This recommendation is based on the view that private firms are more profit oriented, thus tend to be more efficient in carrying out the various operations of the enterprise. Developing countries improve their infrastructure using public funds derived from taxes, fees and publicly owned natural resources such as oil and timber sales.

Over a period of years the government of many developing countries becomes larded with large enterprises that are often nation-wide in scope. The government soon finds itself the owner-operator of auto plants, steel mills, railroads, airlines, trucking companies, hospitals, schools and universities, bus lines, ships, logging and oil companies (complete with refineries). The problem of transfering these large assets equitably and successfully to the private sector is thus a major undertaking.

Typically public operations will be privatised by transferring the assets to a new corporate entity. The shares will be offered to the public at a fair market price in stages, and the share price will then fluctuate on the open market according to perceptions of present and future earning potential.

But governments tend to feel threatened when the shares are bought by foreigners. There is a paranoid fear the foreigners will become re-colonisers. Therefore an effort is made to limit the number of shares allotted to foreign nationals. In addition, there may be affirmative action programs which favor one segment of the population over others, so that preferential shares are created. The equitable transfer of national assets to capable private hands is a difficult problem, and unless great care is taken to avoid it, the activity may give rise to charges of nepotism, cronyism and outright theft.

This is the unfortunate situation in Malaysia. The privatisation process is viewed with suspicion in many instances, especially when instant fortunes were given to family members and political partners. The selection of executives to provide management for the newly privatised companies is often from a narrow group of friends and old-boy acquaintances who have assisted party leaders in their rise to power.

They frequently have neither the education nor the experience to successfully manage a large organisation. The subsequent inequities which occur, and eventually become public knowledge, create rancour toward the political leaders responsible.

The public outcry for full disclosure is genuine, and the politicians who ignore these requests for transparency create deep-seated resentment. A division arises between the political leaders and the public which deteriorates into repression and tyranny. The loss of human rights can be traced to the attempt to keep secret the transactions of the finance ministry. It is said with truth that money is the root of much evil.

The prime minister of Malaysia takes personal credit for much of the privatisation that has occurred. He has selected the people who hold the majority of the shares in many cases, and he has done this in the absence of a consultative body. There is no oversight. Thus the general outrage. Many of the executives have failed to demonstrate management ability, and the enterprises entrusted to them have failed.

Their failure is traced to the prime minister, who, rather than admit mis-judgment and accept responsibility, attempts to prove himself right by entrusting additional large chunks of public money to the same individual. He has the addiction of a compulsive gambler, making heavier and heavier bets in hopes of recouping his losses, the behavioural disease made more virulent by an occassional success.

Because failure of large public utilities and other important areas of national economic activity generate widespread and unforeseeable repercussions, they become too-big-to-fail, and the government is forced to bring public funds to the rescue. Shares must be bought back to return management control to the hands of the finance minister, who cannot be happy to handle the harness of a now-hobbled horse.

He not only gets a failing company as a hard-to-hold hot potato, he must also find means to pay for it, restructure and maintain it, all in a Herculean effort to stauch the massive outflow. Valuable funds desperately needed for other tottering projects must be shifted on an emergency basis to save the pale and prostrate prodigal.

When goverment operations are transparent and all funds are openly accounted for, the public accepts the risk, with some misgivings, making generous allowances for mistakes and ineptitude. It is when the exchanges of assets and funds are kept secret, and clouds are placed to cover the transactions, that the people become first irritated, then angry.

The secrecy creates an impression that public assets are being treated as personal property, taken as a self-appraised reward for service. This impression is reinforced by the conspicuous spending of political party members and their families.

The MAS repurchase is a political fiasco for the Umno-BN party, and to this is now added the Kuala Lumpur city transit firms which have been returned to the finance ministry at enormous cost. One part, the monorail project, was allotted to a favorite flatterer, along with a huge loan to accomplish the project. But the project was not finished, and the work in progress stopped for three years "because of the fiscal crisis" that faced the country.

The public correctly notes that once the public has funded a project there can be no such excuse for not carrying it to completion. The costs were all put into the contract, and the contractor took the project and the money on favorable terms. Normally it is publicly funded projects which carry the country through difficult periods by providing employment and other economic stabilizers.

Where is the surety bond that all competent contractors put up to guarantee completion? (There is no such profitable business for the insurance companies of Malaysia. They are too busy fleecing the public of their pension funds through ill-conceived annuity schemes.) So the argument that the fiscal crisis interferred with the successful completion of the contract requires further clarification.

In a period of expansion and feverish economic activity great enthusiasm may account for imprudent decisions which are later shown to suffer from poor planning. But it is difficult to admit mistakes. It is the failure to reveal the true causes of the failures, and the arrogant insistance that no funds have been diverted to private accounts without tangible evidence, that contributes to public suspicion that political leaders have been using public funds for personal and party purposes. To this is added the bribes which come as kickbacks on large contracts, and for the approval and illegal transfer of public land and timber to private developers.

In Terengganu the records of past government mis-management have become available with a change of government. It will require a similar change in the federal government to achieve full disclosure of the mis-management and fiscal irregularities perpetrated by those who are at this moment busy covering their tracks. The strategy is to eradicate the paper trail, but today the trail is electronic, readily copied and preserved.

That a day of reckoning is ahead is more certain in this IT age. The details of illegal transactions are known to too many, and records are being kept for the day of final accounting. As the momentum for government reformation grows, more and more people forced to cooperate with thieves are finding courage to fight for a new day, a better country.