Housing and local government minister Nga Kor Ming wants a tiktoker to be punished because of his or her unsavoury comments about his MyKiosk initiative.
He has instructed the local government department to track down the TikToker and collect the videos containing the tiktokers supposedly false and defamatory allegation about the MyKiosk project, before warning that his ministry would be filing a report with the police and the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission soon.
“If you dare to spread false information, be prepared to face the consequences,” he told reporters after the pre-launch of the 2025 Minister’s Excellence Awards and Media Excellence Awards ceremony at the ministry here today.
Uncowed by Nga’s threat, Pahang MCA Youth chief, Wong Siew Mun was reported to have expressed readiness to walk into the MACC office alongside DAP members to assist in the investigation into the RM250 million MyKiosk project.
Why, Wong Siew Mun insists, was the government paying RM25,000 to RM34,000 per kiosk when the market price was only RM12,800 per unit.
Nga of course had a reply. According to him, the RM25,000 figure being used to criticise the project was misleading, because that was just the price of a basic kiosk, while the kiosks provided by his administration included solar panels, fans, stoves, transportation, installation, and location set-up.
So whose is right or wrong in this case?
Well, in the way I see it, I really don’t think the question of who is right or wrong arises in this sort of matter.
The truth is that in this world, nobody fully knows the correlation between price and value.
One cup of Teh Tarik that you drink in one Nasi Kandar will be priced at 2.30 ringgit while it will be priced as 4.60 in another. The question of who is right or wrong in the pricing of the Teh Tarik however, will not arise, simply because the correlation between the value that the Teh Tarik offers and its price is subjective.
In other words, there is no one that can say whether charging RM 4.60 for a Teh Tarik is wrong, when it is only being charged RM 2.30 somewhere else, because nobody can say what is the direct correlation between price and value.
Value can change by location, time and circumstances. The same coffee that you drink in Sungai Petani will probably cost twice as much if it is served in Mont Kiara. A grab ride from point A to point B will cost you differently depending on whether you booked the right in the morning or past midnight. Heck, even a glass of water can have a different value at a different time. You might expect a glass of water to be charged no more than RM 1 at a nasi kandar, but if you have been lost at sea for days, you might not mind paying RM 10, 000, for that same glass of water.
If you ask me, If Nga’s 7000 plus MyKiosk enabled 7000 B40 families who had lost hope in themselves or lost the motivation to better themselves, to regain their hope and motivation, even RM 50,000 per kiosk, what more RM 25, 000, would have been worth it.
But if the kiosks caused 7000 families who were starting to lose hope and motivation, to completely lose motivation, even if it was provided free of charge, it still would have cost too much.
So rather than focus on what the price of these kiosks are, I think the better thing to do is to focus on the value that these kiosks offer.
Value is something that stands the test of experience. A glass of water when you are dying of thirst or an encouraging word when you are losing hope in yourself, is of infinite value, that will have a lasting impression on those who have received it. On the other hand, the same glass of water will have little to no value if it is offered to you when you just finished a hearty meal, just as how all the encouraging words that you can find in a dictionary will be of no value, when it is offered to someone who has already succeeded.
One of the signs that we are focused on creating value that stands the test of experience, rather than simply creating an image, to produce an illusion of value, is that we will allow free speech to reign.
If Nga truly believes that his kiosks are capable of generating true and meaningful value, he should just let the tiktokers or whoever just say whatever they want to say, because the value that he provides with his kiosks, will speak for itself.
When I write in Newswav, I am also trying to produce food for thoughts that will register in the experience of my readers. Just because I am trying to do so, it doesn’t mean that all my readers will appreciate what I am trying to do. Some will say all sorts of things to dismiss the value of my writing. But despite that, because I believe in the value I offer, I am still writing anyway, and I am, I have to say, still doing very well in Newswav.
In the same way, just because a tiktoker is giving negative feedback about Nga’s kiosks, Nga shouldn't focus on it, if he truly believes that he is providing value with his initiative. Instead, he should just have faith that the value he produces will win the appreciation of the people, rather than assume that people will just believe what a tiktoker says.
He should follow the example of Nurul Izzah, who asked for MACC to not investigate a social media influencer, simply because the social media influencer had cast negative aspersions on Nurul Izzah.
Nurul Izzah’s action is the enlightened action of someone who is intent on creating value that will register in the experience of another person. It is the action of someone who is confident that they have what it takes to offer value to the people and who have faith that if they are able to offer true and meaningful value to the people, the value that they can create will be able to withstand any negative aspersions that anyone can cast on themselves or their output.
If Nga truly believes that his output has value, like Nurul Izzah, he should just trust in his work, trust in the people and say “other people’s opinion is a reflection of them, not a reflection of me,” and leave it at that.
If he believes that he has to shut other people’s opinion about his output, because he thinks people are so gullible or naïve, that they will believe the views of a tiktoker more than they will their own experience, then he has no faith in the people.
Why would anyone need a leader that has no faith in them? What possibly good can come out of such a leader?
Either he has no faith in the people, or he has no faith in himself or his output. He probably has no faith in himself or his output, because either he does not believe in himself or because he has no intention to create any value through his output in the first place.
One of the biggest problem in Malaysia today is that we have too many people who have no capacity to create any value that will register in the experience of others, but have such an exaggerated sense of self-importance, that they believe that they are entitled to high position, status, wealth, prestige, name and authority anyway.
What these people will do in order to gain position, status and prestige, is create an illusion or image of being able to produce value, without having the capacity to create any true or meaningful value.
It is usually these sort of people that will want free speech to be banned, by calling any views that question their ability to produce real and meaningful value, as defamation or slander or whatnot.
When you are intent on creating value that will register in the experience of another person, you will want everybody to think freely, even if it means that you will have to suffer from negative views by some people from time to time.
When you have no intention of creating value, but only desire to create an image or illusion of being able to provide value however, then you will not want even one person to think freely, because you will be afraid that if even just one person were to point out the fact that you have no capacity of generating value, like the emperor with no clothes, everybody will be able to see how naked of talent and skills you truly are.
One of the biggest problems with Mahathirism, is that it created too many people who, despite having a low capacity of creating value, entertain an exaggerated sense of self-importance.
If Nurul Izzah wishes to carry the torch of Reformasi, one of the things that she will have to reform is that – she will have to be an example of a leader who focuses on providing value that stands the test of experience, rather than indulge in a sense of self importance, by spending all her time, resources, energy and effort, merely to build an image or illusion of ability and competence.
I, for now at least, have faith that Nurul Izzah will be able to provide that example, if she is given the chance.
I only hope that other than her, other leaders in Reformasi and PH, like Nga Kor Ming, will also play their part to make a meaningful change, to reform the country and turn things around for the country.
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