By Nawawi Mohamad | November 09, 2011
The Malaysian Insider
NOV 9 — Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad was a visionary leader who forcefully guided Malaysia’s development by corporate nationalism to achieve the status of a developed nation by 2020.
He made great achievements based on the benchmarks and milestones but was also hampered with some failures, but still the situation had not been that bad; there was still light at the end of the tunnel and remains in effect to the end of his term in office.
Unfortunately the success story stops here and the derailment began. Abdullah Badawi was not able to fill the shoes of Dr Mahathir. Abdullah Badawi was lost in his own world, without any real grasp of what was going on in the country economically, financially, socially and politically.
He pushed everything to the “fourth floor goons” led by his son-in-law to manage the country.
A classic example of his reply on the RM150 million owed by Osu Sukam to one of the casinos in the UK, whereby just by referring to some newspaper articles Abdullah made a knee-jerk condemnation of the former Sabah chief minister, without considering the political impact and the integrity of the BN government.
Abdullah is neither a real politician nor a leader to lead the nation. He was just a caretaker and a lousy one too.
Dr Mahathir was already furious when Abdullah scrapped the crooked bridge project resulting in the government having to pay roughly RM115 million compensation to the concessionaire and concluded that Abdullah was not only unfit for the post.
Meanwhile, the economy was getting stagnant, yet the cost of everything rose and the government simply could not make ends meet. When Najib Razak took over, he had no choice but to borrow.
The government had borrowed before but this time was out of desperation.
Thus our national debt is now more than RM407 billion (2010 figure). The problem with Najib is that he has too much in his hands. He has his personal scandals, wastages and extravagance, his brothers’ issues, his wife meddling in running the country, her extravagance, and lately, his own son is also in the news pertaining to one timber company.
Everything he proposed and tried to execute, just did not work as planned. The problems are further aggravated by the scandals of Khir Toyo, Sodomy II, Bersih 2.0, MACC deaths, police brutality and incompetence, the deterioration of Umno, the doom of Gerakan, MIC and possibly MCA, the RM407 national debt, and the Auditor-General’s report on the callous government spending in 2010 that ended up in the opening of the Pandora box!
In short, Najib has not been able to focus on the management, development, economy and financial health of the country. I need not write the details here as you can find the information from the recent book by Sahbudin Husin.
We have already been informed of the RM6 billion loan by the EPF to Felda (which has not enough money) and Petronas has to issue bonds for development capital. The next train for another disastrous derailment has already begun with continued borrowing and overspending.
It seems that the Umno/BN will eventually have to beg make ends meet. Corporate Malaysia in going bankrupt.