Penang in Decline (Part 1) or How to Wreck Something Good

Finishing my "business" at the mens in Bayan Lepas International Airport, I reached for the toilet rolls to swipe my arse clean and miracle of miracles, Lim Guan Eng's report card congealed before my very eyes on the soiled paper. Yea..it was plain shitty alright, yet another reminder how this Pearl of the Orient is fast becoming a Whirl of Disorient - an inconsequential blip on the investment and growth radars.

The scores make depressing reading for Penangites:

Growth in 2010 : -3.7 (2% off the national average)
FDI : plummeting from 10.2 billion* to RM2B; a 80% drop
Investment ranking : Slipping to No 5 in 2009 (from no 4 in 2008)and out of the Big Four of the local EPL (Economic Powerhouse League) : (1) and (2)

With total investments for January and February 2010, amounting to an anaemic RM200 million,Penang is fast morphing into our local version of Dickens' 'Bleak House' where soon unemployed vagrants and drug addled zombies will stalk the streets veiled by a perpetual smog in search of jaga kereta job opportunities, petty crime vacancies and

Much of the blame for Penang's misery lies at the ostentatous door of the affectatious Chief Minister, Lim Guan Eng, a woefully inept socialist apparatchik who spouts socialism at the public lectern but who worships capitalism at the private altar in cahoots with a hodgepodge agglomeration of seedy property developers and even seedier industrialists. A potpourri of weirdos who pen MOUs like there are no IOUs, men who promise the world but deliver the village.

The debacle commenced when Guano the local Beano decided to racialise the economic landscape through a raft of appointments that was designed to showcase Chingkie business acumen but ended up displaying shitty conmen. Then he embarked on a publicity stunt by inking a RM300M MOU with a Korean outfit announced with much hoopla and razzmatazz, a MOU which lies stinking in the lallangs of Batu Kawan devoid of moolah and all that jazz.........(to be continued)

* Note : RM4.7B of this amount was garnered during the 1stQ of 2008 during Koh Tsu Koon's tenure and not by Lim as he loves to bleat like a love cheat who chanced upon a free clit.

Sources:

1. http://www.miti.gov.my/cms/storage/documents/b12/com.tms.cms.document.Document_234150bd-c0a81573-64f064f0-2b833400/1/MQB Q4 2009.pdf

2. http://www.miti.gov.my/cms/storage/documents/989/com.tms.cms.document.Document_93d5682a-c0a81573-3edb3edb-e3cfb419/1/Trade Investment Bulletin Fourth Quarter 2008.pdf(page 14)