By Dr Chen Man Hin, DAP Life advisor
Anwar claims that Najib is scraping the bottom of the barrel in his desperation to give money to BN MPs to get support from the people. Actually the government coffers are already empty. The money he is now splashing round to the low income groups and to BN MPs who badgered for money are sourced from Petronas and EPF funds.
Predictions of the economy are bad. The GDP growth for first quarter is about 4% which is 2% lower than the expected 6%.
World economy is bad. The Eurozone countries are mired in debt. The China economy is slowing down. So Najib’s dreams of achieving a high income economy are dashed.
The World Bank has no praises for Najib’s economic reforms because he has not made structural reform. The Time magazine echoes the views of the World Bank.
Najib now has his back against the wall. His cronies can’t work up an ideology to boost party morale. The only way for Najib to win votes is to use government funds to hand out money to the people.
For the first batch of RM500 to each poor household, Najib borrowed money from EPF. It cost RM2.6 billion to pay out to 5 million families.
The government has no funds and must now borrow to bribe the votes with another RM500 for each poor family as promised by him.
He now has to compete with MAS which is also scouring for several billion to revive the chronically financially broke airline.
Using money to buy support from the people, is a sad reflection of the sad state of affairs of the Najib government. It means that Najib has lost out in the political argument to win the hearts and minds of the people.
The people which include all the races have lost faith in BN because of its corruption, and lack of good governance. The people are able to differentiate between the policies of PR and the policies of BN. And they will surely elect PR to take charge of the government after GE13.