Story of Barded Wire at Padang Merdeka

Padang Merdeka is the prime field for Kota Kinabalu and Sabah.

Padang Merdeka means Independence Field.

In order to keep maintainance cost down, they had to keep outsiders from using the field without any authorisation.

Despite these barbed wire, my children fly remote control x-wing plane there because we need the sheltered and open space there.

This is in contrast to the olden days, when many people will play at fields all over Sabah when afternoon comes. It is now very expensive in order to pay at fields. They are kept vacant although people cannot afford to use these fields.

Fields such as this Padang Merdeka is not built from expensive astro turf. Just look at the quality of grass there. It is not of the highest quality. In fact the barded wire and maintenance cost of keeping these wires will be more expensive than letting people use these fields whenever there are no functions like the days before, especially when Sabah was Colonised by Britain.

Sabahans will laugh at the suggestion but results speak louder than any argument. The state government is so bad financially that it cannot afford to maintain fields for the public free of charge. They are under the siege mentality.

Our economy is so bad that people cannot afford to pay high rates. The economy is bad not because Sabah does not have any resources. We have land filled with oil palm, sea filled with oil but these resources do not go to the people of Sabah.

These bleeding out of fund is far worse than corruption. Corruption, where the money remains in the state, will generate our economy. At least people will enjoy business as people spend their money inside Sabah. Any outflow of fund will not generate any business opportunity and therefore will increase the number of unemployments.

Our relatives and children have to work outside Sabah while we work at much lower pay. Cost of living will be low but this is not a good indicator of economic well being.

We cannot blame our politicians for being corrupt. Partly because there is little money to go around and too many voters to service at such large areas.

We must blame the federal government for not allocating Sabah, what is due to it, as guaranteed by the Malaysian constitution, and failing to honour the promise for even one Free Trade Zone.

There are many violations of the Malaysian constitution, such as the under allocation of Parliamentary and State seats that do not commensurate with the cost of servicing voters, as guaranteed by the constitution. It is up to the voters to demand these instead of believing in the lies brought out that it is due to the incompetent politicians.

Politicians are hard working people but they must survive in order to be respected.