Dear All,

Malaysia has been richly blessed with natural resources like tin ore, petroleum, palm oil, rubber and many others. Malaysia has also been blessed with many talented individuals who are now heading top political parties, huge conglomerates and many other sectors. My grandmother once told me that there was this saying in the old days about Malaya i.e. you stick a twig on the ground it will soon grow a tree. That’s how richly blessed Malaya was then to many Chinese immigrants. However, on the same breath, my grandmother often reminded us that a rich and fertile land could soon turn barren and even toxic if it is continuously exploited without reapplication of manure or fertilizers. I am sure most will agree that one cannot expect a tree to bear fruits without application of fertilizers on a regular basis.

As many would now aware that we are all living in one big world. Some of the principles of economics that we learned in school are no longer relevant which even Alan Greenspan had finally admitted that a completely free market environment does not work anymore. His assumptions that company executives would take actions to check and prevent ultimate demise of their own organizations were wrong. In other words, human species are not working to preserve the existence of their own specie as long as they are not harmed. They care for themselves and nobody else. Hence explain why there are suicide bombers sacrificing themselves under the noble objective of fighting the evils but in actual fact they care for nobody but themselves. They are after a good afterlife as they have been promised of virgins awaiting them at the door of heaven.

We have similar problems in Malaysia as well. The education system in Malaysia today is drawn up to satisfy popular demand i.e. everyone wants a tertiary education, thinking that it leads to a good and better life even if its means lowering the quality of education. Of course, at the same time it serves to protect interests of the elites as they can afford better education elsewhere.I don’t think we can entirely blame the policy makers for this because they have basically bowed to the clamouring voice of the majority. Hence we have universities and university colleges sprouting up in every town in Malaysia. Great academic instituitions of the world like Yale, Oxford, Boston and many others take centuries to build their standing and reputation. Surely one cannot expect our academic instituitions to achieve similar proficiency or anywhere near them overnight. But then again, the conscience of the policy makers are absolutely clear because they have given to the people what they wanted, even if it means the ultimate destruction of the people and not themselves.

The second major step towards destruction is finding jobs to employ these half baked graduates. Economic 101 would tell us that salary and wages for university graduates were levelled down as they were more graduates clamouring for the limited jobs requiring tertiary education. And there is the issue of private sectors refusing to employ these half baked graduates who could not speak and write English well. Many of them have never heard of the word “poppy-cock”. They may tell you that it is actually a plastic shuttlecock. Many would have realized by now that wage levels in Malaysia did not move up in tandem with inflationary cost all these years which of course the employers are happy with. But the country cannot escape from inflationary pressures exerted from outside Malaysia. What do we get out from this? People clamouring the government to subsidize their cost of living as their income could not cover their living cost. I certainly believe that the government does not have such deep pockets.

Then you have the government taking the honour of employing these half baked graduates. The end result of all the above is the rapid emptying out the fertile soil of Malaysia. If you may like, you can say that these half baked graduates are toxic assets and could one day cause serious indigestion to the system.

If during good times like what we had enjoyed the past 5 years or so and the government not able to balance its budget, what do you think would be the case when the whole world is in deep, prolong recession? Crude oil contributes some 45% of the Malaysian government revenue with palm oil, a distant second. Now with the prices of both these commodities severely down, I think serious belt tigthening is required. Some may have travelled to the Phillipines and have seen poverty in a country that was the most prosperous nation in this region just 30 years ago.

It is sad to note that top politicians are still politicking for their survival when the country is in severe drastic need of a new formula of navigating itself out of the world recession. Sad to note that politicians are still in denial and resting on yesterday’s dreams when the world already been awaken by such a economical catastrophe.

Anwar Ibrahim was right that the budget tabled require a serious review.