New Parliament House and Palace?

THE cost of building the new Istana Negara has doubled, with no open tender conducted for the project. The cost will exceed more than RM800millions. And yes, they are using the tax payers money.

Yet with the cost of the palace that overrun from RM400millions to more than RM800millions, they also want to build the new parliament building, and here we talk about another RM800millions. So basically they are gonna spend like RM1.6billion of the tax payers money on these two.  

Rakyat are confused with the situation of our country nowadays. One minutes they tells us that we’re about to go bankrupt if the subsidies not being cut, they tell us that the government need to save the money and spend prudently, but the next minutes they are the one who spending spree like we are the richest country in the world.

Why we need a new palace when we have two palaces, one in KL and the other in Putrajaya? And why in the world we need a new parliament house while the one that we have can still be use and just need few repairs on the roof.

Despite Idris Jala (u can read about Idris Jala plans here)issuing a caution on the dire state of our economy, they are still not getting it into their heads. Maybe Idris Jala need to study this thing again because with the spending like this, it looks like the country will be truly bankrupt, well before 2019 by the way these mammoth projects keep popping out. There is absolutely no justification whatsoever for these new projects when such buildings/facilities still exist to serve their purpose.

Buckingham Palace was built in 1703 and became the one and only official residence of the British monarch since 1837. Our new palace looked like some Disneyland Arabian fantasy. What is to happen to the old palace? Maybe we could take example from King Hussein of Jordan who donated his palace (Al-Hashmiya) to house the orphans of Amman. But are we going to do that? Well, I doubt it.

And sure the royal has got nothing to do with this. After all they change in every 5 years. Did the royalties ask for a new palace? Did they complain about the existing palace? The rakyat has not heard of any complaints from them so why build such an expensive palace only to up the cost by 100%?

And don’t forget that Samy Vellu promised it will only cost RM 400millions (read it here). Samy, maybe u better answer to those parents who were at parliament house recently asking for scholarships for their brilliant children! Do you know how many scholarships the cost of building the palace would be created for the poor children.

And I’m so confuse, why don’t they just renovate these two? Renovations to upgrade would have cost very much less than the RM1.6 billions. RM1.6 billions may be small change to people like Vincent Tan (read about Vincent Tan here) and other billionaires, but it is huge sum money for the rakyat.

And do we have leaders without analytical thinking? How they came out with RM150millions price tag to fix the roof and wiring of the current parliament house? Did they call for open tender? Or only appoint their next of kin as contractor who hardly knows anything about the work? We should be proud of what we have.

Times are bad with the country running off petro-revenue soon. The government should be practical and prudent. The country is financially weak, so please repair the current Parliament and keep using this historic building as long as possible like how the British upkeep their heritage.

We will never be able to understand this as long as we, Malaysian live. So many Malaysians are trying to make ends meet with so many consumer products going higher and higher. We have to cut subsidies of essential goods. We have to add other taxes like GST and sales tax. We cannot reduce taxes income tax or reduce taxes on the cars importation yet. We have to still give AP. We have no money to offer any scholarship to our bright students anymore. But yet, we have RM1.6billion to build a Palace and new parliament house. Must be a joke, right?

What's next? New international airport? New Dataran Merdeka? New Klang Valley MRT (mass railway transit)? Like this, there's no need to wait until 2019. Next year or before the 13^th general elections, kita sudah bankrap.