Cars

And so the drama with the (locally assembled) Mercedes Benz and the local Proton Perdana cars goes on. Many things has been said about it. It raises many questions, tho.

Like why does it cost so much to maintain the locally made cars? Especially since the car manufacturer alleges that it costs only a fraction of what is claimed to maintain them.

So either the locally made cars are really poor in quality or that someone has made a lot of money servicing these cars. Or both.

But what really irked me was when our wonderful PM allowed them to get away with it. Not even a slap on the wrist. In fact, he stopped short of praising them. He approved of their actions - he was quoted saying “I told them that the state government has not spent extravagantly and the decision to procure the Mercedes cars was done after two years of evaluation”.

However, he tells them to use the cars for foreign dignitaries only.

Yes, RM3.43 million was used to buy these cars which will only be used for foreign dignitaries - and even then, only for official functions (see here).

So 14 Mercs are to be used for that. My question - how often do foreign dignitaries visit the state of Terengganu and how many foreign dignitaries are there at any one point of time? Do we need 14 Mercs for them? Wouldn't this money be better used for other things?

Malaysia boleh!