Najib's 2013 Budget: No Class, Undeserving of Support.

If Najib cannot defend his budget, it means, it’s not worth the support of the people. We have not even begun to go into details yet. Najib’s 2013 Budget has no character to speak of in the first place. 
He insults all those hardworking civil servants who have put in so many person-hours into preparing the Budget. Suddenly his political minders insert in  a number of knee-jerker standard last minute afterthoughts- rebates for smartphones, allowances for unmarried persons. The officers at MOF will now have to screen the thousands of individuals who qualify to get the money promised to ascertain they are not yet married?

Najib’s budget is all about electioneering. He uses the valuable airtime to goad and sneer at Pakatan’s budget proposals. Over in Penang, where the PM engages in his usual banshee-like speechifying, he derided Pakatan’s Economic Blueprint. If he must know, the rakyat are finding Pakatan’s Buku Jingga more credible each day.

The same can’t be said of his economic blueprint. And his 2013 Budget. You must have something to hide if you are scared to defend your own budget.

What about his own economic blueprint? He has only got the serious sounding alphabet soup which makes us dizzy- GTP, ETP, EPP, PDP, NKRA, the list seems to go on and on. Where is the NEM- New Economic Model? When asked about NEM he could only say its market driven affirmative action. What is that? It’s nothing but the continuation of the policies that were started by Mahathir. JumpStart Malay economics by picking, choosing and awarding all sort of licenses, advantages, near monopolies to a coterie of friends and cronies especially those who party with the PM and his now Imelda Macos-like Mrs. PM, golfing buddies, cigar smoking kakis. All done in the name of the faceless, nameless Malays of course. Always in the name of agama, bangsa dan negara.

Let’s talk a little more about the world economy. Because, BN leaders who control state legislative assemblies make it a religious routine to always point out the state of the word economy when scoring points over how they handled our economy. Same routine it is with Najib.  While the world economy is bad, I managed the economy better. Only UMNO and BN can.

They all make the same mistake of ignoring the rising awareness of people out there. They think they are speaking to and down to dullards.

The world's largest economy, the US is in a mess. Europe is in a bigger mess. Japan is in a deflation mood since the last three decades with nowhere to go. China is already slowing down. Its stock market, already down more than 60%.When China gets hit hard later this year, the whole world will be typhooned. Nowadays when China sneezes, the rest of the world catches cold. Malaysia will get hit even harder as its debts are now out of control and unmanageable, unlike Singapore.

Najib’s economic minders seemed oblivious to market signals. They keep supporting our economy by intervening believing they can tame market forces. Maybe they learnt economics from Ibrahim Ali. Their blissful forced-ignorance is for all to see as in how the Najib government is handling the FGV price. 

Didn't he mention FGV in gloating terms during his Budget electioneering speech. 

The share price of FGV is stuck at around the RM4.80 area. How does it become that way despite the world economy nose-diving?  It becomes that because of government challenging market forces and believing they can win. The Najib administration supports the share prices of FGV at all cost, so as not to lose the support of the Felda voters in the coming GE. So it forces people like EPF,PNB, state GLC's, Cornerstone investors ,Umno cronies and front men to keep buying the shares to prevent them from falling down further.

The settlers are his vanguard in the economic transformation blueprint. They are his most valuable assets. How much does he value them? All 112,635 of them.  Let’s see. He has given RM15, 000 advance bribes. He then gives about RM 3800 each as raya bonus. He gives them 800 units of FGV stock. Lets accord him a little charity- say the settler gets a premium of RM1. Earning say RM800. 

Let’s see how much the settler is worth after 55 years of merdeka. Each settler finds that Najib values him at less than RM1 per day per year since merdeka!

The order to be absent from parliament has backfired. Everywhere people are shocked to see Najjb’s budget can’t even stand to be scrutinized and compared to Pakatan’s Budget. The PM has no class and finesse. In a democracy, the PM goes to parliament to engage and debate with the opposition. He abuses his privileged time slot for the budget presentation to attack the opposition, to engage in electioneering. And the next day, he was absent from parliament when the leader of the opposition spoke. 

How could we have an intelligent debate? How can there be a democracy when ideas are not subjected to the heat treatment and to the cut and thrust of parliamentary debate? People are switching off their TVs because it was disgusting to watch the PM abuse the privilege of his position and the democratic process. Of course the brain-impaired BN MPs were thumping their desks to score little brownie points. What else can they do when they cannot think?

If this is the attitude of the PM and that is the quality of the BN MPs, what hope is there for Malaysia with BN in power? How can we ever reduce poverty, uplift the livelihood of that 40% poor? BN MPs thumped their soon to be vacated bench spots when they hear that little meaningless and demeaning cash morsels would be dished out to the perennial underclass, a class of Malaysians enslaved by UMNO/BN power abuse and corruption.

If after 55 years of uninterrupted power these paltry sums mean something to 40-50% of our population, it can only mean abject economic and social failure of the UMNO/BN governments. There is nothing to cheer about. UMNO/BN MPs should instead cringe in shame. 
By giving the rakyat RM500 after 55 years of Merdeka, you honor your own people valuing them at 2.5 sen a day!