PRESERVATION OF NATIONAL ASSETS

I am very concer that so many of our National Assets have been given away to cronies and opportunists in the past, willy nilly by the Powers that be, that I feel the time has come for a general realisation for some form of Constitutional Amendment to be put in place so that no such abuse will ever happen again. I do not think I need to give examples of these abuses, lest such examples will open raw wounds in our memory.

However the recent attempt to exchange the campus of the University of Malaya in Pantai Valley with some tracts of land in Sepang is another example of what some greedy corporate entity can contrive to deprive our nation of our National Assets. If this was not vehemently objected to by all sections of society, this campus would have been sacrificed in the name of economic progress. Can we not learn from the developed nations how their historical sites and institutions of higher learning are preserved for posterity?

I would like to strongly suggest that the release of National Assets for uses other than what they were originally set up for should be made only after a referendum where every adult citizen should be allowed to vote on the issue. Only on getting majority vote can the release be approved.

MSAbdullah.