Can't Agree More With Kadir Jasin, Najib Not Beyond Stricture

Hantu Laut

I was once his ardent supporter but now filled with utter disgust with the kind of ineptitude, playing with religious fire and an economy that self-prophesying for imminent decline.

I have, on many instances, in my past postings wrote on the need to abolish subsidies and dismantle all monopolies and let prices find its own level. 

A government interference in a free market economy is a sure recipe for disaster, it's only a matter of time before the roof came down on us Malaysians. 

It makes one wonder why a cuppa in a Singapore hawker's stall is cheaper than a cuppa in a Malaysian hawker's stall when our neighbour has the highest per capita income in the world and higher standard of living and we still caught in the middle income trap and in all probability going down further south.

Najib must not forgets, the ball is in his court.

Najib is not beyond criticism for his inaction, only he can make the changes and take full blame for any undoing of his government.

I couldn't agree more with Kadir Jasin in his article reproduced below.

Najib is not above criticism, says former NST chief editor

Pro-government supporters should realise that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak is not above criticism for Putrajaya’s cost-cutting measures which had resulted in price hikes, says a former editor of an Umno-linked newspaper.

Veteran journalist Datuk A. Kadir Jasin (pic) wrote that Najib and his advisers were not above criticism when the public react to Putrajaya's way of managing the national economy.

"It was Najib and his advisers during the general election who promised the people that prices will not be raised. So, who is going back on their word?" he asked in a posting in his The Scribe blog yesterday.

He also questioned whether the prime minister was an absolute monarch who could not be criticised or questioned.

"Or is he a living saint who is free from any kind of slip-ups?” asked Kadir, who was the group editor-in-chief of the New Straits Times when Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad was the prime minister.

Since September, Putrajaya has introduced a series of cost-cutting measures to rein in a chronic budget deficit which includes a reduction of fuel subsidies, removal of subsidy for sugar, allowed an increase in power tariffs and confirmed the introduction of the goods and services tax (GST).

Putrajaya is also mulling a revision of toll rates while the 20% rebate offered to frequent users of tolled roads in the Klang Valley is being scrapped.

The increasing cost of goods and services had also triggered a protest on New Year's Eve by an undergraduate non-governmental organisation, Turun, which attracted more than 10,000 people.

In defending his strident criticism of Najib, the veteran journalist also rebuked his critics who had claimed that he only lambasted the prime minister on “economic management but did not offer advice and pointers”. Read more.