This is probably the first time that I am writing about my feeling on Malaysia. I have about 8 mins before I need to prepare for work. Its time to work!
In the last General Election – we have seen that the opposition(then) has won the election. It is a surprise to a lot of people. To be honest. A lot of people has a lot of hope for the Pakatan Harapan to win, but never thought that they would. I would say who I support as voting is secret. When the news that they have won came out, it took many hours before the official declaration was made. I remember staying up so late for this. I guess – deep inside myself – I am hoping for a better Malaysia.
Couple of weeks has passed, so many press conferences, so many news, so many appointments, and have we seen any changes. Well there were some. The one that really impacted the Rakyat was GST. GST was set to zero rate and practically giving all of Malaysians a tax holiday. 3 months from now, SST will be reintroduced again. It definitely spurred a lot of spending. Can see from the shopping malls all – a lot of people are out shopping. Perhaps to buy stuffs for Raya that is next week.
I feel that the country has a lot of potential. Perhaps in the previous ruling party, people were allegedly greedy and siphoned off a considerable amount of money. Despite strong economic fundamentals, there were a lot of alleged misuse of public funds for personal gains. All they way from the top. This is of course are just allegation and not yet proven.
Days after the election, the previous Prime Minister was barred from leaving the country, police was called in to do searches in his houses and offices. Stash of cash and luxury items were seized. Amazingly – this is something that very interesting indeed. Basic common sense will say that this is definitely comes from bribes and commissions from major projects (we are talking about few hundred millions here).
Well – as a Prime Minister, you probably make about approximately MYR100k per month, no way you would be able to save even 10M. Is it greed? I don’t know. These are unproved allegations that we will need to wait for the police to continue to investigate and determined whether its true or not. The previous prime minister has lawyered up, getting some of the best lawyers in the world (coming from US!). I guess based on the rule of law, he needs to be given the right to defend himself.
We need to remember that its never a one person act. Being in power for more than 60 years, it is an ecosystem that has been broken. Some of my acquaintance that has strong ties to then government of the day are living in luxury. I am not talking about businessmen but politically aligned individuals. Well – that is a career for them and let it be. I just hope that what ever the outcome is, the more important part is for the greater good of the rakyat is taken care off.
As what I’ve been telling people, witch hunt is not something that we want to see. People should stop politicking and start governing. I know it is difficult for the current government to do that because they have been trying very hard to get to Putrajaya, and finally the hard earned effort materialized. And now is the harder part of the work which is to make it work.
I have strong believe that this will work. 100 days may be to short to determined how successful is the current government. Some quick wins are possible (like GST) – but there are more work that needs to be done to make it work. Remember, happy people does not equate to a successful country. We do have a very strong economic fundamentals – and with the new government, I strongly believe it’ll give a much needed boost to bring us to the next level.
I think I wrote enough for now. Its time to go to work. Perhaps another day I can continue whining 🙂