Will 2014 Be An Auspicious Year For Malaysia And Malaysians?

The new year is already upon us and the best Bolehlanders can hope for is that Najib's self-serving administration stops fooling the rakyat with doublespeak and gets down to some real serious work.

The government has been spending like no body's business the past 16 years, doubling the sovereign debt in just the last 5 and ballooning it to 600 billion Ringgit if not more, if the contingent liabilities are taken into account.

A government that has been accused of selling the nation's assets to manage its economic incompetence.

A government led by a clueless Pm cum finance minister who's understanding of economics consists of band aids, slogans and useless alphabet laden soups cooked and concocted in Najib's Alphabet Soup Kitchen passing off as enlightened economic plans that few understand and fewer still benefit from, except perhaps for those who walk in the corridors of power, their cronies and families.

A government that unashamedly proclaims the prioritisation of the rakyat but expects them to bear the brunt of its folly and profligacy if not criminal incompetence in managing the nation's economy

You can completely manage any deficit by selling away all the nation's assets, but what would you have left then?

Will 2014 (the year of the horse) be a 马到功成 ma dao gong cheng (Chinese idiom, literally meaning "horse arrives, work done successfully) year or the year you die? Four, in Chinese, sounds like "die".

Whatever it may turn out to be, it is certain that with with the increase in electricity tariff, toll and petrol hikes, coming GST and whatnot, the year is not going to be an easy one on the ever shrinking pocket of the average Bolehlander.

My prediction is that unless the government pulls up its socks and gets serious about fighting corruption and stops all the criminal wastage of funds in public administration and the perennial illicit outflows of funds that have amounted to a trillion of Ringgit to date that have made us among the world's most despised, the nation is heading to economic doom in a year and a half.

Too soon to be true?

Don't bet on it!

The government is not predisposed and certainly not inclined, to do just what it has to do after 40 so years of politics of party patronage and corrupt practice that have crept in and taken hold of its innards and crippled its will, if any is left, to do what it must for the nation.

And that is saying a lot already in favour of the government.