Seems like tomorrow’s fuel-hike demo is going ahead in Kelana Jaya. Hope that there won’t be any violent crash during the rally, and I hope that the protestors are fighting on the right cause and not for political reasons.
There is no point protesting against the petrol price hike… the fuel subsidy was wrong and should have been gone long ago. It there is anything to complain about… it’s about corruption, poor public transportation and the government failure in improving our living standard for the past decade.
Inflation is something inevitable; what really strike Malaysians these days is the failure to improve our earning-capability since the 1997 economic crisis. With exceptions of a few professions, the salary and income levels of most jobs are not on par with inflation rate for the past decade… some sectors are actually falling behind the pre-1997 era.
Singaporeans are paying a despatch boy RM2500 a month while most fresh engineering graduates won’t be getting as much in Malaysia.
Off course there are arguments that the cost of living would be higher in Singapore, but their definite advantage is that their overall standard of living would not be affected as much by global effects because of their higher earning power.
The effect of globalisation has become more apparent these days; inflations and cost of living is not something that we can control alone unless the country is self-sufficient in everything. The logical option to keeping our living sustainable is to increase our production level, and thus the income level of general citizens… and it’s something that the government has to think and work on.
We need to have a plan, a solid idea of what we want our country to be in the next 5, 10 or 20 years. One of the reasons why I am not against removing the petrol subsidy is that the money could be better spent (set aside the corruption issue first) on other development instead of protection policies. It’s better to teach people to fish than to give them fishes.
What the lower income group should fight for are policies that could increase their income level and a fair distribution of wealth. It’s unthinkable that some working classes are earning less than RM500 a month; that’s an exploitation to our labour forces. It’s a fair thing that skillful workers or educated peope should earn more than those who are not… but surely the hardwork itself could be rewarded better.
Malaysia need to rebrand ourselves; we are branded as a cheap and resourceful place for foreign investors in late 80s and the 90s, but with the rising of China, India and Vietnam etc… we are not having the advantage we used to have.
Malaysia need to learn to stop relying too much on FDI and create our own branding… we need to optimise our profit levels and minimise wastage, and the government needs to lead by example and Malaysians should work hard on improving ourselves.
Finally, instead of blaming solely on the government for the hardship these days, Malaysians need to reflect on ourselves too… some of us have been too complacent with ourselves for the past decade or two; some of us have been taking too many things for granted; some of us have been living inside caves for failing to realise what’s going around; some of us have been mere fools to think that government has to be responsible to spoon feed them forever.
