Mahathir-Najib made us debtors

The growing national debt has left oil rich Sabah and Sarawak liable to almost RM80 billion in combined owings.

COMMENT

Umno has seen good leaders and bad ones. How bad is bad leadership depends on what kind of characteristics and value system he picks up.

If he picks the extreme form of negative values then the nation is in deep trouble.

Umno, since Independence and until 1981, saw three late prime ministers who made positive contributions to the country.

They each proved to serve the national interests first which is the essence of good governance.

But things began to change in 1981 after the fourth premier – Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad – took over.

Under his reign good governance took a backseat and things went from bad to worse and now under Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, we’re sinking from worse to the worst.

Over the past 30 years we have witnessed how Umno and Sarawak’s Pesaka Bumiputra Bersatu (PBB) have spewed their bad and evil traits without any feelings of remorse .

Abuses of power, corruption, plundering and looting of state and national wealth were done on a massive scale. The national debt keeps on growing at a rapid pace .

Drowning in debts

In 2009 when Najib took over the reign’s from ex-premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the national debt stood at more than RM362 billion. Now our national debts stands at RM437 billion.

In contrast our expected revenue for 2012 is only about RM186.9 billion!

If the debt is to be shared by all the 13 states of Malaysia, then each state will bear a debt of RM39.7 billion directly or indirectly.

Knowing this, is it worth supporting the Umno /Barisan Nasional government, anymore?

Instead of giving us returns for exploiting our wealth, Sarawakians and Sabahans are now burdened with RM39.7 billion debt each.

Global history has repeatedly shown us how a bad leader had acted alone.

We had (Germany’s Adolf) Hilter, (Iraq’s) Saddam (Hussein) and (Philippines’ Ferdinand) Marcos – all of them acted alone and individually to create havoc upon mankind and their people.

These are called dangerous leaders – which is of the worst kind.

Funds siphoned

In Malaysia we saw Mahathir – on a number of occasions – having acted on his own in the controlling of the judiciary, giving massive projects to cronies, practicing a policy of massive borrowings from banks and the EPF (Employees Provident Fund) and spewing lies as a political tool.

Sarawak Chief Minister Taib Mahmud too has literally taken billions of ringgit of state funds.

And under Najib, we see and hear of massive abuse of public funds with little accountability.

And even as you read this commentary, funds from our EPF continue to be siphoned out at an alarming rate as disclosed in the Auditor-General’s 2010 report.

Knowing the characteristic of our leadership why then are we dependent on them? Such leaders must be rejected in totality.

Awang Abdillah is a political observer and a veteran writer in Sarawak. He is an FMT columnist.