The Trial of our Finance Minister.

Picture  this. The finance Minister comes before parliament and makes a pious presentation on the 2016 budget proposal. He actually pontificates. He does this with a poker face. He appeals to the Maker of the seven heavens and seven earths. He refers to holy verses. He makes reference to wasathiyah and maqasid shariyah.

He does this while carrying inside him, the burden of huge falsehoods.Now, that's beguiling.

He knew what Jho Low was up to. He went along and abetted the chinaman. 1MDB was a huge scam to milk as much money as possible. It’s an UMNO culture and its president is the chief proponent.

Nobody else knew what was going on with 1MDB. No one in the cabinet were told. 1MDB then imploded as its financial mischiefs surfaced.

Police reports were made by the crusading Khairudin Abu Hassan. He is in jail at the moment. I am told he meets up regularly with Anwar Ibrahim. It is an irony. The man who started the downfall of Anwar is now sharing the same premises as him.

Now, I am also told by my sources though I cannot affirm the veracity, that 2 senior members of Najib’s cabinet told Khairudin explicitly never to withdraw his police reports. Both these senior ministers claimed that no one in the cabinet were briefed on 1MDB. Let all hell break loose they say and let Najib fry.

Perhaps the sources were only interested in besmirching the names of Adnan Mansor and Zahid Hamidi.  I am sure they are honourable men.

Perhaps Najib wanted to spare the cabinet from listening the briefing done in English and so thought it wasn’t necessary to brief the cabinet.

When assessing Najib as PM and Finance Minister, I am reminded of the polemical books by Christopher Hitchens; The Trial of Henry Kissinger and No One left to lie to. I recommend people to read these books and many others by the same author. Hitchens died in December 2011.

Because, the titles of the 2 books are a nice fit in the machinations of Najib. We are reading a trial of Najib. How it was he who created this monstrous scam called 1MDB. And he is lying to everyone in Malaysia, there’s no more left. From Kings to commoner, from patricians to plebeians.

I have to break a promise I made to myself. I promised to give myself an extended break. I should have said sine die. But the budget is too enticing. Plus I was there when Najib delivered his budget speech.

Is there actual money in the first place in the Budget? I hear rumours attributed to government ministers telling followers that there is no money. Perhaps, the only ministry to have money and takes precedence over all others is the PMs department. He takes up RM20 billion.

MARA? Education Ministry? No money yet.

This man has destroyed almost all the institutions that support the integrity of this country. The office of the Attorney General, the MACC and Auditor General are all compromised. They have been forced to be pliant. The last remaining bulwark is Bank Negara.

Is Bank Negara managing our financial system well enough? Take for example the various pronouncements made by Bank Negara. Do we actually have USD reserves with which to do mop up operations? I.e. selling the greenback to buy as much Malaysian Ringgit as possible to drive up the value of the Ringgit. All I hear is that we have so much and so much RM equivalent in USD. Why didn’t the governor say, how much USD reserves we actually have.

Why do we find so much amount of Malaysian Ringgit in the market? Who has been flooding the market with Ringgit? It is as though some people in Malaysia are printing the Ringgit, spending them and flooding the market with the ringgit. These people may buy anything with USD. They may even be amassing USD and now that Bank Negara can accept USD, they may want to keep USD accounts with Bank Negara. Whether they can do that directly with Bank Negara, I would not know. .

When I listened to Najib delivering his budget speech- it was full of tumbril remarks, you can’t help to feel utterly disenchanted and can’t wait to kick him out Putrajaya.

Tumbril remarks are those smart ass remarks proffered by the nobility that are likely to incite thoughts of revolution. These are remarks made by the upper crust designed to inflame instantaneous abhorrence and revulsion. Those who hear them cannot wait to kick out the author of those remarks.

Examples. If people don’t like to pay toll rates, use free roads. If people can’t afford to eat meat, eat soybean curd. If people don’t like it here, they can emigrate.

Don’t you feel revolted when Najib advises people to spend judiciously when he and the missus splurged around the world? Don’t you feel the erupting anger when Najib offers pious counsels on how to manage our personal finances, when he hasn’t come clean about the financial wrongdoings under his watch? Don’t you feel utterly impatient to see him get booted out for behaving as though we owe him a living and we can thank our lucky stars that Najib is around?

Nobody dies if he is not around. UMNO will survive him. The people of Pekan will not drop dead.

Najib’s oeuvre is his annual showmanship presenting the budget with all the fanfare of a circus atmosphere.  The budget speech 2016 (not to be confused with the bloody thick anggaran perbelanjaan persekutuan 2016, is full of tumbril remarks.

Some examples. This budget is made in the name of He who has created the 7 heavens and the 7 earths, made in the name of such and such holy verse, made in cognizance of the principle of wasathiyah, always in compliance with maqasid shariyah and so forth.

What is Najib doing? Najib is pontificating. The budget is suspicious- because it was presented in such a magniloquent manner.

The budget is a circus.

First I don’t fully understand the over-excitement about budget 2016 or any budget for that matter. It’s an extended document, presented by the finance minister about how much we collected-.that’s called revenue and how that revenue is to be applied. To do that, the finance minister comes before parliament and asks parliament to approve setting aside a specific sum from the consolidated fund. For 2016, the finance minister asks for RM267 billion.

The key sentence- comes before parliament to seek approval for setting aside some money from the consolidated fund. The money set aside will be used for opex- operating or recurring expenditure and capex- capital expenditure. Operating costs and development costs for managing the country. Najib is a glorified general manager of the country responsible to the board of directors, the MPs who in turn represent the real shareholders of the country- the citizens of this country. 

The technicians can go nibble at the details. They have an important job to do. But let us look at the bigger picture. Let’s look at least 5 budgets before. 5 years is a reasonable time period to expect some changes to have taken place. But not 1 year. What can a year achieve?

Yet Najib speaks of epochal transformation enabled by one year’s budget. Is he a fantasist or what?  One year cannot achieve anything. Not rural transformation. Not agricultural transformation.

They will not happen.