Bolehland, What's New?

I was away for the Chinese New Year.

And what a blessed week it had been!

I had resolved not to read the news or to watch the idiot box for the same.

But all good things have to come to an end. And now it is back to the grind.

Nothing has changed where Bolehland is concerned.

The same old depressing news continue to hog the headlines.

You and I can't expect that Ah Jib & Co would just disappear, though there is speculation tha
t Ah Jib himself might find life at the top difficult with the ghost of Altantuya still refusing to go away and the sad tale of 1MDB continuing to bedevil the sovereign fund of which he heads.

Not to speak of the fallout of Anwar's second sodomy conviction.

Nor that the economy would miraculously take a healthy turn, what with the plummeting international price of crude oil and the value of the Ringgit going down south.

(What is certain is that Bolehlanders can only look forward to more hardships with the added burden of consumption tax to hit hard their limited pockets come April when the Goods & Services Tax comes into force)

Less still that we can expect Ah Jib and his administration to have any idea what to do or the will to want to do anything meaningful.

It seems that much of what ails the country today might be traced back to Mahathir's tenure as the Pm when public business began to be transacted behind the skirt of the Official Secrets Act (OSA)

When huge public contracts began in a large way to be awarded on a direct basis to cronies and crony companies. When accountability meant not questioning the powers that be.

When failures were rewarded with bailouts and successes were privatised.

With the event advent of public transactions conducted behind the skirt of the OSA, and the following lack of accountability, came the possibility and spectre of corruption and corrupt practice and their entrenchment.

The rest, they say, can only speak eloquently of failure.