Malaysian Politics and Economy

An admission – I’m just a layman not used to talk about policy-level issues on a local scale, let alone national scale. But I need to get this off my chest.

1.       KPIs are so last century, but hurray GoM is now implementing this as part of their alphabet soup of governance, as advised by the alphabet soup consultants!

2.       Sibu shows the Chinese electorate are a pretty sophisticated bunch who move as one big mass of body politic

3.       Hulu Selangor shows that the Malay-electorate can still be swayed by short-term financial perks – RM50k anyone? Same for Indian-electorate.

4.       Innovation & Technology, the pivot around where the NEM is supposed to sway on to bring us to the high-income territory, is just so bloody far away that I just cant see it happening

5.       The PM has shown that he’s no statesman – u don’t go around explicitly bribing your electorate

6.       Brain Drain shows no signs of abating, and I fear that it may pick up steam after the next GE “when” BN still wins majority seats because of no. 3 above

7.       The Opposition, while showing some promise to reverse some of these deep-seated fundamental problems, have major issues of credibility and leadership. Let’s take a look at national leaders – there’s DSAI – who has funnyman Saiful being a pain in the ass, quite literally – but beyond him….? LKS or LGE – oh please! Let’s not trade a bigot with another. Dzulkifly Ahmad, Nizar, Khalid Samad are too far away from the national consciousness.

8.       Malays are at an important crossroad – they must choose their future – let go of the easy money and be competitive OR milk the nation till everyone starves. You think they’ll be able to make the right choice?

9.       Malaysian sportsmen are our hope for a common, united Malaysia, but are let down by weak mentality. So hockey, badminton, football – not much success there to unite everybody. Squash – too much on the fringes.

10.   The most articulate young politicians are not given the platform to shape or to move policy, institutions or society. Those given opportunities are betrayed by inexperience, lack of ability, easily outmanouvered politically and most importantly in my opinion, let down by an inordinate exaggerated belief in one’s own ability. Personal conviction of youth is our main hope, and when we don’t have enough competition amongst apathetic, rotten, amoral, unethical, ambivalent youth raised in an ineffective education system to produce young leaders– we have a major problem.

11.   oh – item 10 – our education sucks. We need more of the Musleh schools – perhaps in an English medium, which makes them Adni schools. And that needs to be opened to all public, without restriction.

12.   Then there is the teachers – overworked, underappreciated, overwhelmed, stressed and scope creep continues unabated. But they get a nice big Selamat Hari Guru card from the PM… isn’t that sweet?

13.   Financial management of the country sucks. We have a Madoff-like institution giving out high returns regardless of its portfolio performance, we have a provident fund which is so risk-averse that at your retirement age, the average Malaysian will still not have enough, Zakat institutions that are.. I reserve judgment.

14.   We have in inordinate sense of self importance – why do we still protect Proton at the expense of all Malaysians? Btw TM stands for Terribly Mediocre – unbefitting of its status as a national fixed line operator that will soon rollout triple-play and quad-play products. Practise meritocracy and see what Digi does with this. And VW to partner Proton. Btw what happened with Proton’s acquisition of Lotus – Lotus is now dragged down to Proton’s level! CK says we can source out other hydro plants from Sarawak, but which will still need the submarine cable, which was too costly. Oh yeah, he won the Best CEO award, so we should be comforted. Come to think of it, who are the major shareholders of these companies?