Ha Ha Election Budget 2013!

Malaysia's annual budget has been a deficit budget and a joke for the past decade or so.

Pic By Ordinary Malaysian

This year's is more clearly an election budget and an even greater joke!

There is no idea at all on how to grow the economy.

But Najib has a lot of goodies for the rakyat in a last ditch attempt to buy their votes for the much anticipated 13th general election that the Pm still does not seem to have the guts to call for despite many false starts.

So what was supposed to be a one-off pay out of Rm500 for householders earning Rm3000 or less per month will continue for another time. Not only this, the payout has been extended to singles earning Rm2000 or less per month.

And it does not stop there, there is the provision of Rm1000 one-off payout to some 224,000 army veterans and a 1.5 month bonus for the some 1.4 million civil servants.

All these and some more will cost about Rm3billion plus, at a time that we can least afford it with the national debt at a dangerously unsustainable level of close to 55% of GDP.

The proposed handouts will not create wealth but will only likely add to inflationary pressure.

That said, I do not begrudge Malaysians the handouts. Take them but vote wisely. Otherwise, the next time we may have to export our daughters to Indonesia to work as housemaids in a reverse flow as the Indonesian economy is moving ahead while ours is getting stuck.

But as usual, the Barisan ministers and Barisan friendly economists and self-proclaimed experts will come out in droves to sing praises again of the 2013 budget as they always did of the previous budgets every year.

And for the second year running, Najib's administration is delaying the release of the Auditor-General's Report for fear of being embarrassed as it unfailingly reveals gross mismanagement and wastage of public funds.

Last year, it revealed what later turned out to become known as the infamous "cow-gate" One wonders what "gate" it will reveal this year.