Category: Economy

To Continue the Fight or Put Nation’s Interest Above All Else?

I was driving home from our escapades to the countryside farm together with my better half’s school mates. Their group of probably around 10 close-knit friends since they were teenagers. The almost always have two gatherings a year, one during Hari Raya and another to spend the night somewhere talking about the good old days. Although they are friends of my better half, they have been so nice to me that they have included me in their group to talk about stuff. Throughout the years, it now felt like I was there in the same school with them back in the 90’s.

Among the group, we have one guy whom I actually have little respect back in the day (him as a politician) but now have enormous respect. As a friend, he’s the best you want to have around. Funny as hell, love to feed his friends with great food, love to gossip about old friends, always there if you need help, and never stingy when it comes to money. A great guy all around. Currently he’s a staunch supporter and is a personal aide of one of the President of a party in PH.

That Sunday morning was a power breakfast morning. We exchanged stories about the going on in PH. Stories from a few months ago, stories of what happened during the eventful PH Presidents Council Meeting where everybody came out agreeing that it’s up to Dr. Mahathir to decide when to step down as PM. The meeting was said to be a very very hot meeting. It was hot because of the pressure within PKR for Dr. Mahathir to step down and Bersatu being defensive about it. Stories from PH President Council meeting where Dr. Mahathir did not attend and they decided to have Anwar as PM. Stories when Dr. M again became PH choice of PM. Stories of how Muhyiddin and co orchestrated the play between PH parties. Fascinating stuff indeed. We all agreed that, if it’s not because of Bersatu and PKR camp just can’t seem to agree when Dr. M should step down, all of these could’ve been avoided, among other things lah.

My friend agreed that both sides were not of their right mind. The other parties in the coalition realised it as well. But politicians being politicians, they will still fight about it. True indeed, that I agree with him. They won’t be politicians if they aren’t fighting for power.

We can’t deny that there is still bad blood between Dr. Mahathir and Anwar camps dated since 1998, much more between the two gentlemen themselves. I personally am happy to see them reconcile their differences and can only hope they will really let bygones be bygones. But one can only hope. Deep down, both my friend and I agreed that there will forever be bad blood between them.

So where do I stand? he asked. I told him, I’m torn. On one had I feel PH needs to fight one last time when Parliament reconvened. PH have fought too hard to back down now. There are still a lot of things to be done and reforms made. Get enough numbers and motion for parliament to decide the next PM based on numbers of MP supporting the current PM. This is the easier way for PH to be the government again. PH already have 92, add Dr Mahathir, Warisan+Upko and lost Bersatu lot (Saddiq, Maszlee and etc), that’s 108. Just another 4-5 seats to close the deal. It’s the easiest way to win without a doubt.

If PH goes for snap election, PH would lose in a big way. I told him, the typical Malay folks would vote for PN in a heartbeat. Why? For Abata lah. That will be the raison d’etre for the typical Malays. Even now these Malay folks are jumping with joy since the two biggest Malay-based party joined ranks. Do you think by simply branding them “pengkhianat” will win them support? The typical Rakyat don’t see the party hoppers betraying their wish, they see it as the Malays coming together. They see two biggest Malay based parties who have been at war with each other for a long, long time, working together again for a better Malaysia. The typical Rakyat don’t see them betraying the people’s mandate because the mandate has always been for a better Malaysia and Islam. This may not necessarily how I see it, but it’s definitely how a typical Malay is seeing it. So yeah, if PH goes for snap election, PH would lose in a big way.

My barometer is simple, let’s look at some hard data, and some soft data. Hard data would be the results recent by elections. Let’s just take 2019 onwards. There has been 6 by-elections from 2019 onward. Four Parliament seats and two state seats. Of these six, PH lost five of them. Two of the lost seats were actually PH seats. These hard uncontestable data shows that PH is on a losing streak. PH were the government of the day. Promised millions of development projects for the constituencies and yet PH still lost 5 of these seats. People hate PH that much.

Tanjung Piai by election.

Soft data is easier. Look at social media timelines and WhatsApp group chatter. There are way too many talks of people hating PH and whatever it is that PH do. This is way different that the euphoria of 2018 where there were so many praise coming through the timelines. Remember Tabung Harapan? People actually give politicians money. Yeah, now you see it right? I will not get into the why because that’s for PH to find out and fix. They can read my previous posting if they need some pointers where to start looking.

So, to me, if PH wants to get the PM position and cabinet back, the best way to go is to get a vote of no confidence going in Parliament.

That’s on one hand. But I’m torn, remember?

On the other hand, this will put the country back into a state of disarray. We will then have another round of drama, u-turn, back stabbing and frog-hopping. More money and promises will be dished out and more under the table dealings will be dealt. This is so that they can secure the number of seats required. And it’s all to get that PM and cabinet power in their hands. This will happen in both camps.

The stock markets and economy will once again plunge into the abyss. Oil prices have already hit rock bottom with the largest one-day percentage decline since 1991. Ours is an oil-based economy, where some 30% of government revenue are oil related. A 25% reduction in oil prices means government may not have a huge chunk of that 30% revenue anymore. Coupled with our declining export in Palm Oil, which saw a 42% decline in palm oil shipment export values over the last five years, and of course the impact of Covid-19 across the world economy. We are in no position to be have our politicians fighting each other and forgetting about the nation and the impending multitude of issues.

Being different is beautiful.

We also have lots of local problems, we still have race relation issues to fix. There has been way too many Malay vs Chinese, India vs Malay, Semenanjung vs Sabah/Sarawak, Islam vs Non-muslims situations. Even within Islam, Sunni vs Syiah, Wahabbi vs whatever that is not Wahabbi and so many other. I don’t have to link them. I would hate myself for linking them.

Is another power struggle the answer? That is why I’m torn. That was why I stated in my last posting that these leaders need to put away their differences and find a workable solution. I meant Unity government. Work together to solve immediate problems. It’s not that hard.

Should we have another power tussle? Is this the best for the country at the moment?

Thank god I’m not a politician. I don’t have to burden myself with these decisions. However, we can’t really trust the politicians to make decisions that will put the country first and foremost right? They always put themselves first right? Quite a conundrum we are in.

I’ll leave you guys there. Think hard and then tell your representative what you think they should do. Think really hard.

A friend once told me, “Politik ni kena tamak dan gamak” (In politics, we must be greedy and have what it takes to do something that might be bad). Another good friend (which I really need to connect back with) told me this saying from China “If you wait by the river long enough, you will see the body of your enemies come floating down”.

Peace be unto all.

To Snap or not to Snap.

Thanos wouldn’t ask this question, he would just snapped and be done with it. However, we need to think about it. Or the Avengers will come and kick our collective asses.

Based on what our Interim PM said yesterday, “The King has asked all MPs to make a statement… in front of him. The result is that he can’t find anyone with a distinct majority. Since there isn’t a distinct majority, he says the right forum would be the Dewan Rakyat”.

This is very astute of our King. He understands that the power belongs to the people. This is one of the many reasons why I love our current King. He’s a people person who doesn’t think he’s a know-it-all, clairvoyant and above the people like some other royalties. He believes that the people have elected these representatives to represent them, and that they are the best group people to decide on the next step. A true example of the saying “Raja dan Rakyat berpisah tiada”. Meaning the ruler and the subjects are inseparable. The King knows that we the people have chosen our representative for each of our constituency. So he let these representative decides.

Our King, Sultan Abdullah Ri’ayatuddin of Pahang wants the people to decide.

Unfortunately, our representatives are at an impasse. Who should be PM and lead them. One minute it was Dr. Mahathir, then it wasn’t, then it was Anwar. Then we hear Hishamuddin Tun Hussin, and now we hear it’s may be Muhyiddin though I think that is just Mahathir saying it as an example. I don’t believe that is what he wants. Why would he want’s someone who betrayed him? Knowing Dr. Mahathir, he probably wanted it for himself. Whoever it is, the impasse is, who should be PM?

You hear these politicians talks about, this is what the rakyat wants lah, they want this PM lah, and that PM lah, this mandate lah, and that mandate, this manifesto and that manifesto lah, this party lah and that party lah. This is all what they, the politicians want.

In actual fact, many of the manifestos and promises have now become secondary. We are now facing a much more immediate problem that needs fixing. It may have overtaken many other promises that was made more than 2 years ago.

Our economy is tanking

We now have a tanking economy, Stock market is at a 10-year low. Our 2019 GDP growth was at 10-year low. BNM even had to unexpectedly announce a cut in interest rate recently. Crude oil prices are at a one year low. The list go on and on. When this happens, everybody loses and we the rakyat lose more the the politicians and the rich people. Jobs creation halted, people loses jobs, purchasing power weakened, more shops will lose sales, means more jobs lost. The cycle is vicious.

The tanking economy is now made worse with the impending epidemic of Covid-19. It’s not yet an epidemic, just at pandemic level now. However, with Japan closing their school through March, North Korean is following suit by extending school break, and the latest even Saudi have halts pilgramage over Covid-19. What all these point to is a bigger negative impact on our economy. IMF will downgrade global growth. This is like a double whammy for our economy, or as the saying goes, “it never rains but it pours”. I like it more in Malay, “Dah jatuh ditimpa tangga, dan terpalit tahi ayam”, the “terpalit tahi ayam” is me adding on to it.

We will need the best people to steer the ship through these dark waters. We will need to be working together in getting through these dry spell. This is above party politics, this should be a bi-partisan issue that everybody agrees above anything else. Yes, even above who should be PM. If the person can’t steer us through this, then he better not be PM. Let the leaders think who is the person. Use this one thing that we all can agree upon to decide who’s the best person.

What if we can’t decide and we go for snap election?

What if Thanos snaps and we have a snap election? Let’s hypothetically entertain this idea. First of all, it will probably cost upwards of 800 million ringgit. That’s almost a billion. These are money that our government doesn’t have. Heck, even the recently announced Covid-19 stimulus package have already put a dent to the projected fiscal deficit from 3.2% to 3.4%. This isn’t even including political parties spending several hundred millions to fund the snap elections. More money down the drain. Do you really want this my dear leaders and readers?

Azhar Harun (Art), our Election Committee Chairman.

How fast can the EC organise the snap election? I reckon between 1.5 to 2 months including a 1-2 weeks campaign period. This means the country will be without a fully functioning government for another 2-3 months throughout this dangerous waters that we are going through. You really want this my dear leaders and readers?

And assuming we have this snap election, this effectively means we will have two full months of campaigning. The politicians are desperate for power, things will get ugly. Race relation in Malaysia is worsening. Think of what 2-month long of desperate campaigning will do to us? Think of just how much race and religion fanning sentiments will be thrown all over the place. Do we really want this my dear leaders and readers?

People are also fed up will all these politicking, back-door government, power tussle and the likes. A snap election may very well have the lowest turnout ever. Politicians will display their worst due to desperation, people will get more fed up, and may ended up not voting. Do we really want this my dear readers and leaders?

What I’m proposing is, all parties must work out theirdifferences. Put the immediate and real problems ahead of your ego, your vengeance, you hatred and whatever it is that is clouding your better judgment. Put the well being of the people going through the dark waters first.

Use these few days before the parliament sitting on March 2, and work out your differences. Present to the King a workable solution that will not end up in a snap election. Show to the people that you, the elected representative, knows better. That you will put the country and the people well being ahead of your own self.

This is what I implore you the readers, to tell your representative. This is what I implore you the leaders to do. This is what I, the rakyat wants.

Peace be unto all.

RM278 monthly for retirement sounds good?

Recently I saw a friend of mine quit his job to take care of his ailing father. He had a pretty stable job. Probably brought back a good RM7-RM8 thousands a month with his job then. He’s the sole breadwinner. He will be going back to Batu Pahat Johor to live with his father. He will be taking his wife and his 2 sons with him. His father was too old to be living alone and his father just don’t want to live with him in Selangor. It’s not our culture to send old people to old folks home hence as a good son he is, he moved his home to Batu Pahat and lives with his dad. He earned a living by driving for Grab while doing some odd jobs here and there.

This situation is not at all uncommon. We find there’s more and more people living with their mom and dad. And this doesn’t look like it will change any time soon. According to the data shared by Employee Provident Funds, on average contributors who are aged between 50-54 only have RM200 thousands in their account. What’s worse, 67% of these folks have less than RM50 thousands in their accounts. The rich have so much money it inflated EPF average number for that age bracket. That’s very very worrying.

Table from 2018 EPF Annual Report. It’s scary looking at them.

Let’s assume that many of these old folks will indeed retire with RM50 thousands in the bank. Let’s further assume that these vintage folks will continue to live for another 15 years as Malaysia’s life expectancy is indeed 75 years old.

What can RM50 thousands give you over 15 years? That’s about RM278 a month. How much does a pensioner needs to live nowadays? This is what EPF shared.

That’s right folks, for a vintage couple, they need about RM3,100 or RM1,500 per person in a month. Probably more if they live in Klang Valley, Penang or JB. In 5-10 years, those in the age bracket with about RM50 thousands in their EPF account vintage folks will retire with only RM278 monthly income. That is if they don’t spend it at one go for umrah or pay up their housing or personal loan upfront. Even if we have double of that amount, RM1000 a month is not a lot.

Why am I sharing this? Because, where we are headed at our current rate, it’ll be way way worse than this. Lots of the folks in their 30s and 40s are still paying for student debt (PTPTN), fresh graduates have upwards of RM40 thousand in student loan alone. Most will have taken personal loan for marriage (I took out RM15 thousands loan for my marriage back in 2005. Then there’s car loan and credit card outstanding balances and many other loans probably.

We may ended up not having anything saved for out retirement. If we are part of the 67% of people that have less than RM50 thousands in our accounts by the time we are 50 years old then we need a miracle to be able to retire comfortably.

Remember that current adults and later our kids will not have it easy either. Even now people in their twenties are having a hard time to make enough money for themselves. Fresh graduates are doing menial jobs and paid at just slightly above minimum wage of RM1400. These are salary for folks working in fast food joints and restaurants. They don’t even have enough for themselves. More than 60% of graduates are unemployed in the first year after graduation. In total there are more than 500,000 adults are unemployed in the country. We don’t need statistics to tell us if these are younger folks or older folks.

So let’s be better prepared with our finances to better take care of our parents. Be better to prepare our kids so they fared better in the economy. Be prepared so we retired comfortably and won’t burden our parents nor our kids nor their kids.

If we aren’t prepared, we will be living with our kids later, together with their kids and their kids’ kid all in the same home. Singapore folks seemed to be ready and way ahead of us for this, for better or worse.

Peace be unto all.

Between the Picky and the Prick

I was reading the news recently and came across this article from The Star. It’s our Human Resource Minister Kulasegaran saying, “As I am speaking, currently there are more than 640,000 job openings available. Not just the 3D (Dirty, Dangerous, Difficult) jobs, for example at the management level there more than 6,000; for professionals more than 21,000; as well as technical and associate professionals for more than 22,000.” He added “The biggest challenge for us is there are a lot of employment opportunities, but the youth are not willing to take these jobs.” Bold font emphasis is mine.

He was answering a question by DS Ismail Yaakob (BN-Bera) on the ministry to state whether the Pakatan Harapan government will be able to implement its election manifesto of creating one million job opportunities by the end of its five-year term.

First of all, if we add the management level, technical and professional jobs, it’s not even 10% of the 640k jobs available. Does it means the rest are all 3D jobs? Why do you like give half-assed answers that opens up your backside Minister?

This is why I hate our half-assed politician and minister. They think they are so good and performed well enough when in actual fact it’s far from what it should be. Let’s take a closer look at your ministry.

Here’s the Human Resource Ministry mission statements I took from https://www.mohr.gov.my.

Clearly, in the mission statements you wanted to “Increase employability and employment rate of the local workforce to meet the national labour market needs”. So it’s not just jobs creation, but also getting these unemployed youth to get jobs. Now, if what this prick said is true, that we have more than 640K jobs available and that 150K of those jobs were created within the year. We would’ve significantly reduced unemployment rate already by now because back in March, I remember our unemployed people in the country are in the range of 500k. So let’s take a look at the latest unemployment rate by the Department of Statistics Malaysia.

Unemployment rate has remained flat since the beginning of the year. – DOSM

So there you go you Minister Prick. You have done nothing so far. You can add even a million jobs and if the unemployment rate doesn’t change you can forget it. It’s just like increasing minimum wage, you can increase minimum wage to a hundred thousand a month. If the purchasing power doesn’t increase, you can forget it.

Now look, I’m a reasonable person, if he doesn’t stop at saying our youth are picky and continued to acknowledge that the ministry hasn’t done enough to either educate these picky youth or create more jobs that suit the youth and these are the things we are doing to fix that, then I’m okay. It means he understands that there are still more things that he needs to do. Then again, only a minister with a big cojones will acknowledge that he/she still have a lot to do. This particular minister, this particular prick? Not so much.

I have said before that youth nowadays have mismatched expectations when it comes to jobs. This is not something new, we all know this. You know this, Minister Prick knows this, I know this. So instead of saying the same thing over and over again, Minister Prick, you need to work on getting it resolved.

Another thing, you don’t get to say it out loud that youth are picky. You haven’t even done anything significant yet, so you haven’t earned the right to say it. Don’t for a second think you can be like Dr. Mahathir, he has earned the right. He can say Malays are lazy or whatever the heck he wants. He has earned it. You Minister Prick, haven’t. We the rakyat, get to say whatever we want because we put you in office. Remember why we put you in office? To solve the damn problem.

So start working on getting it resolved, stop telling us youth are picky because you are such a prick for saying it.

So, don’t be one.

Peace be unto you.