Rail-ly Rafizi?

In yet another one-upper, Rafizi Ramil has announced that Pakatan Rakyat will build a high-speed interstate rail, in which he claims is much needed compared to the high-speed rail recently announced by PM Najib and PM Lee Hsien Loong.

So which administration is more likely to succeed given the manner of how projects are announced?

Unlike Rafizi's proposal, the high speed rail previously proposed by YTL is likely to have been given more thought and planning by a private conglomerate as opposed to Rafizi's awe and shock anouncement, clearly targeted at those undecided voters.

In fact, the announcement itself coming from Rafizi rather than say, Tony Pua says something about the proposal.

After all, Tony Pua is the 'advisor of ecnomic affairs' to Pakatan Rakyat, or did I get it way wrong?

When Rafizi referred to the hypotethical  proposed interstate rail as a much needed system, he also failed to see that a high buy-in to a project such as this as opposed to the Malaysian-Singapre HS Rail (MSHSR)will see an imbalanced budget for interstate travel investment. After all, such a rail system will only see passenger traffic increase as opposed to goods and passenger traffic on road expansion.

Rafizi also failed to realise that the MSHSR is part of a greater scheme of things when Malaysia agreed to the joint development of KTM Railway land in Singapore. (Did Rafizi also forget thet M-S Pte Ltd is a 60-40 joint venture between the Malaysian and Singapore government?)

Here is a timely reminder to Rafizi - Who do you think protested against Tun Mahathir when he announced the North South Expressway? And fast forward 20 years later, the volume of traffic itself indicates that the North South Highway alone is not enough. Who do you think benefitted more from this project? Had it not been, what do you think would have become of small towns like Tangkak? ( do you know that there is thriving textile industry in Tangkak?)

The narrow view of the likes of Rafizi cannot be faulted because they only see their arguments as a catalyst for their own political future, hence the 'announcements' such as these are only designed to bring maximum publicity to themselves. And the grapevine says that Pandan constituents are especially impressed when their YB hopeful can drop a line or two every now and then to make himself relevant.

(p.s Rafizi, which NGO in Pandan can you divert some of your funds to? I hear that there is an NGO wanting to fight corruption against the MPAJ where YB Ronnie is said to be 'incharge' of)