Adakah Najib Tak Segan - Is Najib Not Ashamed?

Pm Najib not only likes to talk through his nose but he is also quite shameless in what he says.

Just the other day in Cambodia where he was, to attend the Asean summit in Phnom Penh, he was shamelessly blowing his own trumpet by claiming that his administration has fulfilled the election promises he had made to Malaysian voters.

But what has his administration really done for the rakyat?

Malaysians have not seen anything meaningful being done under his administration except the dispensing of one off payouts like the Rm500 given out recently to householders with monthly income of Rm3000 and less which many see as mere election time gimmick to buy votes and not one that is really helpful to the economy.

In fact, Najib's administration had to revise downwards the projection of economic growth for the year from a lofty 6% to some 4.5%.

Public debt is at an all-time high at 53% of GDP, dangerously close to the legally allowable limit of 55%!. And despite this, Najib's administration had the gumption to ask Parliament a few days earlier for a further supplementary budget of Rm10 billion!

And one of his deputy ministers even had the cheeks to come out and say that Malaysia's public debt at 53% was alright, we are still 2% points away. Ha ha! Brilliant! In any other country he would have been asked to resign or lynched.

Corruption is still alive and in high places. The cow-gate scandal for example still has Malaysians enthralled and horrified at the revelations.

And now Najib is claiming that Asean's "gentle" approach towards, and so-called constructive engagement with, Burma all these years was the main catalyst for the reforms there!

He didn't exactly say it but if Najib had actually claimed that it was Malaysia's leadership that was the main catalyst for the recent Burmese reforms I wouldn't have been surprised at all.

But really, was Asean's softy softy approach the main reason for the changes in Burma? If so, why had it taken so many decades for it to succeed?

Had Najib considered even for a moment that Burma's economy was practically dead if not moribund as a result of the western sanctions of one kind and another that had also played a crippling if not a substantial part?

And that the real catalyst was the fear of an Arab Spring that left the military junta with little or no choice?