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I refer to the letter Dr M kept man-in-street happy and have my reservations on the writer's view that 'no matter how Dr M spent funds from the country's coffer, he did not burden the rakyat'.

Dr M's mega-projects, touted as world-class, had a very high foreign content and were a major drain on our currency reserves. This invited currency predators like George Sorros to attack the ringgit and its value dwindled. Capital control was introduced to stabilise our currency.

The result of this was that interest rates were slashed, thousand of retirees living on interest-based income suffered, million of thrifty housewives who saved with banks suffered and millions of EPF contributors had their interest earned on contributions reduced.

The ones who benefitted were the business tycoons who needed to pay lesser interest on their bank loans. Mahathir did try to promote ' value added' downstream petroleum-based industries but with limited success. I hope Abdullah Ahmad Badawi will have better luck if he succeeds in reforming the country's investment policies.

Singapore's economics success is not only on the 'value added' front. They run their country with a business-like approach. Let me quote two examples. One (as I recall from a report) is what a retired senior executive said of SIA: "We bargain very hard when we buy aircrafts". The recent world-wide bidding for the award of their first casino licence is the other case.

The opposite happened in Malaysia. A decade or so ago, Mahathir gave a licence to someone to operate the country's second multi-million prize lottery ostensibly to wake up the government- owned Social Welfare Lottery Board.

But hardly soon after, he stopped the running of the latter by giving the excuse that it was against Islamic values to have a state-run lottery. By a stroke of the pen, to me, he denied the Lottery Board the very right to sell the business. To have an idea of the size of this loss, just check the Bursa Saham quotations for the current lottery operator's market capitalisation.

I think the ills of the country are largely due to Mahathir's relenting push to make instant bumiputera business tycoons and billionaires. But instant wealth has to come from someone's pockets. You and I know from whose - from the men-in the street's.

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