Focus On Real Targets
By Walla
Those who can must get the word out to focus on real targets.
First, the situation.
One, the latest budget was to bribe the fixed deposit voting cohorts. Civil servants, teachers, militia and farmers; the amount for pensioners, due only in 2013, is paltry.
In addition, no action has been taken on Taib so as not to lose Sarawak. With Sabah in tow under Umno and its fast-tracked citizenship program for illegals, six fixed deposits are now primed for Barisan to retain its government, abetted by Umno-friendly royalty, judiciary, enforcement, mainstream media and election commission constructs. The last card is of course to cheat at the polls.
Two, where finance and education are concerned, the present government plays to only one gallery – the Malays, and with only one goal – to win the next general elections.
Money is spent minor for their targets, major for themselves – because Umno has become the official engine for whitewashing cronyism, with the result the bills including financing charges based on increasing debt servicing will be for the account of the still-dreamy young of the future.
And education is based on denialism which will result in irrelevance and loss of competitiveness. After fifty four years and billions, it is still a delivery issue. And their way of solving it is to entrench the challenges even further. Because the teachers can’t, education will become less about imparting real and relevant knowledge, more about imparting grades made to look good by lowering standards, with the specter that one day overseas admitting institutions will deny entry because they will have avalanches of richer students from other countries, furthermore with better international results and stronger command of the medium of instruction – there.
Three, the demographics have changed. Once the Chinese were over thirty percent of the population; today in the twenties. The slide will continue because the birthrate has dropped since more will be too busy working harder to try and maintain livelihood while dispirited of future prospects in the face of increasing costs but crumbs in state support. How the latest budget has been distributed says it all. Ask the MD of SPSetia what he now thinks of the NEP rearing its real head, and for effects what is the size of Umno’s political puissance over PNB’s RM124 Billion in funds as well as Petronas and EPF monies?
Four, the US and European markets for our local products are going to be sundered on the shores of fiscal calamity. The rates at which they can service their debts will never catch up with the rates at which the interests on those debts are compounding. Ergo, even if they work flat out and unless a global trade miracle happens, they will be paying just the interests due without reducing the principal debt. In the next two years, another recession may spurt which will run contrary to the wild projections of revenue paraded in the latest budget of easy dispensations, all happening when one third of national revenues come from oil and gas, depleting commodities, with its attendant effects on the other two-thirds of direct and indirect taxes. Currently our national yolk is rm442 Billion of debts, and real productivity in terms of elastic skills, not population growth numbers, is stagnant. Meanwhile the present government continues to spin, and continues to hire expensive spinners, while living it up like there’s no tomorrow. That, they are correct.
