YOURSAY | No surprise that S'pore beat us in the race for vaccines

YOURSAY | 'Khairy's pathetic lament that Singapore has 'deep pockets' is a national affront…'

Why M'sia lags months behind S'pore in getting Covid-19 vaccine

Aegis: This is nonsense. Singapore and others get the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine early because they have the urgency and competency to resolve a problem.

The return you get when a country gets its economy back two or three months earlier far outstrips the investment. This is simple mathematics.

See what they did to secure the vaccine early. Our government allocated the fund for the vaccine, but took its own sweet time to come up with a vaccination plan. The rakyat suffer again.

Vijay47: In fairness to you, Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin, that Singapore “inked the Pfizer agreement” months earlier than we, is six of one and half-a-dozen of the other.

Had there been subsequent problems of pricing and vaccine-efficacy, Singapore would have had egg on its face and you would have been regarded as Pahlawan Negara, complete with silver keris and all.

In the event, that little annoying island comes out looking excellent in being pro-active and efficient in making international arrangements to take on Covid-19. So I will let that slide. C’est la vie.

But your pathetic lament that Singapore has “deep pockets” is a national affront, coming as it does on the heels of rumours that Malaysia is to be the beneficiary of donations from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Have we come to this, Khairy? Has a once proud, prosperous nation been reduced to the sad status of being Asia’s beggar, songkok in hand, and in the words of Henry Kissinger, a basket case?

Shameful as this deterioration is, much worse are the reasons for our fall into mendicancy.

We are now in this contemptible state only because of that alleged monument to corruption, Umno, the party you wear so proudly on your sleeve.

One would have thought that having a prime minister convicted seven times over for financial depravity would have been lesson enough.

On the contrary, it seems to have mutated into an impetus for even more vermin to leap onto the gravy train, making hay while the sun shines, looting while the virus ravages.

Does our leadership care? Like bloody hell they do. Our political elite appear to be still committed to making money on both the swings and the merry-go-round.

Jedi Yoda: While Singapore has deep pockets (due to decades of careful planning by relatively competent MPs), Malaysia is in deep s**t (due to the backdoor coup by greedy MPs).

While the Singapore Parliament was in top gear debating and making decisions on anything Covid in April, the Malaysian Parliament was in sleeping mode, not convening any sitting for months by the Muhyiddin Yassin government in fear of losing power.

Dummies Dhimmi: Nothing like a real problem, especially a global one which pits us against the world, to shed light on incompetence. Sheer incompetence.

If we were like any other oil-producing country like Norway, we would have had riches beyond counting, had we not turned a blind eye to massive corruption.

If we had a government with even a small brain, we would be on par or above par with countries like Singapore.

The predicament we are in is the sum total in negligence of greed and stupidity in the years of poor governance. We were led by greedy politicians mostly leading us with a crutch mentality and stupid policies.

Now we hear of empty pockets in our resource-rich nation against a nation with deep pockets but with zero resources. A country that has to buy water from us to survive.

We boast of supporting the largest number of royalty, super-rich politicians and cronies, but we cannot buy medicine for the people.

Our neighbours and the world laugh at us for supporting mediocrity. We will suffer this - the rakyat always does and will pay with our lives as well.

Enlightened Globalist: We are an upper-middle-income nation and should be able to afford the vaccine. Otherwise, ask former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak to return some of the missing 1MDB money.

I think the truth is that the government was sleeping on the job. Khairy, the Health Ministry and the Health DG should have started the process months ago. Now Khairy is giving the excuse of lack of funds.

JW: Singapore beat us again. We don't have deep pockets because we cannot grow and manage the economy as well, despite having a lot more natural resources and people.

Instead, Malaysia has the crippling amount of siphoning due to all levels of corruption in government, and because our lack of meritocracy has failed the economy.

If we have a thriving economy but still cannot get the vaccine as fast as Singapore, then, Khairy must be sleeping on the job.

Otherwise, how come Singapore was able to ink a deal with Pfizer months earlier? What were you doing months earlier, Khairy, if not snoozing?

OCT: Singapore has deep pockets. So do we. Our ministers have deep pockets but not the nation. Most of our contracts are opaque whereas other countries have transparency, which can be disclosed in Parliament.

In every crisis, our MPs create the opportunity to make extra for themselves. Have the rakyat seen any of our ministers in jail for any crime?

Our ministers are super clean and honest. Trust them and vote them in again. You cannot have a better group than the current bunch.

Jetson: We should be one of the nations with deep pockets until Dr Mahathir Mohamad took over and swept many corruption issues under the rug.

From that day onwards, subsequent leaders had treated the Treasury as their personal asset and today we have to queue in line for the Covid-19 vaccine.

How to blame Pfizer for not trusting us, as they would want to see the money upfront first before they deliver.

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