Genovasi - The New Branded Shoes On The Block?

I have written often enough on Pm Najib, the most recently this.

The Star 2 Aug 2012

Apart from often being known as the flip-flop Pm, Najib is noted for his alphabetical soup of economic transformation plans or ETPs that few Malaysians understand and fewer still have felt their alleged salubrious or economic effects.

Just a few days ago, he came out shouting of the Rm26 billion Kuala Lumpur International Financial District now renamed Tun Razak Exchange (a tribute to his father, Tun Abdul Razak, the second Prime Minister of Malaysia), or TRX for short. It is supposed to become the world's new financial icon.

Some wise guys have joked that TRX sounds like T-Rex and would go the way of the feared dinosaur. I don't want to make fun of such a solemn venture in memory of Malaysia's second prime minister.

There are others more qualified than yours truly like DAP's Tony Pua and SakmongkolAK47  who have  given their two cents worth on TRX and I just hope, for Malaysians' sake, that the T-Rex reference is not anywhere near prophetic.

I just want to talk about Pm Najib's latest baby - Genovasi, a combi of the Malay words "generasi and inovasi" (generation and innovation for the Anglophile).

Trust Najib and his advisers to come up with such swell names. We are flooded already with such gems from Najib and his administration. And no one would be churlish enough to want to take issue with such a beauty as "genovasi". I bet even the French can't better this.

But I am digressing .

Genovasi is an ambitious (or hare-brained, depending on how you look at it) plan to develop 5000 Malaysian youths as "innovation ambassadors" (whatever that means) over a five-year period that the Star newspaper said in a report,, can take the lead in spurring progress, a better quality of life and solutions for the nation.

According to the report, Najib said that three tracks would be offered to the participants to apply their new innovation skills - community-centric projects to benefit the masses, economic-focused projects that generate new waves of wealth and government enhancement projects to help improve the delivery system.

Now, what I am wondering is whether this is an indirect admission by Najib that he and his administration have failed Malaysians in all three fronts? and now need "innovation ambassadors" to correct his and his administration's failures?

Ah, if so, that would be a nice admission for once.

But no, I don't think that is the drift.

Najib and and his advisers are full of costly and grand sounding plans and schemes that they hope and believe, Malaysians will trust in their genius.

But what can really come out of Genovasi?

Can you teach innovation? Who are the innovation expert fellows who would come to teach it to our youths, ah, our soon-to-be innovation ambassadors?

Who are these fellows who would come to our great land to impart innovation skills to us? Don't you think that if they are really great innovators themselves, they would rather impart their knowledge to their own citizens and keep the goodies for themselves?

Don't you think that our kiasu next door neighbour would not have already snapped them up before you can even utter "genovasi"?

And if the experts who come are the ones who are already past their shelf-life, don't you think that the skills or the knowledge that they can impart may no longer be all that useful or relevant or current anymore?

And if the youths whom we take in to be future innovation ambassadors are  those SPM failures or low-graders with no motivation, what can we honestly expect?