FOOL'S BUDGET: Let's face it - PM's chair is just TOO BIG for Najib!

Malaysia is being ruled today by the Barisan Nasional, a party that no longer enjoys the moral right to rule Malaysia. This is because they lost the popular vote in the last election. They have been rejected by the majority of Malaysians.

Despite controlling every TV station and every newspaper, they lost the support of the majority of Malaysians. They are only in power because of gerrymandering and outright cheating by using foreigners and stuffing ballot boxes. In a fair election, the BN would be occupying the opposition benches today.

It is therefore extremely arrogant and ill-mannered (the Malay term would be kurang-ajar) of Prime Minister Najib Razak to think he need not attend the Opposition Leader’s speech on the Budget this week. Instead he flies off to London, large wife in tow, wasting millions in taxpayer funds, after just having carelessly raised our taxes.

83% on op-ex, drained by 1.4 million-strong civil service

The Budget Najib unveiled last Friday, the 25th of October, was a vision-less piece of garbage which does absolutely nothing to lead Malaysia to a better future. It had neither strategy nor focus. It was jumbled-up nonsense.

Every Ministry got about what it got last year. In fact they ate up 83% of the budget to keep operating as incompetently as they always have. That left a puny 17% of the budget for development. This isn’t really what a developing country requires.

Part of the reason could be our huge civil service, 1.4 million of them. There are enough of them to administer every country in Asean, not just Malaysia. If we were to put together the civil servants of the UK, Australia and Canada combined, Malaysia still has more!

To the citizens who seek their help, they mostly seem to be sitting around waiting for tea-time. Which is long. But these are the people who swarm and consume our tax money like some biblical plague of locusts.

Taking it out on the people

Najib Razak did not practise prudence in spending. He did not impose budget cuts on his Ministries, many of which should be immediately shut down for being entirely useless.

Instead he cut the people’s subsidies.

He removed the sugar subsidy in a drastic move, which affects every family, while giving a lecture, to add insult to injury, about the dangers of sugar.

Then he announced the GST which will particularly burden the poor. All this so that he could continue to pay himself, his legion of Ministers and their civil servants.

Vision-less

He did not announce how Malaysia would survive in an increasingly competitive world. He does not know. Nor did he make any other announcement of substance.

It is ironic that Najib would release his budget a few days after neighbouring Singapore’s Tharman Shanmugaratnam was awarded the Best Finance Minister award by Euromoney.

Mr. Najib is arguably one of the worst in the world. And he is sitting in a chair which is too big for him trying to do a job which he is patently unable to handle.

Najib is not fit to be the Prime Minister or Finance Minister of Malaysia. He is a witless fool. And it is Malaysia’s tragedy that the country will run on a fool’s budget in 2014.

MAILBAG