Just who is running the government?

We came, we saw, we bribe.

BN has won the Pangkalan Kubor state seat in Kelantan. We know the slogan- we came, we bribed, and we cheated. It retained its seat. The BN got a larger majority because it paid voters. BN spent millions. It also prevented almost 2000 Malaysians from crossing over into Rantau Panjang. Also, Kelantanese outside did not return.

Just as they did in Teluk Intan, the BN bribed its way to victory. That is also the Najib method of winning elections.  It’s no big deal then. The victory was achieved partly because there is currently some bad blood within the Pakatan camp.I hope PAS understands the loss.

Let us take on some of the issues raised.

UMNO’s information chief, MP Ahmad Maslan says Putrajaya may actually be supporting 3 months of any rakyat’s livelihood. This is achieved through all the subsidies given out, all forms of welfare assistance and BR1M. These, says Ahmad Maslan are the hallmarks of a good, benign and responsible government.

To that, we say only the smallish mind would want to gloat about it.  Sadly, the smirking comes from ignorance. What the government programs do is affirm the existence of severe income inequalities in the country and the economic hardships experienced by the poor. More and more people require assistance because they do. Incomes have fallen behind- the cost of living has gone up and the standard of living for these people has gone down because life is costly.

I hope no rational thinking Malay buys the idea that economic hardships experienced by them are the result of natural turn of events. The truth is, they are the result of mismanagement of the economy, incompetence, corruption, bad governance, wrong policies and even stupidity. Don’t ever trivialise the hardships as being caused by the natural turn of events. All were man made and caused by the incompetence of the government of the day.

The Malays must break the mental bondage. I have experienced this first hand and shall use an example to illustrate the readily-excusing mentality of the Malays which UMNO takes advantage of.

Raub is a small town with probably around 100, 000 inhabitants. Water shortage is the norm rather than exception. Every other day, there will be water interruptions and stoppage.  Some people in certain areas go without water for a week.

The response by Malays and Chinese is revealing.

Malays endure being without water for a few days attributing the shortage to that’s how it is. Chinese will go up in arms, calling the ADUns and MP to do something. We do of course short of actually carrying buckets of water.

I see two different thinking operating here. The Malays are ready to endure and accept  water shortage as part of the natural order of things. So they are ready to excuse the shortage and endure. The Chinese don’t. The Malays are not likely to consider that the water shortages may be caused by wrong investments taken in the past, the supply of defective and substandard pipes, bad water distribution management, lack of investments in facilities etc.

While water is indeed a product of nature, its delivery to homes is not. It’s a function of human management and involvement in many forms.

The Malays need to question everything and never take things as they are. Things are never as they are. 

its not government's money. 

Secondly, the government is spending what it takes from the people. Government itself has no money other than what it takes in the form of taxes. Next year, the government wants to be leech-efficient. It wants to suck whatever can be extracted from people.  That is why GST will be carried out- it’s a more efficient method of collecting taxes. 

Now, let us get back to the issue of the Malay problem. This issue is played over and over again. The contest in Pengakan Kubor is between 2 Malay parties. Something must be wrong when 2 Malays contest, the party that gets whacked is the non-Malay. Is the Malay problem caused by non-Malay or by the government that is in power? Who is responsible for the policies, who controls governance, who controls the treasury?

The UMNO Malays must have outsourced everything to their Chinese partners,  so now it’s justifiable to lay blame on the Chinese.

The cat is out of the bag- UMNO has been subcontracting the management of this country to the Chinese. But UMNO is the Malay party fighting for the 4 institutions that are sacrosanct to the Malays no?