GE13: Malaysians Decide Tomorrow!

Malaysians are all eager to come out to vote tomorrow!

Will the result be a historic change or the same old, same old?

My gut feeling is that the opposition coalition Pakatan will win, barring cheating at the polls.

But there will still be the die-hard supporters of Barisan, especially of their taiko (big brother) Umno, if for no other reason than the BR1M RM500 the Najib administration dished out, not once but twice, in a populist if not a desperate move to retain power.

Unfortunately, these die-hard supporters rarely stopped, if they bothered at all, to think where the money came from and, more importantly, what the monetary dispensation meant to themselves and the nation as a whole.

There is no such a thing as a "free lunch", especially if the lunch did not come from a surplus.

Where did the billions paid out under BR1M come from?

The country has been running deficit budgets for 16 consecutive years and the sovereign debt has ballooned to over RM540 billion!

It was not as if the fund for the BR1M payouts came out of any surplus.

The consequence is that each single Malaysian is already burdened with a RM17,000 debt!

What has Barisan done that merits another 5 years, that Malaysians can feel has made a meaningful change in their lives and will continue to give them hope.

For sure, Malaysians are increasingly feeling the pinch of a rising cost of living.

Increasingly fearing for their personal safety and property, notwithstanding the authorities' fatuous assurance that crime rate has plummeted .

Increasingly feeling alienated from each other while the powers that be shamelessly mouth and promote "Satu Malaysia" (1Malaysia) while condoning, if not encouraging, the antithetical acts and behaviour of sponsored goons.

Increasingly feeling frustrated that their voices are not being heard and certainly not being attended to, except where it suited the selfish purpose of the powers that be.

Increasingly feeling that only the rich, the connected, the politically powerful, their families and cronies get rich and fat at the expense of the rest of the hoi polloi.

Where the nation's business is done under the skirt of the Official Secrets Act and contracts given out  cloak and dagger style to favoured parties.

Where crony capitalism and monopolies reign supreme in the name of  privatisation (Lim Kit Siang calls it "piratisation", perhaps the better word for it?) and national development; and failures rewarded with handsome bailouts at the expense of the nation's coffers and the rakyat's well being.

Where riches and success mean that you sapu (grab) everything for yourself and leave the crumbs for others.

Where power  means I am right, you are wrong. Where power and corruption are twins.

Where indeed the disparity of incomes between the elite few and the rest of common populace or the gini co-efficient confirms that we have the worst income differentials among the South-East Asian countries, even worse than Burma's!

Where mismanagement and waste of the nation's resources seem to be the order of the day and accountability is only for the naive and the foolish while the knaves get away with a smirk and a taunt on their face.

Where nowadays, fewer and fewer Malaysians feel that they trust the authorities, state/public institutions or bodies like the Election Commission itself, to act neutral after all the neutering.

Vote wisely.

There is no free lunch.