Every cloud has a silver lining and indeed the recent world economic recession has had a very beneficial side effect on Sarawak and its people in that it has probably caused the postponement and hopefully eventual cancellation of the Bintulu aluminium smelter.

The whole saga of the Bakun dam and others like it in Sarawak have been a sad and dismal result of the policies of our corrupt government.

The construction of the Bakun dam was never a rational act in that Sarawak just does not need all the electricity that it is going to produce and so it must only be viewed as yet another of the mega projects for which Malaysia is so notorious.

The main reason behind such mega projects is that they create huge contracts which are then used to launder money to the politicians and their cronies - the ordinary people only get a few crumbs from such projects and in the case of the Bakun dam, whole communities are displaced and marginalised from their ancestral and traditional lands.

But having created the Bakun dam and its 2,000 plus megawatts of power, there is now the problem with what to do with all this power.

The correct decision would be for the government to construct and then operate a major network of public transport facilities (trains, trams, buses, etc,) which would utilise all this power for the benefit of the hundreds of thousands of people of Kuching, Sibu, Bintulu, Miri and surrounding areas.

But there is a problem here. Such a socially beneficial and responsible policy would do little for the likes of Taib Mahmud, his family and cronies. Much better to do a deal with Rio Tinto Zinc to build an aluminium smelter. The huge contract will then generate ongoing profit for his family, using our electricity from Bakun.

A comprehensive public transport system would reduce carbon emissions, reduce air pollution, reduce road traffic, increase the quality of life for all the people of Sarawak and provide tens of thousands of jobs for ordinary Sarawakians.

An aluminium smelter will increase carbon emissions, hugely increase air pollution, reduce the quality of life for the people of Sarawak, provide only a few hundred jobs, but of course most importantly add to the pile of money that those in power have amassed from their nearly thirty years in power.

So here is one great benefit of the global economic slowdown - no aluminium smelter for Sarawak.