NOVEMBER 3 — Ah yes, the Budget announcement or “event likely to raise my blood pressure” just happened.
For my mental health I refused to watch it “live” as a group of clowns dragging their nails on a chalkboard would probably be less torturous.
It is nearing the end of 2021 and no one knows where those laptops that were supposed to be given, no, leased, to students have yet to materialise.
Perhaps they were a figment of our collective imagination and we are all actually dreaming in cryo chambers, waiting to be woken up to a world where politicians can use the Kamus Dewan and learn the difference between timah (tin) and Timah (the abbreviation of a common woman’s name that originated from Arabic).
I had to step away from my keyboard after seeing a friend excitedly share a graphic touting the allocations made to specific race groups — Chinese, Indian, Orang Asli and native East Malaysians.
My friend is very well-meaning but as she identifies as neither of those race groups she can be incredibly blind to how these people saw the Budget and how they felt about those special allocations.
There was a lot of noise in the Budget about allocations for Bumiputera but I guess to Putrajaya, East Malaysians are not Bumiputera seeing as how they got a comparatively tiny allocation of RM10 million.
The stepchildren of Keluarga Malaysia
Why does the government keep ignoring what the pandemic has demonstrated so effectively — that poverty runs across all racial lines? The perception that “oh all the Chinese are rich and the ones who aren’t can just get help from the community” is very flawed and yet is still conveniently thrown around to stoke racial tensions when needed.
Why is a poor minority member less deserving of aid? Malaysia needs all its people and the Keluarga Malaysia concept is nothing but a sham if it continues being exclusionary above anything else.
We have the 1MDB debt repayments continually looming.
Just a thought, maybe if the government wouldn’t keep handing out GLC posts and creating special ambassadorships, there would be more money to go around?
It does not make sense there are so many portfolios and ministers in the prime minister’s office, and so many deputy ministers too but we claim we can’t give better terms to our contract doctors.
Speaking of those doctors, they’re planning another protest and they rightfully should.
I don’t agree with the perception that “they signed up for this, they should just accept it.”
We live in supposedly enlightened times; just because they are trained to save lives, it doesn’t mean they do not deserve rights and humane working conditions.
As important as the ballot box is in a democracy, it’s just as important for Malaysians to keep making noise.
We have to reject the notion that asking for accountability and calling out injustice and excesses is “complaining” and “ingratitude.”
Malaysians are too pampered, meek and repressed a people to resort to violence but the simmering dissatisfaction and unhappiness will not benefit the nation.
More people are clamouring to leave, even if it has become even harder these days with xenophobia ramping up globally.
We cannot become a high-income nation with first-class infrastructure when we elevate and celebrate the mediocre.
Quiet desperation should not become the Malaysian experience; now all our hope rests with our young who I can only hope have the courage and imagination so lacking in our Cabinet.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
