The nation's 2013 budget announced recently was again a "people-friendly" budget. Last year and the years before it was the same - a people-friendly budget. In fact, as far as I can remember, it has been the same all the time - a people-friendly budget. In case if you're wondering, it will be the same next year and the years after if BN is still in power.
But, what's a people friendly budget? What does it really mean?
Simple. It's a pay-check to enrich those who are already rich, powerful, same race mentality, friendly with the government /party, in sync with the theories and ideologies of those who "own" the country and to those who are "brain-dead".
If the above recipients accept the budget, then the government have done their job well and able, else someone somewhere up in the higher echelons of power will get real annoyed and mad.
So year after year the same torpid budget is dished out and to the selected few their lives are fertilized with a budget spelt "goodies galore".
If you're in the selected few from the above bracket, wow ain't you one lucky bastard. Too bad I'm not in that 'sugary" list. Every year I sulk and rue reading the contents of the "people-friendly" budget. Not because it did not quench my cravings or make me an unassailable rich person but it does not serve me with any purpose. NOT EVEN A BIT. None of the announced "goodies" is ever helpful to me.
More so, some of the budget's "goodies" is never understood nor comprehensible. Again, I ain't an intelligent being so am not to know or ask. Don't get it wrong. Some are good and some are really GOOD but only to a selected few. Too bad I don't even fall into any of those categories to gain. Hmmm... SULK.
However, year after year I hope and cringe if ever what I seek will make its way into the budget list. Till now I'm still waiting. Hopefully, if the opposition party do take over the reins of governance coming the impending 2013 polls, they could least try to get my few "wanted" list into the budget. A BIG HOPE.
You may be thinking I must be one greedy goofy person trying to enrich my personal self by asking "something" I need for myself....
What I want from the "people-friendly" budget may read lame and funny but to many it may NOT.
Let me start off with :-
No. 1 MILK
Why? Milk is expensive. Toddlers and children need milk. Not just any milk from the shelf but good enriching milk. It is the building block for children. Look at our children. Many are small framed, petite, and to a good yardstick malnutritioned. If milk cost half a pay-check, what good is the "people-friendly" budget? The Government should subsidize or even absorb the exhorbitant cost of milk and deliver it free to children if they can, to the poor, the elderly and those severly lacking.
The 2013 budget had this to say :-
"Subsidy for sugar will be reduced by 20 sen effective tomorrow"
Why sugar? WHY NOT MILK? Common, look at our growing children. Many go to bed empty stomach and many never have tasted good enriching milk for proper growth.
NO. 2 BOOKS. (reading and educational)
I mean foreign imported books. Why? In Malaysia, books are bloody expensive. They are unaffordable. Why can't the government allocate a huge sum of money to reduce tax or excise duties or whatever (am no economist) to reduce the cost of foreign imported matter - books, magazines, peridocals, papers - I mean anything written in English or any other language apart from Malay? YES. This will surely make me HAPPY and GLEE.
The below was announced in the budget but it simply ain't enough - RM250 book vouchers for all students in institutions of higher learning (IPT) and at pre-university level. This will benefit 1.3 million students.
I envisage someday the Government would least try to lower "the whatever" to make imported reading materials cheaper but that day is still high up in the Himalayas, cold and dead.
The reason I say imported books, particulaly in English is this. I met a 17 year old Malay student who actually did not know the meaning of the word "tourist" and asked me rather annoyingly - "pe tu tooriz".
Speak to civil servants and you will know the state and level of learned and spoken English is in Malaysia.
Only two I ask and yet it isn't forthconming. I rest my cravings here.
And you thought I wanted a Ferrari from the budget.