Lim Kit Siang

What we want now

Letters
by Steven

Nowadays, by just reading the newspaper and watching TV news, mostly it was related to political news. Well, I admit that most of the Malaysian are kinda shock, surprised or attracted to the past election news. The most important thing is how to improve the quality of life of Malaysians. I really don’t see how these issues were handled carefully in the past. I believe that some people would agree with me. We always know how to compare with others countries, but correct me if I am wrong that the comparison made was always with poorer performance countries. I don’t really understand this. Why we don’t want to improve our nation by comparing to the developing countries? We had already achieved independence by 50 years. Please do not always feel satisfied with what we have achieved nowadays because there is still much room to improve.

Malaysia is a blessed country with many resource like rubber, tin, petroleum, fishes and others. Why we are not utilizing them and make benefits of them for the good of society. Sometimes, I would think that why so many youngsters leave Malaysia and go abroad to work. Of course, the most attractive factor is money, living environment and safety. I still remember that when I was small, our money currency was almost equivalent with Singaporean. But looking at it now, we are much much lower than Singaporean, Euro, Australian and others major countries currency. Please don’t tell us that we are okay nowadays by looking at Malaysia Ringgit vs US Dollar. It was just USD is weak and not Malaysia Ringgit strong. Please awake and do something now before it is too late. I am not financial expert who has the right comment on our Malaysia Ringgit performance. At least I notice that our Ringgit is much depreciated. Please learn it from other countries. I worked in US before, the costs of buying goods like a comb of bananas doesn’t change much from time to time, it was ~USD1 in 2002 and also in 2007. But for us, everything is up. I can’t deny that there is an inflation factor counted in Malaysia’s economy. We would think that the inflation number reported is not right, every year is also low. Does the inflation number reported is just solely based on the controlled goods? Overall, our Ringgit and Sen is weak?

Knowing that the Malaysian money weakness is one thing, but please don’t ever spend unnecessary money on some projects like sending a guy to the space. This maybe brings some fame to the country, I admit it. However, the money spent is just on one person individually only. It will be wiser to spend the money on the society, like improving the city infrastructure, nation’s traffic, cleanliness and crime issues. I know that we want to be famous and it is using a lot of our money. Please don’t come and tell us that this would lead to invention of science in medical line. If this program is sponsered, it will be great. What we want is everyone happy and not individual. Please think of the basic necessity first. A person will have good quality of life no matter he or she is rich or poor if the city is developed, clean, good and no crime. Talking about the cleanliness, I know that this is hard to deal. We have to change our attitude as well but things will
improve if there is more litter bins prepared.

Crime is serious issue also. Is there anyway we can handle this more wisely? Having more policemen is not enough. We should either review it in different manner. Like maybe setting up intelligent computer eye at the lamp posts or setting up radar scan for detecting suspicious movements. I don’t deny that some crimes in Malaysia is attributed by the imported workers. Maybe it is time for the government to review the law and impose heavier penalties for them.

If all this things is not going to change, I would think that people would just surrender it after fighting for the changes through election. They would probably leave Malaysia and go to other countries for better life and living. And then the government would complain of running short of special talents, and no investors want to come to invest.