Pening Kepala - Whither Malaysia ?
The decision to reconvene parliament was made only after a 3rd reminder from the Yang Di-Pertuan Agong.
Speculations of 2 UMNO ministers and 5 MPs withdrawing from the PN government are also turning the rumour mill into a frenzy. There is a ‘Fly a Black Flag’ campaign to pressure PM Muhyiddin Yassin to step down and rumours are swirling that ‘numero uno’ is not in the best of physical condition. All these are not making living conditions any better for the B60 households and those in the lower rung M30 category.
You will notice here that I have chosen to use B60 and M30 instead of B40 and M40 as these new terms are a more accurate representation of the actual conditions under the present situation.The only initiative by anybody that makes sense and which actually brings some measure of relief to the hard pressed rakyat is the ‘Fly The White Flag’ campaign.
To the disbelief of right-minded Malaysians, this campaign was attacked and heavily criticised by leaders of Perikatan Nasional (PN), notably from PAS and PBB/GPS. Leaders of PN from PAS famously or rather infamously said Malaysians should pray hard and not fly white flags and that in one state, the Menteri Besar said the state government will not recognise the white flag as a signal for assistance. A PBB/GPS leader even stated that it is not a local culture to fly white flags for help.
The reason for the attack is painfully obvious: this Covid.19 pandemic has exposed the multi-faceted weaknesses and failures of the PN government, a back-door government formed with the help of Kingmaker GPS. To attack this ‘Kita Jaga Kita’ or ‘Kita Tolong Kita’, the only genuine perihatin raykat initiative from the rakyat themselves qualifies to be called the worst of all below-the-belt punch that a government can inflict on the rakyat.
In a news report which suggested a national news agency as the source, the PN federal government attempted to shift the blame to the Barisan National (BN) and to the 22 month-old PH government. It mentioned that, ‘to be fair, the government has entered the crisis on a weak financing footing, following decades of financial scandals, overspending, over-borrowing and financial imprudence under previous governments….We have had so many financial scandals and weak fiscal management in the past that the country's financial resources had been severely drained even before COVID-19 hit our shores’.
Talk about slapping your own face.
How did we end up with this kind of government, a government so clueless, so incompetent? If they had spent just 6% of RM530 billion ( RM31.8 billion) during the 3-month period, from April 2020 to June 2020, we will not be in this shithole right now. Malaysia’s economy will not ground to a near standstill state for close to one and a half year, the national treasury will not dry up like a stone-under-the sun and the government debts to GDP ratio will not have to be revised to such a frightening level.
Just in case you are wondering where I pluck the RM31.8 billion figure from, the starting point is Malaysia’s population for 2021 which was estimated at 32,781,744. The average Malaysian household has 4 people. That gives a total of 4,917,500 households. A PCR test kit cost RM150 each. If the government had decided to mass-test the entire population during the first 3 months of the pandemic in Malaysia, it would have cost the government RM5 billion. A Pfizer Biotech vaccine under COVAX cost RM100 per dose. At 2 doses per eligible citizen, it would have at the most be RM7 billion. If the government had decided to lock down for the 3 months and gave all affected B60 families cash aid of RM1000 per household for 3 months, it would have cost RM15 billion, including a contingency allocation of RM 3 billion, the most we are looking at is RM31.8 billion.
The words of a timbalan menteri in the health ministry is one clear indication of the kind of government that we have. In August 2021, deputy health minister Aaron Ago Dagang said that Malaysia was only conducting 5,000 to 6,000 tests a day as he said that there was no need to waste money and resources on more testing.
https://codeblue.galencentre.org/2020/10/16/malaysia-using-half-of-covid-19-testing-capacity/
Back to the question of how we ended up with this kind of government, the answer is to be found in Sarawak.
The PN government would not have entered our lives had it not been for the role played by Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS). It was a tragic day when they decided to use (or misuse) their kingmaker status to back up a bunch of politicians whose background are at best questionable, to form a government that does not have a mandate from the people.
And when it matters most, GPS has chosen to remain conspicuously silent to all these glaringly unhealthy and unethical political maneuverings ?
Doesn’t this remind us of the adage – ‘silence means consent’ ?
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