This is a central dilemma: power is too lucrative for anyone to walk away without a shove from the electorate. Some parties have also begun to believe that they can purchase enough voters to ensure victory, but such are the illusions that money tends to induce.
Perhaps our politicians should learn to laugh. It is a good antidote to self-importance. Clemenceau, prime minister of France during World War 1 and a hero to his nation, said, wistfully, upon seeing a pretty girl when he was 80, "Oh to be 70 again!"
Like a good Frenchman, Clemenceau had interests that were larger than politics.
Lynas Corp has told residents living near its rare earth plant in Kuantan that its RM1 billion investment into the Gebeng industrial zone will be a boon, not bane, for their future despite fears of its radioactive effects.
The Australian miner says its RM700 million refinery and other investments will be “the foundation industry for other high-technology industries that use rare earth.”
“This will be of benefit to the next generation of Malaysians,” executive chairman Nicholas Curtis told The Malaysian Insider in an interview yesterday, adding that the multiplier effect could result in double or triple the money flow from its initial investment.
“The whole momentum, the workshops we use, the equipment that needs to be built, maintenance contracts. The economic impact is far in excess of our own investment,” he said.
Curtis also insisted that the amount of thorium - the radioactive element found in virtually all rare earth deposits - that will be released from the factory would result in “zero public exposure” due to specialised storage dams it is constructing onsite. Studies say radiation is linked to diseases such as to cancer and congenital birth defects, fears of which has led environmentalists and local residents to protest against the project.
Kuantan residents examine the government's point of view before a town hall meeting to discuss the Lynas plant in Kuantan, April 5, 2011. — Picture by Jack Ooi
Nearly two decades later, the plant is still undergoing a RM303 million cleanup exercise and has been linked to at least eight cases of leukemia, with seven resulting in death.
Although reports say that the plant may generate revenues amounting up to one per cent of the Malaysian GDP, critics have questioned the real economic benefit of the project, pointing to the 12-year tax holiday Lynas will receive after being accorded pioneer status.
However, the government has estimated RM2.3 billion in investments spinning off from the plant that will be ready for operations in September after over two years of construction.
Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Datuk Seri Maximus Johnity Ongkili told Parliament last month that RM300 million has already been poured in for two factories in Gebeng that will produce the hydrochloric and sulphuric acid needed to extract the rare earth metals.
Curtis said yesterday that the plant would position Malaysia as a prime hub for high-technology industry as rare earth metals are crucial in applications ranging from the automotive, energy and electronics sectors.
Lynas plans for its Gebeng plant to supply one-third of global rare earth demand outside of China by 2013, with California being the only other site outside of the Asian giant with a similar kind of deposit the company says has low enough thorium levels to be processed safely.
curtis reassuring Gebeng residents about the benefits of the plant. — Picture by Jack Ooi
“When the full value chain is here, that’s 2020, that’s knowledge society,” Curtis said, referencing Malaysia’s plan to be a developed, high-income nation in nine years.
He said that the Gebeng industrial zone could grow into a hub for research and development (R&D), resulting in “distinctive Malaysian intellectual property” as rare earth metals was making cutting-edge products like smartphones, hybrid cars and laptops possible.
Curtis said that of the 350 skilled workers the plant would hire, only a handful of R&D staff would be non-Malaysian, who will be given “the best knowledge in the world on the processing of rare earths and the potential to modify those processes to meet special application needs.”
Asked if there was the right skills in Malaysia to fill those positions, he replied, “We advertised for 30 positions last week and received 10 Malaysian applicants per position.”
“I firmly believe that the best people to run a plant in Malaysia are Malaysians. It’s their home, they will look after it as though it is their home and they will actually be proud of it,” Curtis said.
Anderson laughed at Indian law and State
By M J AkbarA nation that cannot uphold its law cannot preserve its order. When Anderson was smuggled out to safety, the authority of state abandoned the responsibility of state. Excuses, evasions and lies have shifted over 26 years; this central truth has not.
It is odd that the government should have chosen law and order as its final alibi after some exhausting self-laceration in its search for a credible explanation for the escape of Union Carbide’s Warren Anderson on December 7, 1984.
Why do we say “law and order” rather than “order and law”? Simple. Law comes before order. Law defines the nature of order. Law is the difference between civilization and chaos. Law is evolutionary: the edicts of tribes, chiefs and dynasties lifted human societies from scattered peril to structured coexistence. The laws of democracy have vaulted us to the acme of social cohesion, for they eliminated arbitrary diktat and introduced collective will. The divine right of kings is dead; it has been reborn as the secular right of an elected Parliament.
A nation that cannot uphold its law cannot preserve its order. When Anderson was smuggled out to safety, the authority of state abandoned the responsibility of state. Excuses, evasions and lies have shifted over 26 years; this central truth has not.
Unsurprisingly, Anderson sneered at the establishment that knelt before him; contempt is the umbilical chord of the colonial, or neo-colonial, relationship. The crux of the Bhopal tragedy is summed up in a few sentences uttered by Anderson as he was escorted out of India on December 7, 1984: “House arrest or no house arrest, or bail or no bail, I am free to go home…There is a law of the United States… India, bye bye, thank you.”
‘House or no house arrest’: he could not care a damn about those funny-looking policemen (in lathis and khaki shorts?) who had dared to arrest a pillar of the American corporate establishment. ‘Bail or no bail’: what was a rotten piece of paper signed in an Indian court worth to a lord of Wall Street? Not even the decency of silence. Anderson was publicly, even proudly, contemptuous of those who did not have the courage to interrupt his freedom for a mere industrial disaster in which a few thousand semi-slave Indians had been gassed to death within hours and thousands more would die over years.
‘There is a law in the United States’: Anderson had twigged on to a basic truth that the law is a malleable reality for those who are “well-connected” in India. How could Anderson have respect for India’s law when those entrusted with its sanctity had defiled it? Anderson laughed at Indian law, and jeered at the Indian state. Compare this with the fact that his company was scared witless at the prospect of an American trial. Carbide fought hard, and successfully, with predictable help from a comprador Indian establishment, to shift the trial from America to India. Their subsequent collusion with Indian courts touched Supreme heights.
British Petroleum knew the perils of entanglement with American justice and shelled out within six weeks of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Big Oil (which is far bigger than Big Chemical) has been forced to put aside $20 billion for the repair of the environment after an ecological disaster that has not killed a single innocent human being. Technically, BP need not have paid more than $75 million. The first demand on Carbide, 26 years ago was for $15 billion. It has paid the equivalent of just one billion dollars (at today’s prices) for the death of nearly 20,000 people and the horrific maiming of over 100,000.
Barack Obama slipped on a bit of oil himself when the spill began. He thought playing to the gallery would subdue the clamour, while BP contained the damage. He upped the ante (it became an environmental 9/11) even while his National Guard helped BP by hiding affected bird-life from media cameras. Obama began to taunt the British in British Petroleum, perhaps because he found it easier to attack a nation than a multinational; but public opinion was not to be mollified by rhetoric.
BP paid America out of fear, not because of a demand order from its conscience. Carbide had nothing to fear, and never possessed a conscience. QED. BP will not pay a dividend this year. Carbide paid a dividend even after Bhopal.
‘India, bye bye, thank you’: those famous last Anderson words. Bye bye; this is a divorce, not a separation. There might be some alimony in it, but don’t start shopping until the cheque is in the bank.
Accusation is the easy exit route from Bhopal. Introspection will take us back to the beginning. Betrayal is impossible without trust. We did not trust Carbide to be honest. We trusted our political class, and it continues to search for new and inventive ways to betray us again.
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