In Malaysia, politicians makan daging while rakyat makan tulang

Maybe it is not true that ‘Nero fiddled while Rome burned’. But that is precisely what is happening in Malaysia. And while Malaysians argue about which party should be the government and which person should be the prime minister, rakyat makan tulang while the politicians makan daging.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Many have probably heard the story about ‘Nero fiddling while Rome burned’. Whether Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus really did play the violin as Rome was burning is disputable because the violin was not invented until 1,500 years after Nero had died. Nevertheless, you get what the saying is supposed to mean.

The UK is going into a crisis. (READ HERE: Inflation: Five things that are going up in price and why). Soon there will be many more people living below the poverty level in the UK compared to in Malaysia.

For example, my power and energy charges have doubled from RM7,000 a year to RM14,000 a year. The council tax has increased to RM9,000 a year while petrol prices have gone up 50%. Staying at home doing nothing is going to cost you roughly RM10,000 a month.

And this is only the beginning. And this is because after suffering for more than two years due to the economic crisis brought on by Covid-19, the Ukrainian invasion has wiped out whatever little there was left.

The west is imposing sanctions on Russia. But by doing so you are not hurting the Russian elite. You are hurting the 155 million Russian rakyat and the 749 million rakyat of Europe. In other words, to hurt the Russian leaders, you also hurt more than 900 million Russians and Europeans.

So now the rakyat have to spend more money every month because politicians decided to go to war to decide who is the big boss of Europe, Russia or NATO. At the end of the day, maybe nothing is going to be achieved from all this death and destruction in Ukraine. But for sure we are going to end up far poorer than from the day Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad decided to resign as prime minister rather than allow Anwar Ibrahim to push him out and take over as PM8 in February 2020.

So how is the British government or the 650 British members of parliament going to solve the financial misery of the 67 million British citizens? What plans do they have?

At the moment the British politicians are too occupied to worry about the problems of the 67 million rakyat. The politicians need to focus on seeing how they can exploit and take advantage of the ‘Partygate scandal’. Can Boris Johnson be forced to resign due to the crime of holding a party in ‘Number 10’ during the lockdown?

Yes, even in Britain the focus is on how to oust the prime minister rather than on how to look after the rakyat and come out with ideas on how to reduce the suffering of the rakyat.

If in the UK this is how politicians behave, what more in Malaysia where politicians behave like primary schoolchildren in the playground during recess? Malaysian politicians tok kok and engage one another in cock fights. Their egos are so huge that they must be suffering from hernia carrying all that excess weight around.

Some people whack me and say if I am so clever then why do I not contest the general election? Hello, it is because I am clever that I DO NOT contest the general election. Why would I want to become a wakil rakyat when the quality of Malaysia’s wakil rakyat is below that of a Bandaran dog catcher?

All you need to do is listen to politicians from both sides of the divide talk to see that their hearts and minds are not on the rakyat. Everything they talk about is regarding their own personal interests and the interests of their own party. Nothing they say concerns the rakyat’s welfare and future.

Lokman Noor Adam talks about kepentingan Umno. Nurul Izzah Anwar talks about the future of PKR and Pakatan Harapan. Muhyiddin Yassin talks about what PPBM should do to remain relevant. And the same goes for all those other so-called champions of the rakyat such as Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, Anwar Ibrahim, and the many other Umno, DAP, PKR, PPBM, Warisan, etc., leaders.

Maybe it is not true that ‘Nero fiddled while Rome burned’. But that is precisely what is happening in Malaysia. And while Malaysians argue about which party should be the government and which person should be the prime minister, rakyat makan tulang while the politicians makan daging.