia tidak akan terkecuali. Baru-baru ini skandal konsesi sudah pun ditelanjangi. Ada banyak lagi yang akan muncul nanti.

Mahathir telah mengajar dan mengejek dengan celupar Vajpayee - itulah tajuk rencana dari India ini. Dengan tajuk sebegitu tentulah pembaca akan memarahi Vajpayee dan Mahathir sendiri... Patutlah skandal dibuka untuk tatapan warga dunia sekarang ini.

TANPA POTENSI LAPANGAN TERBANG MAHAL TIDAK BERGUNA SAMA-SEKALI

Banyak dagangan dari kuasa pelaburan dunia dari Jepun dan Amerika ke Malaysia dan India nanti akan tersangkut di negara China. Penutupan beberapa kilang di Malaysia itu dan pengekalan kilang di China itu harus dibaca dengan teliti bagaimana fenomena ini sudah pun terjadi. Taiwan/Hong Kong telah lama membaca pola ini sehingga ia sanggup berbelanja berbilion untuk lapangan terbangnya. China juga membina menara tertinggi di dunia kerana ada yang akan mengisi ruangnya.

[Rujuk: Rencana Cover Story: New Taipei Airport Terminal Opens di http://www.worldroom.com/pages/wrntpe/coverstory.phtml oleh Kevyn Kennedy.

Lapangan terbang Taiwan (Taipei - Chiang Kai Shek) ada tiga landasan berbanding Hong Kong (Chep Lap Kok) dengan dua dan Jepun (Narita) cuma satu]

Kepesatan industri di Taiwan dan China itu adalah potensi pasaran kargo mereka. Permintaan dan keperluan itu memang ada. Malah China berhasrat untuk menyertai WTO. Pendeknya ia menghidangkan sesuatu yang amat berselera - patutlah ia mendapat tempat di hati pelabur seluruh dunia.

PENSWASTAAN SERBA SERBI MEROSAKKAN WAWASAN SENDIRI

Sekarang cuba fikirkan keadaan Malaysia pula. Kita seperti ingin meniru negara China dengan sistem kawalan matawang dan pembangunan industri teknologi siap dengan taman-tamannya. Tetapi kepakaran yang ada tidak seberapa kerana sistem pendidikkan hari ini tidak mampu melahirkan mereka yang betul-betul bergeliga kerana kosnya yang terlalu tinggi serta imbuhan gaji yang tidak seberapa. Kaum China di Malaysia lebih minat berniaga kerana di sana lebih banyak ada wangnya. Manakala orang melayu perlu bekerja segera selepas belajar mendapat ijazah biasa sahaja kerana terpaksa menyara keluarga. Menyambung pelajaran hanya akan menambahkan hutang yang terpaksa dibayar dalam jangkamasa yang lebih lama. Ini semua akan menyukarkan MSC untuk berjaya kerana kita ketiadaan pakar secukupnya. Kita memerlukan bukan sahaja pakar IT dari India malah pakar membina landasan keretapi juga.

Hanya baru sekarang kerajaan sedar pentingnya soal pendidikkan tetapi jika kos sara-hidup dan kos belajar terus meninggi akibat penswastaan - MSC akan terus menjadi mimpi yang tidak akan mencecah realiti. Ia cuma wawasan dan angan-angan yang hanya akan memufliskan lagi negara ini. Pergilah ke negara China dan saksikan sendiri siapakah pakar yang berada di sana - mereka adalah anak tempatan kebanyakkannya. Kemudian pergi ke Silicon Valley - jangan terkejut hampir semua syarikat IT mereka mempunyai pekerja 'emas' keturunan China dan India.

-Kapal Berita-

EDITORIAL

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe20010524/fed4.html

Sermons and sneers from Mahathir

Time to get real about India-Asean relations

Subhash Agrawal

It is sad that Mr Vajpayee's trip to Malaysia will be remembered as a fiasco only because of the failed attempt to bring back Ottavio Quattrocchi. It was on all counts one of the most uncoordinated and disastrous foreign trips by an Indian head of government in recent times. Not only did Mahathir Mohammad backtrack on a deportation treaty ostensibly and informally agreed upon earlier - either that or the Ministry of External Affairs grossly misread their signals - but he also preached about Kashmir, rejected India's pleas to be upgraded in Asean's external relations, and forced Mr Vajpayee into a nuclear-free Asean declaration which nobody this side of the Andaman Sea really much cares about. In short, nothing meaningful was achieved either in political synergy, future cooperation or business. The oil-for-rail contract is a mirage, subject to many conditions, unlikely to materialise.

While there should be some sort of public audit of why this trip was even undertaken, it also provides an opportunity to do a reality check on our relations with Asia in general and Asean in particular. With the exception of China, no Asian country has aroused great interest among the local political and intellectual elite. For many years we either ignored them or treated them superciliously. The US-inspired Seato treaty, and its downstream developments set amidst the Vietnam War, created the first serious divergence which never really got healed. Right through the '70s and '80s, Indonesia and Malaysia took up an anti-India posture at major fora. We were forever denied entry into inner Asean circles.

Our main contact with Southeast Asia was via the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) but even here the results were dismal - a few months after Sukarno and Nehru posed in Bandung like long-lost brothers, Indonesia began aligning itself with Pakistan to whom it even sent secret military aid during the 1965 war. In the last few years, much hope and hype in India has been invested into a 'Look East' foreign policy. The timing has coincided with multilayered changes in Asia, most notably the rise of China. These changes have led Asian countries to increasingly act independent of old influences or habits, such as in Asean admitting Myanmar despite strong objections from the US or in Japan embarking upon a dramatic expansion of its navy to secure shipping of key oil imports in the piracy-rife Malacca Straits.

These post-Cold-War geopolitical shifts have presented an opening for India to increase it influence, but most Asian countries are still publicly circumspect about India's perception as a regional power. They do worry about China and its future intentions, but propping India is not the answer in their eyes, not yet anyway. As if to underscore this, Asean has time and again refused to put India at par with China in its relationship hierarchy. Mr Mahathir did it again two weeks ago, and we should have known better than to ask.

The reasons why Asean treats us this way, and will continue to, is simple: India lacks economic muscle. Asean exports to India are roughly $5bn, less than one-tenth of its exports to China and about 3 per cent of its total exports. Given the current rates of savings, investment and growth, India will play a distant second to most Southeast Asian economies for the next half-century. Vietnam already gets twice as much per capita FDI as India and will overshoot it in 2005 in number of in-bound tourists. This, a country ravaged by war and brought back to life only in the last 25 years.

China runs up an annual $60bn trade surplus with the US and about $30bn with Japan. Sino-Japanese trade is galloping at something like 30 per cent per year and is likely to cross $100bn in 2001. That is equal to roughly 10 per cent of Japan's total trade. And despite some improvements in India-Japan relations since then Prime Minister Mori's trip to India last year, hopes of a substantial jump in Japanese FDI are misplaced. Japanese investment in India is less than half a per cent of its total overseas FDI. And this is unlikely to reverse now that Indian priority has, or at least should have, shifted to power, ports and other infrastructure sectors where Western firms have an edge over Japan because of wider experience and better disposition to nurture useful local contacts.

Economic data like this - going beyond the oft-repeated FDI comparisons between China and India - can be very boring but also very instructive. Southeast Asians sometimes point to it when Indians get carried away at international seminars by fuzzy notions of 'strategic partnership.' Across much of Asia there is now a recognition of India's potential and even slow rise, and this has laid the foundation for more contacts. But till such time as we arrive at a more recognisable milestone on this long and arduous road, there is no point in either begging for Asean upgradation - it's not going to happen - or in wasted foreign junkets.