Bureaucratic theft. Devil's advocate series no 29.

1. The usual trick retort by the slippery eel-ish person when you asked an accusing question is: he will ask you back, show me the proof.

2. Have you come across a person who has done wrong will give you incriminating proof of himself?

3. We shouldn't put too much weightage to that kind of retort. We are silenced for the moment until we gather all the proof they thought to be cleverly hidden.

4. Because the proof is hidden or protected by some laws, is the reason why corruption by holders of public office proliferate.

5. These thieves and robbers think they enjoy protection and have a cloak against legal accountability.

6. Our country is rich. We have rubber, tin, minerals including rare earth, oil and so on.

7. To extract these you need licenses and concessions and approval from government departments.

8. These departments are full of thieves and robbers dressed smartly and acting tight lipped and intelligent.

9. The departments ceased to be centres dispensing economic justice and sharing economic prosperity and opportunities.

10. Instead these departments become closed shop centres where government officials indulge in investing on themselves, crafting their own financial plans to provide for their own future financial security.

11. Then upon retiring they buy 15 to 20 million bungalows in places like country heights and become neighbors to people like wak47 .

12. But they forgot they accomplished all these by crowding out and depriving the public.

13. Let me become more blunt, they accomplished all these on the industry of farmers, the labour of workers and the life endangering struggles of the fishermen and resourcefulness of entrepreneurs.

14. The wealth and properties they amassed is the product of theft.

15. That's why Pierre Joseph Proudhon says, property is theft .

16. These thieves are of course working with the connivance of wealth seeking politicians.

17. These policians are of one kind. They go to parliament or assembly and talked nonsensical issues or doze off .

18. To curb corruption , close the doors leading to it.

19. Hold periodic account and lifestyle audits. We don't have to go the extreme of executing them. The lifestyle and account audits are as good as death sentences. Followed of course by long prison sentences.

20. We have to ask the PM, his attitude on this type of corruption. He has been shouting loudly on eradicating corruption in general.

21. Are these shouts for real or are they the shouts of a reconteur dishing out flim-flam rethorics?

22. Almost always the costs of government projects are inflated to include the financial plans of government officials.

23. We have a term for these inflated costs. We termed the costs as having been UMNOnised.

24. Even worse the grand mafia conjure up projects and departments requiring massive budgets.

25 . The grand mafia then religiously 'circumcise' these budgets.

26. Jolly good sahib. Bravo !