Our Tourism Minister doing a David Copperfield

I am someone that is very critical with figures especially when it s being inflated to an unbelievable extent.

On 12th January 2009, the Star newspaper quoted our Tourism Minister saying:

"Singapore contributed the largest number of visitors to Malaysia, with 11 million arrivals last year followed by Indonesia (2.428 million), Thailand (1.493 million) and Brunei (1.172 million)."

However, today, 19th January 2009 it quoted her saying:

"A total of RM21.96bil in tourism receipts were recorded from more than 16 million visitors from Singapore last year, said Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said."

Although I doubt both figures truly reflects these people as tourists, how can the figure of 11 million visitors from Singapore changed to 16 million visitors in a matter of 1 week?

Is she talking about the same Singapore?

Can it be that the Minister has been misquoted by the journalists covering these events?

Are these figures being inflated so that the Tourism Ministry is able to obtain more fund for their marketing activities or to show Malaysians that the tourism industry is in a very healthy state?

Even if we want to inflated these figures further, "tunggu la dulu sampai pembaca dah lupa statement yang mula tuuuuuu......."

(There is an old saying - "When you lie, you tend to forget what you said earlier")

Some of these politicians think that we Malaysians are so gullible or stupid??????

Well, maybe we are..... Maybe that is why Barisan lost most of its seats in the election........ because Malaysians are so stupid that we mark our crosses at the wrong places.