I believe it was reported in a Singapore newspaper a couple of months back that about US$3 billion has been spent thus far on the Multimedia Super Corridor. It was reported in the same article that about 70 percent of primary schools in the rural areas of the peninsula, Sabah and Sarawak are without electricity supply or access to piped water. The question of priorities inevitably arises.

The issue of the government buying back the shares of MAS from Naluri Bhd is another case in point of corporate governance and transparency gone haywire. It was reported in the Singapore papers that Tajudin Ramli had admitted to the minority shareholders of Naluri that the government did not carry out an independent valuation before deciding to buy back the MAS shares from the company at RM8 each.

It has to be admitted that MAS has been run into the ground. In terms of rankings, it has dropped out of the top 10 airlines in the Asia-Pacific region. It labours under a crippling debt load. Its cargo operations are widely regarded in the airfreight industry as a joke - anyone heard about the phenomenon of "syndicated offloading"? Experienced pilots have quit the airline to work for other airlines in the region. Its planning and marketing strategies are in shambles.

Minority shareholders have been apparently led down the garden path - the airline is doomed to be loss-making if it cannot get rid of its domestic operations - the government has admitted as much. Yet the company was listed on the KLSE on the basis of consistent and increasing profit projections, figures that in retrospect look as real as the possibility of a snow storm in downtown KL.

Yet the government has seen fit to pay RM8 per share. One wonders who will take this stake in MAS off the government's hands, and at what price. I look forward to the creative accounting that will be used to account for the difference between the buying price of RM8 per share and the eventual selling price when a foreign investor is found for MAS.