Friends, folks and fellow ordinary citizens, crunch time is here. The inevitable will happen. We must brace ourselves for the impact. Price and rates hikes are imminent between now and February next year and the hikes will involve petrol, diesel, electricity tariff, cooking gas, sewerage charges, quit rent and assessment rates.

What better way to obtain the funds than from the rakyat itself - take from the rakyat to give to the rakyat.

COMMENT

Friends, folks and fellow ordinary citizens, crunch time is here. The inevitable will happen. We must brace ourselves for the impact. Price and rates hikes are imminent between now and February next year and the hikes will involve petrol, diesel, electricity tariff, cooking gas, sewerage charges, quit rent and assessment rates.

This columnist’s reliable source of information has mentioned that the nation is running on near-empty and that is the reason for the gigantic increase in assessment rates between 100% to 300% for properties in KL. A 10% to 20% hike is already substantial, over 20% is a lot but over 100% is just simply crazy and ridiculous.

The government is also in dire need of funds for the BR1M payout. Therefore they need to source for funds and what better way to obtain the funds than from the rakyat itself – take from the rakyat to give to the rakyat.

In actual fact, the nation is in ‘technical bankruptcy’ which means that the national debt is more than its reserves. The national debt stands at RM541 billion while reserves is less than RM500 billion.

Although there is trade surplus, this is being used as operating expenditure and does not help to lessen the national debt which also incurs servicing of its high interest of its loan.

A layman’s explanation goes as follows: You have only RM500 in your savings account but you are owing your friend RM700. Your salary is RM1,000 but you are still unable to pay your friend because your salary is used for daily expenses.

As the government is in dire need of funds for its operating expenditure, it has no choice but to tax the people. Actually, the government should cut down on its own extravagance and unnecessary spending instead of taxing the rakyat.

That is also the reason why the people of KL are unhappy with the hike in the assessment rate – they view it as mismanagement on the part of the government. More than 200 people interviewed by this columnist have only this to say about the BN government: ‘Government no money, lah’.

But now it is too late to do anything. BN has won the 13th general election and we will be on a slippery slide downwards swiftly as the government needs to source for funds from the citizens.

The way the government is running the country is akin to having 10 pots but nine lids. They are in hot soup and they choose to dump the hot soup on us – the ordinary rakyat.

This columnist’s source of information also revealed that the news that has been given to us is untrue especially news pertaining to the nation’s economic health because prior to the news being fed to the public, it first has to be filtered and then changed wholesale.

Therefore if you read a piece of news saying that such-and-such a world organisation is praising Malaysia for its financial prudence, then the opposite is true.

Something sinister

All this simply means that many Malaysians including urban folks are kept in the dark as to the actual health of the nation’s economy.

With the citizens being kept in the dark, the government continues to tax the ordinary people via the hike in rates while some gullible citizens still continue to believe that Malaysia’s financial situation is healthy and robust due to reading polished news in the media.

However the situation is like the Indian saying of using a coconut leaf to cover an elephant and someday in the near future, an implosion is imminent.

With the price hikes expected to take place before Chinese New Year on Jan 31, the Chinese are already grumbling due to the expected massive expenditure needing to be forked out besides the usual year-end expenses.

Is the government punishing KL folks for voting Pakatan Rakyat? The Chinese certainly think that there is something sinister behind this increase besides the fact that the government is in a dire financial situation.

Besides the hike in assessment rates, the petrol hike for RON95 is expected to be between 10 sen to 30 sen. After the petrol hike which is expected to be implemented very soon, the prices of all goods will of course follow suit.

This then will surely awaken many people to the fact that the government’s coffers must be quite empty. If the economy collapses, then the foreign workers here will be jobless, hungry and angry.

If such a situation were to occur in Malaysia, we the citizens will be at the mercy of the foreign workers because there are too many of them here and they can cause a great chaos if there is an economic downturn in Malaysia.

It is only a matter of time before an implosion occurs. What will Malaysia’s economy be like then?

Do not forget that we depend a lot on domestic consumption to fuel the nation’s economy. But for now, the situation is that the people of KL are angry with the federal government for being unreasonable and many have remarked that the government is robbing the rakyat.

It is useless for the government to give BR1M as it is not only a matter of giving out but taking back many times more from the citizens – the whole thing is nothing but a charade.

Selena Tay is a DAP member and a FMT columnist.