Are We Going to Bankrupt?

Now, who is right who is wrong? Are they knowing what they are talking about?

First of all, I am not economist. I do not know whether we are going to bankrupt in 9 years time as explained by Idris Jala or we are still in good shape and no risk of bankruptcy as mentioned by Najib Razak. The concern is, why can it be so simply when they announce something?

Who should we trust now?

Let see what had happened.

It was on 27 May, Bernama reported that ‘Our deficit rose to a record high of RM74 billion last year, and the nation could go bankrupt by 2019 with debts totalling RM1.158 trillion.’  That was announced by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Idris Jala.

Then what had happen? Together in the same speech, Idris had said that we need to rationalize our subsidy in order to reduce deficit and to avoid the said bankrupt situation.

And yesterday, 8 June, Bernama again reported that ‘Malaysia will not go bankrupt like Iceland and Greece following the nation’s success in maintaining its debts level under control and prudent measures taken to reduce debt rate, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak told the Dewan Rakyat."’

What a magic. We turn the economy around in less than 2 weeks time.

So what is our current financial standing then?

From a layman understanding, I suspect that:

1. At first, the ‘bankruptcy’ talk was a try to convince the people that we have to accept the fact that government need to reduce subsidy for us.

2. Unexpectedly too much objection to the statement above especially voices said why cut subsidy for people instead of reduce wastage in non productive projects and corruption?

3. People start to blame BN poor administration that has cause the problem and eventually putting people into suffer.

3. It must be too much of pressured felt by Najib and due to worry of losing votes, he have to deny the statement by coming out some other statements.

Conclusion: they do not know where we are now and do not know how to continue administer the economy effectively. All we see our government currently doing is ‘test water’ and react to the situation, not proactively control it.

PS: If we are so in deep shxt, why the hess we plan to spend money on building a new Parliament building, now (Bernama, June 9)? Is that really necessary? Weren’t we just spent quite a big buck to renovate the existing premise some years ago?

Potong ke Tak? Cut or Don’t Cut??

Remember there was classic advertisement – the ‘Potong’ series?

Now we have another big discussion about cutting things. This time around, they want to cut the subsidy.

Well, cutting subsidy is good move to normalize the country economy. It helps government to have better cash flow to be allocated to more needy areas like infrastructure, education, medical services, public transportation etc.

If the implementation of subsidy demolishment is done with proper consideration of how to reduce expected impact to people as a whole, then I strongly agree that we should do it.

However, now we are at the level where our salary can’t afford the typical living cost. That’s why subsidy is so important for us. What is the strategy to overcome the situation? We don’t have any solid strategy yet on the table. We have only a slogan-type vision of increasing our income per capita to certain amount by certain number of years.

So, why talk about subsidy now? Obviously government is looking for ways to reduce expenses. We have to because we don’t have the money to spend. You might question, we are all hardworking people. Our nation is having good natural resources. What we plant, it just grow. We have oil. We have timber. We have a lot of thing people around the world keen to buy. Why we still feel we are ‘poor’?

Let me show you why. Please read the article below:

1 Million Laptops for ‘POOR’ Student?? Sure or Not??

Are they so sure that they want to spend the $$ to distribute the laptop to students? Well, I am not against the idea of helping student to own computer, and ultimately expose them to the skills of IT. But is there better way? For example, give a interest free loan instead of giving free?

After giving the computer, are they going to subsidize the Internet access as well? Basically without Internet nowadays, a computer is near to ‘useless’.

So who is going to be the supplier of the laptops? A branded company or local made ‘Cap Ayam’? Pricing wise is it reasonable? Nowadays we can get a netbook with price around RM 1,500. But remember, with a netbook, we need to acknowledge that we can’t do much more than browsing internet, doing word processing and social networking. Is that considered practical for students? For them, they might be keen to expose to more advance technology for example playing 3D games, do some graphic design, play with programming etc. We can’t really use a netbook to achieve that.

The most to worry is, it’s said to have 1 million student gonna benefit. However, who is to ensure that it’s correctly justified? What if they report as 1 million but the underlying fact is only 100k people get the laptops?

Too many question to be asked. Please don’t simply spend our $$. By the way aren’t we just been told that we need to tighten our budget deficit or else we might have to default our sovereign debts in few years time?

Some update on top of the original posting above. Still remember we had the project to provide projector, laptop to schools for teacher to use as part of high tech teaching? What I have known so far is, a lot of the projector are left unused, or at most used for watching videos during school time. Many teachers don’t know how to use computer aid teaching material to teach correctly. The laptops are out of date now and not suitable anymore. However, after spending all the money, what benefit have gain? I do not know. Maybe those in education field could share more.

Funny Side of the Story

Well, we had follow enough about Saiful and Anwar. Now it come to a juncture that it is something to be questioned to all Malaysian.

According to the ‘poor’ boy, he had been fxcked by uncle A from the backside.

He then seek advice from his uncle, his cousin, and even the Prime Minister of 1Malaysia. Indeed, nobody advice him to make police report immediately.

Reason being is, for not affecting poor Saiful’s future career.

Ok, I am not intended to question whether this is true or fake story made by Saiful together with PM of 1Malaysia + ‘First Lady’ of 1Malaysia.

My question is rather, if let say you have heard of any of your friend (sorry, this is just example.. alright), suffer from such incident, what is your immediate response?

Isn’t it make sense if you go and report to police as soon as possible to faster the process of arresting the offender? And for getting better evident to charge the offender, you quickly go to hospital to perform medical checkup and collect what ever sample it could be to prove that your charge is true?

Are we not trusting the police therefore we are reluctant to make police report? Or are we don’t trust our court to charge anybody in guilty, eg if they are famous politician? I suspect if Saiful’s story is true, then our value system is in big problem. The problem is, even the Prime Minister, don’t know how to judge correctly based on universal principle. The answer to me is simple, we holding strongly to the JUSTICE. If you are victimized, please stand out and speak. No hiding. The more we hide, the more people will suffer later.

Israeli Commandos and Malaysian Cops

We feel so sorry for the victims killed or injured or remain missing in the Israeli commandos’ attack towards the humanitarian relief.

Our point of view is all the same, it’s the Israeli’s fault for attacking the ship sending people and tonnes of supply to help them.

However, the other side of story, the Israeli explained that they had been attacked first before they counter strike.

Well, we can’t hardly know what ‘truth’ is truth.

The only thing that we can hold tight is ‘Justice’.

The incident make us so angry. We are seeing, and shall see more politicians as well as busybody like me express the feel of disappointment.

This is why, for justice, we want those Israeli to be responsible.

For justice, remember, we want PDRM to show responsibility on the fatal shooting of Aminulrasyid, the poor 14-year-old.