What better way to obtain the funds than from the rakyat itself - take from the rakyat to give to the rakyat.
COMMENT
Friends,
folks and fellow ordinary citizens, crunch time is here. The inevitable
will happen. We must brace ourselves for the impact. Price and rates
hikes are imminent between now and February next year and the hikes will
involve petrol, diesel, electricity tariff, cooking gas, sewerage
charges, quit rent and assessment rates.
This columnist’s reliable source of information has mentioned that
the nation is running on near-empty and that is the reason for the
gigantic increase in assessment rates between 100% to 300% for
properties in KL. A 10% to 20% hike is already substantial, over 20% is a
lot but over 100% is just simply crazy and ridiculous.
The government is also in dire need of funds for the BR1M payout.
Therefore they need to source for funds and what better way to obtain
the funds than from the rakyat itself – take from the rakyat to give to
the rakyat.
In actual fact, the nation is in ‘technical bankruptcy’ which means
that the national debt is more than its reserves. The national debt
stands at RM541 billion while reserves is less than RM500 billion.
Although there is trade surplus, this is being used as operating
expenditure and does not help to lessen the national debt which also
incurs servicing of its high interest of its loan.
A layman’s explanation goes as follows: You have only RM500 in your
savings account but you are owing your friend RM700. Your salary is
RM1,000 but you are still unable to pay your friend because your salary
is used for daily expenses.
As the government is in dire need of funds for its operating
expenditure, it has no choice but to tax the people. Actually, the
government should cut down on its own extravagance and unnecessary
spending instead of taxing the rakyat.
That is also the reason why the people of KL are unhappy with the
hike in the assessment rate – they view it as mismanagement on the part
of the government. More than 200 people interviewed by this columnist
have only this to say about the BN government: ‘Government no money,
lah’.
But now it is too late to do anything. BN has won the 13th general
election and we will be on a slippery slide downwards swiftly as the
government needs to source for funds from the citizens.
The way the government is running the country is akin to having 10
pots but nine lids. They are in hot soup and they choose to dump the hot
soup on us – the ordinary rakyat.
This columnist’s source of information also revealed that the news
that has been given to us is untrue especially news pertaining to the
nation’s economic health because prior to the news being fed to the
public, it first has to be filtered and then changed wholesale.
Therefore if you read a piece of news saying that such-and-such a
world organisation is praising Malaysia for its financial prudence, then
the opposite is true.
Something sinister
All this simply means that many Malaysians including urban folks are
kept in the dark as to the actual health of the nation’s economy.
With the citizens being kept in the dark, the government continues to
tax the ordinary people via the hike in rates while some gullible
citizens still continue to believe that Malaysia’s financial situation
is healthy and robust due to reading polished news in the media.
However the situation is like the Indian saying of using a coconut
leaf to cover an elephant and someday in the near future, an implosion
is imminent.
With the price hikes expected to take place before Chinese New Year
on Jan 31, the Chinese are already grumbling due to the expected massive
expenditure needing to be forked out besides the usual year-end
expenses.
Is the government punishing KL folks for voting Pakatan Rakyat? The
Chinese certainly think that there is something sinister behind this
increase besides the fact that the government is in a dire financial
situation.
Besides the hike in assessment rates, the petrol hike for RON95 is
expected to be between 10 sen to 30 sen. After the petrol hike which is
expected to be implemented very soon, the prices of all goods will of
course follow suit.
This then will surely awaken many people to the fact that the
government’s coffers must be quite empty. If the economy collapses, then
the foreign workers here will be jobless, hungry and angry.
If such a situation were to occur in Malaysia, we the citizens will
be at the mercy of the foreign workers because there are too many of
them here and they can cause a great chaos if there is an economic
downturn in Malaysia.
It is only a matter of time before an implosion occurs. What will Malaysia’s economy be like then?
Do not forget that we depend a lot on domestic consumption to fuel
the nation’s economy. But for now, the situation is that the people of
KL are angry with the federal government for being unreasonable and many
have remarked that the government is robbing the rakyat.
It is useless for the government to give BR1M as it is not only a
matter of giving out but taking back many times more from the citizens –
the whole thing is nothing but a charade.
Selena Tay is a DAP member and a FMT columnist. - Free Malaysia Today
No comments:
Post a Comment