In Malaysia, the poor gets poorer

By Mohd Ariff Sabri Aziz

All those swanky acronyms linked to Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak's economic transformation agenda has done little except push up the prices of the poor man's meal.

Have you been to the market lately? Let me enlighten you on some costs. Ikan Kembong (fish) is now RM17 a kilo, can you believe this?

One kilo will give you five to six fishes. In the kampung where a family is easily seven members, it means only one meal because growing children have healthy appetites.

The price of sugar, which is now a monopoly business under Pak Habib Bukhary (Syed Bukhary) , has shot up. When it was under Uncle Robert (Kuok), sugar prices were lower.

Rice too has gone up. A regular 5kg packet has risen by RM7 ringgit.

Since Najib came in subsidies have been taken away and prices of everyday necessities have gone up.

Don’t forget we’re still paying far more than we should for fuel, considering we are an oil-and gas nation.

Tell me the people are not suffering. What game is Najib Tun Razak playing?

How can the he boast that his economic plans are successful when a single ringgit has almost no purchase value anymore.

This is the underlying truth that is threatening Umno and the fact that the Malay masses are more knowing now. They are aware of how Umno operates. They know that Umno spins lies and is devoid of principles.

Umno, they realise has lost its ABCs of the original struggle inked out by its fathers in 1957.

After 50 years of suffering, corruption, thieving and plundering, do we still want to put our trust in the old driver who’s been schooled in the ways of a robber?

I re-read the 2012 budget and nowhere does it reflect the “lightening allocations” that have suddenly been made available to the Najib and his deputy Muhyddin Yassin.

Where did the RM600 million which both leaders freely distributed over the past 11 weeks come from?
It didn’t come from government coffers because parliament would have had to pass this budget. And it did,

I’m sure, come from their own personal savings, although it is common knowledge that both are very wealthy.

It must have come from the overpriced purchases that the Najib-administration is now famous for.

‘Outa’ leaders ruling nation

In which case can we trust a driver like Najib?

In the 2008 general election, artful gerrymandering by Umno and Barisan Nasional saved Najib from becoming an Opposition Leader. The fact is that Umno and BN only got 49% of the popular votes then.

Since then the BN coalition has acquired a new component – meet the SPR (Election Commission). Now BN is a 15-component partners.

This BN government has just too many “outa” leaders. This government led by Najib and his deputy Muhyddin Yassin has never been final. They are always flip flopping on their decisions.

A former finance minister once told me that Najib is a worse flip-flop that Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

Apparently Najib has far more “advisors” than Badawi did on his infamous 4th floor.

Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein too has proven to be sub-standard compared to his father former premier Tun Hussein Onn.

Hisham is constantly volleying over scandal-ridden PDRM. The public are waiting to see if he will set upa commission to investigate allegations that a former IGP was in cohorst with local syndicates.

The morale among the police has dropped sharply following these allegations. Minister in the PM’s Department Nazri Aziz, has as usual shot-off his mouth without thinking.

Muhyiddin, as the Education Minister, used a weak research to defend our education system. He claims we have an education system that is on par with the US, UK and Germany.

Najib, the thinker?

Please tell that to the thousands of Malay graduates who can’t get jobs and who are forced to work in Old Town White Coffee!

It’s hard to tell which one of these “lead” ministers take the cake on the “stupidity” or “outa” scale.

Maybe we should just wait for the release of the Nobel prize winners list. Afterall, isn’t our education system on par with the first world nations as declared by the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia himself?

And lets not forget that our chief mini bus driver of the nation has told parliament that purchase of the scorpene submarine was a “clean deal” when the court in France has found official proof of a bribe. In which case what was the money paid to Razak Baginda for?

Najib must think Malaysians are fools. The exotic acronyms – ETP, NKRA, NKEA – and whatever else titles are only terms used by Najib to show-himself off as a ‘thinker’.

But ‘thinking’ is not exclusive to Najib, is it?

Mohd Ariff Sabri Aziz was a former Umno member.