Tourism industry being sabotaged?

Well, it seems like the new state government's one month anniversary is celebrated by an apparent sabotage by those we often identified as sore losers.

First the tourism minister decided to cancel all the MoUs with the five Opposition states and then cut all ties between tourism action councils and the states which I wrote about here.

Then recently, seems like the Penang Tourism Action Council or PTAC is following 'silent' orders to clearly sabotage the state government. Never mind that it affects the tourism industry and ultimately the people. What's important to them, it seems, is to put the state government in a bad light.

How did they do this?

Simple.

By not cooperating with the state exco.

By not providing the correct information to the state exco.

By not even bothering to inform the state exco anything about upcoming tourism events in the state.

Sure, they don't have to report to the state exco now, but hey, the events are being held in Penang so isn't it common courtesy to at least inform the state government?

Also, it seems that they have not received any black and white directive from the tourism ministry to stop reporting to the state governments. Technically, they still need to report to the state government until they get the formal directive. But then of course, we knowla how great our Malaysian system is. Spoken directives, some more through the media, is sometimes sufficient. Then when something go wrong, they blame the media for misquoting them!

So, recently, through the mysterious workings of certain parties, there was quite a stir over a minor issue which escalated to a huge word war. It was damn ugly and not in the least good for the one-month-old state administration. Not a very good mua guik / moon yut (Hokkien /Cantonese for full-moon) present hey?

It is quite an interesting story. First, they (PTAC) send out a press invitation to all the media for some tourism event to be held at 7am to welcome about 3,000 tourists arriving on a luxury cruise liner which is berthing in Penang for the first time.

Naturally, all the media assumed the tourism exco or even a representative will be present, as is the norm.

Ah, then this is where it gets interesting. The invite never got out to the tourism exco (Danny Law) or his representative. There was a separate invite from the cruise liner to Danny for another event onboard the ship at 10am so he had already asked a representative (Jagdeep) to go on his behalf as he was outstation at that time.

Now, some of the media who went to the 7am function were puzzled as to why no representatives from the state government were there. They waited and waited and still, no sign of anyone except for the tourists.

So, they became pissed, thinking 'what an arrogant lousy state government, didn't even bother to send a representative to welcome these tourists when they are the ones who organise this welcome ceremony'

Well, most of them waited to attend the 10am function and since Jagdeep was there, they quickly forgot about the 7am function. BUT two other papers and no, strangely, it is not The Star or Utusan, didn't wait for the 10am function and had straightaway assumed the worst.

The two Chinese vernacular papers wrote scathing articles about the whole thing. One article even have the headline 'Are they sleeping?'. It was not good for the new state government. So, Danny called them up and clarified that he was not invited to the 7am function but the 10am function in which Jagdeep went.

Now, the issue would have been settled there and then but sad to say, due to human error and probably his lawyerly streak, Jagdeep called a press conference to give the two papers a piece of his mind and demanded for a correction. Needless to say, it all ended badly with the reporters shouting at him and him (stupidly) using the 'I do not want to resort to the courts for this issue'.

To cut a long story short, the Chinese papers reporters became even more pissed with that statement and wrote even more scathing articles about how the new state government does not support freedom of speech.

Poor Danny was scrambling around apologising and trying to put things right again but we all know, reporters aren't easily appeased. You see, this whole debacle may seem like some petty fights between an assemblyman and some reporters but if you look closely and think, what is the cause of it?

Yep, the main cause was the media being invited for an event while the assemblymen wasn't and the media was misled into thinking at least one assemblyman would be present at the event. This showed an obvious sabotage attempt using the media who readily play up to the expectations of the saboteur. The end result with bad blood between some reporters and the assemblyman must have been a bonus !

My guess is this is only the first step. More will probably come. Just think. The Penang World Music Festival is coming up in a month but the state government wasn't privy to anything about the event because PTAC decided not to share it. If the event flops, they will readily blame it on the government administration.

Yep, methinks there is some ongoing sabotage and I can only hope LGE or Danny wise up to it and think of something to combat this!