Another very good article by Finance Twitter. I like to read his article. Full of facts with laughter.
There are good reasons why the opposition does not and should not reveal its shadow cabinet. It would be a suicidal mission to do so in a country like Malaysia whereby racial politics and race-based policies are part and parcel of present government which has been ruling since independence. The moment the shadow cabinet is revealed, the government-owned media will spin till kingdom come to scare the heck out of rural voters. Hence, as expected, when the opposition presents their superior Shadow Budget, it wasn’t mentioned and compared in a fair manner by the media.
Whatever good idea proposed by the opposition will be rubbished as another way that could bankrupt the country – a lazy way by Najib regime’s propaganda machines in answering opposition propositions. By the same token, the prime minister should not whine when the alternate internet media criticises his recent budget which consists of nothing but Election Budget designed to buy votes out of taxpayers’ own money. Considering BN government has successfully increased the nation’s federal total debt from less than RM200 billion in 2003 to an estimated RM502 billion in 2012, this is perhaps one of Mahathir’s greatest achievements –producing incompetent leaders who excel only in worshipping the dictator.
Naturally, when Abdullah Badawi took over from Mahathir, the country was in auto-pilot mode while his administration spent as if they’re printing $US dollar notes. By the time Badawi booted from the office, the federal debt skyrocket to slightly more than RM300 billion in 2008. Well, if you think a sleepy prime minister was bad, wait till you hear what a transformation prime minister did in a short 4-year. Najib Razak, whose favourite movie is none other than Michael Bay’s Transformers has leapfrog the nation to a new level – increases the debt to RM502 billion this year, the highest in history and reaching 54% of GDP. In short Najib doubled the debt in 4-year what Badawi managed to do in 8-year, an impressive milestone indeed (*grin*).
That’s just 1% (percentage) point before hitting the legislated debt ceiling of 55%. If this is not moving the country towards bankruptcy, I do not know what else is. While we’re waiting to see if the PM Najib will pooh-pooh the national debt as just paper debt, made famous by Mahathir while he was in office about paper loss due to forex gambling, let’s look at all the goodies and sweeteners before the coming general election: