Image sampler: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, December 2009-January 2010
"Petronas founder and veteran Umno leader Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah" declared in a major speech that Malaysia had become an "oil-cursed economy because its political leaders had squandered oil revenues and shown no accountability." Tengku Razaleigh, who was president of Petroliam Nasional when it was established in 1974, described the early vision of oil wealth as an "unearned bounty that would provide the money for modernization and technology" in a "developmental perspective." But oil wealth soon became "a fund for the whims and fancy of whoever ran the country" ... "a narcotic that provides economic quick fixes and hollow symbols such as the Petronas Towers." Oil wealth came to be used "to bail out failing companies, buy arms, build grandiose cities amidst cleared palm oil estates. Instead of helping eradicate poverty in the poorest states, our oil wealth came to be channeled into the overseas bank accounts of our political and politically-linked class." Singapore Straits Times (2009). "Malaysia an Oil-Cursed Economy: Razaleigh." The Sunday Times, December 13, p. 17.
