1. I was listening to Ahmad Maslan explaining the reasons of our rising public debt. He attributed this mainly to our increasing our legal debt ceiling from 55% to 65%. We had to spend more because of covid.
2. Mind you, this is a man touted to have a high CGPA speaking. He spoke like an idiot.
3. Don't assume that a man speaking in a serious tone, a deputy ministerial tone, in a baritone tone, is s
4. In fact, he was lying at that short session, attributing the rise in public debt to natural calamities like covid. What next? Floods?
5. Then, ultimately blame God la because it's God who sends down the natural disasters.
6. Publish data then on how much we actually spent on covid and on other natural disasters. How much, did the sum of the spending on the 2 items, contribute to our public debt ? Ada berani?
7. I don't think a person who was fined RM 1 million and who received dirty 1MDB money and one accustomed to living with financial shenanigans under an umno government, will dare do that .
8. Spending on natural disasters do contribute to the rise in public debt. But I suspect the percentage increase in expenditure on natural disasters is not as high as overall public debt.
9. I don't have the data to go by, but let's do some intuitive imagining. Let's say, in 2013, the spending on natural disasters was x amount. In 2022, it's x+1 amount. Over the same period, public spending was y and y+1 amount.
Misuse of revenue, tax cuts tax relaxation lower tax revenue
10. Then we can calculate the percentage increase in x and y and compare the two.
11. Or we can compare the absolute increase in x and y and calculate what is the percentage of x of y.
12. Or to be more vigorous, we can run an econometric analysis to find which independent variables contribute to public spending, actually. Which variable is the culprit to our rising debt.
13. We can't assign major blame to natural calamities and disasters. They are beyond our control and as a responsible government we react accordingly and to spend. Spending on them is unavoidable.
14. As they are acts of nature, we can't treat them as a major determinant of public debt. They are, as Lim goh thong said of landslides in genting, 'ini tuan Alla punya kerja'.
15. Indeed, some natural calamities like floods occur with such regularity, that you can rationally expect them, rationally decide on them by setting aside budgets.
16. You are able to this because you learned from experience and makes rational decisions to solve it. Making rational decisions because you learned from past experiences is a gloss on the rational expectations in economic theory. You never learned anything from it means you are a real dungu.
17. COVID-19 is an anomaly and an abnormality. It is totally unpredictable. It doesn't occur with regularity, and you can't learn from it. You have to spend money in order to save lives.
18. Still, it remains for us to find out whether we, the people and the government got the money's worth from the financial outlay to combat COVID.
19. Some people may be scooping out of murky waters and placing fish traps in bottleneck conduits. God knows there are many sadists out there.
20. Perhaps the government may want to produce a white paper on how much was actually spent on covid and established whether there has been misuse in public revenue.
21. That brings us to what I think are the more serious causes of public debt. Misuse of public revenue, tax cuts, tax relaxations and reduction of tax revenues.
22. Publish, from 2013, the absolute values of all the direct negotiations. What is the proportion of these to our national debt? Are the PM and the Pontian gnome bold enough to do this?
23. The amount we forfeited as a result of direct-nego, represents the amount stolen from the people, had the various projects had been offered on open tender basis.
24. That kind of stealing deserves the severest of punishments. Let's see if PMX walks the walk. Will he punish these crooks?
25. It seems, misuse of public revenue is rampant. It's committed by prime ministers, ministers, immigration, coercive forces, members of the judiciach ry-heck nobody seemed insulated from the scourge. Misuse of public revenue is a catch-all term- it encompasses corruption, price fixing, theft etc.
26. Let me be clearer in my example. If we can save 11b from realigning the ECRL, doesn't it mean that 11b was intended to be sakau-ed?
27. Or the intended theft of 11b is ok because the name of the would be chief perpetrator is Ali babavum Najib, and they would be thirudargalum were probably UMNOPUTRAs?
28. Perhaps some turbaned Ustaz somewhere got a message from God, saying the 11b can be classified as sedekah and is therefore halal and kosher?
29. All these financial skulduggery makes it imperative for the PM to form financial oversight committees over a certain threshold at all the cost centres.
30. The application and commitment of public revenue is so important that they must not be decided by one person only such as head of GLCs, civil servants, ministers including finance or the PM. Decisions must be made by financial oversight committees.
31. These are being done la. Well, if financial misuse still happened, it means some members of the committees are complicit in the embezzlement.
32. Decisions by committees are time-consuming and may not be good for business. My answer to that is, if it means saving money for the country, it's worth doing.
33. Indeed, further safeguards to save as much money are needed. I would like to see the formation of overseeing audit committees above the financial committees. So we don't lose a billion to companies belonging to sons, sils and cronies.
34. I didn't hear the misuse of public revenue in this form being mentioned by the pontian gnome. Perhaps to a man accustomed to umnonization of public funds, this kind of embezzlement is normal.
35. Were any tax cuts and relaxations given to crony companies? I am not talking about the various tax concessions given to foreign investments. To selected crony companies like low budget airlines, port concessionaires etc. Publish these.
36. What's the amount of reduction in tax revenues from 2023 to now. These reflect the inadequacy of tax collection institutions such as the Ihdn, customs, immigrations etc. The collection from these institutions pale in comparison to tax evasions and illegal repatriations, for example. The tax evasion saga of the Najib family, for example, suggests that evasions by the rich and powerful are rampant.
37. Now, what safeguards will the PM put in place to stop these financial haemorrhages? Can he sing his way out of these?
38. Whatever is taken away from the people or denied from them, call them misuse of public revenue, direct nego, tax cuts, tax relaxations, tax evasions or illegal repatriations is theft, embezzlement, robbery, purloining etc. Theft by any other name is theft .
39. One final thing. By assigning blame to natural disasters, for example, indicates that this pontian hobbit is a dangerous person.
40. If he can callously and flippantly say that natural disasters are a principal cause of national debt, then he is likely to say that all the income transfers of the PM such as the various bantuan Sara hidup and EPF withdrawals are but populist initiatives. He is a double-edged sword, Mr PM.
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