PM has failed to look into our welfare

The price of everything has gone up since the general election but the prime minister is not listening to the people or looking into their welfare.

COMMENT

Since the conclusion of the 13th general election, prices of goods have been periodically going up and so far nothing has been done to counter this. Instead the situation has only gotten worse with the impending hike in electricity tariff early next year.

Before GE13, Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has promised that he will listen to the voice of the people and look into their welfare. Thus, the sky-rocketting cost of living is certainly not in line with his promise.

He has always accused the opposition of not keeping their promises but here it is the case of the pot calling the kettle black.

And it is much worse for him because he is the Prime Minister whereas the opposition does not have recourse to federal funding.

Definitely many people can now see clearly that he is a promise-breaker although there are just as many gullible citizens who is simply enamoured with his Government Transformation Plan (GTP), including one of this columnist’s relatives who praised the GTP as being very ambitious and pro-active in helping the rakyat.

If Najib is really listening to the rakyat, he would have immediately instructed KL City Hall to lower the assessment hike to not more than 20%. Instead, he acts deaf and dumb to the rakyat’s rumblings on the ground.

A local English daily on Nov 22 has reported Federal Territories Minister Tengku Adnan Mansor as saying: “I will be fair and come up with a win-win situation for the people. I will decide on an appropriate rate that we will charge and I promise you it will not burden the rakyat.”

Let us hold him to his promise. We do not want leaders who simply give empty promises as the BN government has always announced with pride that they are a caring government.

However, in the recently concluded PAS Muktamar, a resolution was passed that PAS will organise a big protest against the GST (Goods & Services Tax), TPPA (Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement) and the general rise in the cost of living. This is good and perhaps then the government will wake up to the fact that the rakyat are angry.

So far, after the general election there is nothing much to rejoice about. The corrupted sharks are still swimming about, crime is still on the rise, the national debt has increased, higher taxes will be imposed and the ordinary citizens have to cope with the higher cost of living.

Yes, the rakyat are indeed unhappy

Not in sync

Pakatan Rakyat MPs raising the issue of the Prime Minister’s RM2.2 million electricity bill for his official residence have certainly annoyed the latter but the issue is important.

Why is the Prime Minister telling the rakyat to tighten our belts when he himself is spending lavishly? He has certainly lost credibility due to his shocking electricity bill.

He has also said that those who evade taxes are traitors to the nation. If he is hinting at the KL folks who are against the assessment hike, then he has totally lost the point.

KL folks are only protesting the ridiculously massive hike, nobody ever said that they do not want to pay. This shows that Najib is not listening to the rakyat at all.

In the meantime, in a recent press conference earlier this month, PKR’s Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar has revealed that there are 30 Special Branch (SB) officers in London.

What are they doing in London? Do they intend to stem the flow of real, true and accurate information from Malaysians in UK to Malaysians back home?

Now we know that although the government is not listening to the rakyat, they are listening in on the rakyat.

“I don’t want to listen to the economy being robust and resilient when I am struggling to make ends meet,” said Peter Chong, who works in the retail sector.

Chong said Najib was a failure especially in not listening to the Chinese and thus he should not be angry if the community rejected BN.

He listed three major points for Najib to take note:

• According to the population ratio, more Chinese voted for PAS compared with the Malays;

• The Chinese say that the BN government is hopeless and is mired deep in mismanagement; and

• More Chinese will be migrating soon which means that Malaysia will experience a greater brain-drain.

At the end of the day, it is clearly obvious that despite all the hype, Najib is not in touch with the pulse of the rakyat despite constantly saying that he is.

Those who think that he is doing a good job as a Prime Minister fail to see that his proclamation of BN as a caring government is in direct contrast with his actions.

Najib and the rakyat are not really in sync. He is only in sync with the Umno members and his elite cronies.

Selena Tay is a DAP member and a FMT columnist.