PM, whose fault is it then? The rakyat's?
YOURSAY 'You have not been prudent in managing our resources.'
PM: Don't blame gov't for price hikes
Anonymous #02382443: What rubbish. If the government had not entered into the lopsided agreements, stopped the extravagance and all the leakages, there would be no need for all the price increases.
To put it bluntly, you have not been prudent in the management of our resources and financial affairs.
TTT: PM Najib Razak wants us to "consider what the government has done prior to the spate of price increases before laying blame". You mean, like all the misappropriation of funds cited in the auditor-general's reports?
If you had stemmed corruption, leakages and improved the government's productivity from the first day you became prime minister, like what you had vowed to do five years ago, we wouldn't be in this dire state.
Hot Khong: You mean the government is not responsible for signing stupid agreements with the independent power producers (IPP) that have resulted in our electricity tariffs going up? And the dumb-ass agreements with the highway concessionaires?
Najib, be a man, do the right thing and just resign.
Metallic: Najib said, "However, the government will only decide on this (pay compensation to highway concessionaires) after it studies the matter."
My God, what has the government been doing all this while? Must you wait for your consultants to return from their year-end holidays?
Rayfire: The PM is missing the whole point! This is not something you can just wash your hands of.
The signs of pending price increases have been there for quite sometime: increasing debts, wasteful spending, corruption, cronyism, etc.
What have you done about it? Instead of finding ways to resolve the problems, you went on a spending spree during the elections, with your face appearing in every nook and corner.
Now the cost of maintenance, especially for you and your missus, has turned out to be exorbitant. What have you done to address all these?
Hajile Leumas: Najib and his wife Rosmah Mansor are jetting around the world in government-owned or leased private jets costing hundreds of millions of ringgit to maintain, and Najib dares tell the rakyat not to blame the government?
The money can be better used to help the rakyat. Najib, you are so blinded by the rakyat's wealth that you are freely spending it and is oblivious to the plight and struggles of the common rakyat who are finding it more and more difficult to put food on their table.
May God have mercy on you and Rosmah.
No Compulsion: Indeed, if we hadn't wasted billions in corruption and in cronies, I might believe you, Najib.
Onyourtoes: Granted that general increases in price levels over time are inevitable, it is the excessive price hikes, the uneven burden that falls on the people and the resultant instability that are the major issues of contention.
It is too simplistic to blame it on imports and external factors. Singapore is even more trade dependent and precarious, but inflation there is much better handled than us here.
Excessive price hikes is merely a symptom. The cause is a badly managed economy saddled with excessive transfer payments (too many free riders in the economy, if you don’t understand what this term means), very uneven distribution of income, poor management of the ringgit, excessive high costs due to monopoly or cartel actions and even excessive creation of money and credit.
Go examine the factors I mentioned, I think every one of them is present in Malaysia.
Worse still, the government is now withdrawing subsidies and allowing more market-based costs to pass through the system.
But do workers in Malaysia get their market determined wages? A price increase is alright if various players in the economy also get their incomes adjusted accordingly. But do we? How do those depending of fixed income and retirees cope?
By the way, you think we care two hoots of the compensation paid to the toll road concessionaires when the privatisation agreements were opaque, riddled with cost padding, and when the government was stupid enough to provide guaranteed traffic volume, guaranteed revenue and guaranteed profit?
You think you have done us a great favour by deferring the toll increase. Look, who paid the compensation ultimately, you or Umno? It is we the people who paid the compensation to your cronies, don’t you ever forget that.
Pputeh: PM, what you should do is sit down and see how you can save every dollar of the people's tax money. Here's my list but I think others can add on.
1. Sell all the private jets/planes the government owns. It is a waste of funds to maintain them.
2. Cut all the government's grandiose projects.
3. Give out contracts transparently so the government can give it to the lowest bidder and not to the middle men. For example, money earned from approved permits (APs) should go to government.
4. Withdraw all subsidies to the IPPs. Ask them to sacrifice for the nation as they have been earning 'big bucks' all this while.
5. Minister and deputy ministers, MBs, MPs and state assemblypersons should take a 30 percent cut in salaries and no more entertainment, drivers and other allowances.
6. No more open houses for festivals. Let's stay at home and enjoy the holidays with our families.
Apache: As the government, you could have renegotiated the lopsided IPP agreements with the independent power producers to lower the electricity tariffs, reviewed the unfair toll concessions with the operators, cancelled white elephants projects such as the Eastern and Western Economic Corridors and PKFZ (Port Klang Free Zone) to eradicate corruption and wasteful spending, authorised Selangor government to take over Syabas and other water utilities companies to reduce water charges and decrease the frequent water disruptions, reduced your overseas trips using private and chartered jets to minimise travelling expenses and helped to build up the government coffers, scaled down the size of your bloated cabinet and civil servants to eliminate deadwood and redundancies, eliminated the need to have so many external consultants to advise the government, sue to recover the soft loans and grants granted under the various failed projects such as the NFC (National Feedlot Corporation).
With these measures, you could have saved millions, if not billions, of ringgit for the country and then use these monies to bring down the cost of living for us. Unfortunately for us, you never did.
Anonymous_3e86: So Najib, whose fault is it then? The rakyat's?
Anti-Dumno: Don't blame the Barang Naik (BN) government, they have worked so hard to adjust the price hike since early 2013 to squeeze every sen for the BR1M cash handouts.
Now we, the non-recipients, have to suffer just to keep BR1M 2.0 going so that BN can fish more votes in the next GE.
YouAreNotAlone: Yes Najib, for once what you said about not blaming the government for the price hike is right. We should blame the 47 percent who voted you in.
The above is a selection of comments posted by Malaysiakini subscribers. Only paying subscribers can post comments. Over the past one year, Malaysiakinians have posted over 100,000 comments. Join the Malaysiakini community and help set the news agenda. Subscribe now .
PM: Don't blame gov't for price hikes
Anonymous #02382443: What rubbish. If the government had not entered into the lopsided agreements, stopped the extravagance and all the leakages, there would be no need for all the price increases.To put it bluntly, you have not been prudent in the management of our resources and financial affairs.
TTT: PM Najib Razak wants us to "consider what the government has done prior to the spate of price increases before laying blame". You mean, like all the misappropriation of funds cited in the auditor-general's reports?
If you had stemmed corruption, leakages and improved the government's productivity from the first day you became prime minister, like what you had vowed to do five years ago, we wouldn't be in this dire state.
Hot Khong: You mean the government is not responsible for signing stupid agreements with the independent power producers (IPP) that have resulted in our electricity tariffs going up? And the dumb-ass agreements with the highway concessionaires?
Najib, be a man, do the right thing and just resign.
Metallic: Najib said, "However, the government will only decide on this (pay compensation to highway concessionaires) after it studies the matter."
My God, what has the government been doing all this while? Must you wait for your consultants to return from their year-end holidays?
Rayfire: The PM is missing the whole point! This is not something you can just wash your hands of.
The signs of pending price increases have been there for quite sometime: increasing debts, wasteful spending, corruption, cronyism, etc.
What have you done about it? Instead of finding ways to resolve the problems, you went on a spending spree during the elections, with your face appearing in every nook and corner.
Now the cost of maintenance, especially for you and your missus, has turned out to be exorbitant. What have you done to address all these?
Hajile Leumas: Najib and his wife Rosmah Mansor are jetting around the world in government-owned or leased private jets costing hundreds of millions of ringgit to maintain, and Najib dares tell the rakyat not to blame the government?
The money can be better used to help the rakyat. Najib, you are so blinded by the rakyat's wealth that you are freely spending it and is oblivious to the plight and struggles of the common rakyat who are finding it more and more difficult to put food on their table.
May God have mercy on you and Rosmah.
No Compulsion: Indeed, if we hadn't wasted billions in corruption and in cronies, I might believe you, Najib.
Onyourtoes: Granted that general increases in price levels over time are inevitable, it is the excessive price hikes, the uneven burden that falls on the people and the resultant instability that are the major issues of contention.
It is too simplistic to blame it on imports and external factors. Singapore is even more trade dependent and precarious, but inflation there is much better handled than us here.
Excessive price hikes is merely a symptom. The cause is a badly managed economy saddled with excessive transfer payments (too many free riders in the economy, if you don’t understand what this term means), very uneven distribution of income, poor management of the ringgit, excessive high costs due to monopoly or cartel actions and even excessive creation of money and credit.
Go examine the factors I mentioned, I think every one of them is present in Malaysia.
Worse still, the government is now withdrawing subsidies and allowing more market-based costs to pass through the system.
But do workers in Malaysia get their market determined wages? A price increase is alright if various players in the economy also get their incomes adjusted accordingly. But do we? How do those depending of fixed income and retirees cope?
By the way, you think we care two hoots of the compensation paid to the toll road concessionaires when the privatisation agreements were opaque, riddled with cost padding, and when the government was stupid enough to provide guaranteed traffic volume, guaranteed revenue and guaranteed profit?
You think you have done us a great favour by deferring the toll increase. Look, who paid the compensation ultimately, you or Umno? It is we the people who paid the compensation to your cronies, don’t you ever forget that.
Pputeh: PM, what you should do is sit down and see how you can save every dollar of the people's tax money. Here's my list but I think others can add on.
1. Sell all the private jets/planes the government owns. It is a waste of funds to maintain them.
2. Cut all the government's grandiose projects.
3. Give out contracts transparently so the government can give it to the lowest bidder and not to the middle men. For example, money earned from approved permits (APs) should go to government.
4. Withdraw all subsidies to the IPPs. Ask them to sacrifice for the nation as they have been earning 'big bucks' all this while.
5. Minister and deputy ministers, MBs, MPs and state assemblypersons should take a 30 percent cut in salaries and no more entertainment, drivers and other allowances.
6. No more open houses for festivals. Let's stay at home and enjoy the holidays with our families.
Apache: As the government, you could have renegotiated the lopsided IPP agreements with the independent power producers to lower the electricity tariffs, reviewed the unfair toll concessions with the operators, cancelled white elephants projects such as the Eastern and Western Economic Corridors and PKFZ (Port Klang Free Zone) to eradicate corruption and wasteful spending, authorised Selangor government to take over Syabas and other water utilities companies to reduce water charges and decrease the frequent water disruptions, reduced your overseas trips using private and chartered jets to minimise travelling expenses and helped to build up the government coffers, scaled down the size of your bloated cabinet and civil servants to eliminate deadwood and redundancies, eliminated the need to have so many external consultants to advise the government, sue to recover the soft loans and grants granted under the various failed projects such as the NFC (National Feedlot Corporation).
With these measures, you could have saved millions, if not billions, of ringgit for the country and then use these monies to bring down the cost of living for us. Unfortunately for us, you never did.
Anonymous_3e86: So Najib, whose fault is it then? The rakyat's?
Anti-Dumno: Don't blame the Barang Naik (BN) government, they have worked so hard to adjust the price hike since early 2013 to squeeze every sen for the BR1M cash handouts.
Now we, the non-recipients, have to suffer just to keep BR1M 2.0 going so that BN can fish more votes in the next GE.
YouAreNotAlone: Yes Najib, for once what you said about not blaming the government for the price hike is right. We should blame the 47 percent who voted you in.
The above is a selection of comments posted by Malaysiakini subscribers. Only paying subscribers can post comments. Over the past one year, Malaysiakinians have posted over 100,000 comments. Join the Malaysiakini community and help set the news agenda. Subscribe now.
