As 2008 draws to a close, there remains one catastrophic event that is sweeping across the globe that our “sleeping” administration has neither seriously acknowledged nor addressed.
Most countries in the world (including our neighbour down south) have publicly admitted that the financial and economic tsunami, which originated from USA, has resulted in their economies going into recession and their governments have taken steps to help manage the accompanying devastating effects. The most worrisome being thousands of jobs are lost and businesses closing shops on a daily basis like there
Malaysia is a trading nation with exports of roughly US$165 billion a year. That makes us susceptible to economic and currency fluctuations. We are entirely dependent on world trade.
Due to the fall in oil prices which would wipe out earnings of about US$ 60 billion in 2009, we can say we have no money for investments in 2009. Besides whatever oil money we receive is going towards paying for operating expenditure. That means paying govt salaries!
IOW, all our income is going towards paying for Operating Expenditure and is still a large shortfall here which is covered by borrowings, and zero for Investment Expenditure.
The end result of this is that we will be bankrupt and have to lay off one-third of the civil service and shut down nearly half of our govt programmes like Rela, National Service, etc.
This situation has been building since 1994 but the high oil prices were masking the problem.
These things will inevitably happen by itself over the next two or three years. I would hate to be in the ruling party in power in the next few years. Let BN sack the malay civil service and uniformed services and face the crunch. They built an obese service over the last 40 years, so let them bring it down.
No party can come to power and reverse the situation. The only way to reverse is to trim the govt service, by half. And almost the entire lot of foreign workers have to be repatriated and all estates shut down. Only smallholdings can continue and survive.
Wee, please let the civil servants know of this. That the party is over! Put it in simple terms like the cops, teachers, hospital staff and the pensioners are not going to be paid for months. This is the scenario waiting to unfold. The malay society which is largely dependent on the govt, is going to be in chaos.
YB, have to disagree with you on 1 point
those “leaders” are not my leaders. I usually disagree with them
I suppose they can sleep easy as the retirement funds of their grand children should be secured, thanks to some creative personal financial management scheme, that’s the something they know and that we might not know.
I doubt the present leaders know what to do in a crises. Mahathir discourages initiative and original thinking from his subordinates and might have seen this as a threat to his power hence the people who are intelligent and working for him – Musa Hitam, Anwar Ibrahim etc are banished in 1 way or the other. The No.2 who enjoyed better working relationship with him…Ghaffar Baba and Badawi, well ………..
Hence under this “my way or the Kamunting way” leadership, there is no succession plan; there is no emergence of real strategic thinkers amongst the UMNO leadership ranks to take over from him. Badawi was supposed to be the puppet but as fable story goes, pinochio came alive and somehow gotten a habit that can make his nose grow long, or Najib, whose promotions seems to be due to his blood ties rather than any true visible achievement, like Brooklyn Beckham will one day play for England just because his dad got 107 caps, never mind if Brooklyn can kick a ball properly or not.
Ironically, the slowness of development in the Malaysian financial markets helped us. Derivatives, futures, options, essentially paper wealth musical chairs are never a big part of our economy hence we have not been hit directly. The real shit that hits the fan for us is that come few months’ time, when the overseas orders stop coming in, our OEMs and exporters will have to cut production etc.
I foresee in 20 years time, or sooner, the Malaysian economy will be rocked by retirees hit bad by credit card detbs accumulated in their younger days.
It is time for the world economy to revert to the old value system where economic strength is measured by tangible production capabilities, rather than paper wealth indicators.
Temenggong, you are right
to correct our economy structure, we have to ship back the foreigners and take the extra civil servants into their places, that means construction sites, factories, coffee shops, restaurants and all that
that will stop the foreign exchange outflow but we will have voters revolt amongst the civil servants, a huge group of lazy, inflexible, arrogant, unproductive, unimaginative group of people replacing a mixed bag of hard working and not so hard working foreign labourers.
In practice, it cannot be done. The only thing the government should do is to freeze intake and increment of civil servants for 3 years and instill cost cutting measures of 10% a year for the next 5 years for this bloated piece of leech. How to cut cost? Remove “lawatan sambil belajar”, remove training courses, open tenders for supplies to government offices, reduce red tapes hence cost of administration. I believe there is a lot of fat that we can cut off.
YB Wee, I know lah this is out of topic but I want to say something here okay.
About the Hudud Law that PAS wnat to implement, I wish lah Tuan can you please tell Karpal Singh to just shut his mouth ah. He is messing up by opening his mouth and talking nonsense. He of all people should know lah it is not so easy to have Hudud Law. There must be 2 third majority in Parlimen before this can happen what and also ah the constitution must be changed also. What like this he also do not know ah? Maybe Karpal Singh is getting old aledi and he should not open his mouth unnecessary lah. Please lah YB Wee, can you tell him ah?
Also ah, can Pakatan Rakyat MPs stop all the stupid nonsense they are doing. Why so much noise and fighting and want to resign lah and so on and so what. This is confusing all the Pakatan Rakyat supporters you know. Also, BN must be very happy now and laughing like mad dogs to see all this happening in Pakatan Rakyat.
Please lah, Pakatan Rakyat must stop all their nonsense and do their work quietly so the people will vote them again in the next GE. What lah, how to be the government like that. Thanks all and YB thank you too.