Where to 53rd. Merdeka Day?

In another 30 days' time, our beloved country will celebrate the 53rd. Merdaka anniversary. Time to call for a celebration?

Yes and, unfortunately, NO too!

Yes, because I have grown up healthily and meaningfully ever since and have hitherto raised a family peacefully in this blessed country I call home for a good 10 and 53 years now.

No, because I cannot bring myself to entertain nor reconcile the thoughts of our Malaysia 'going to the dogs'! There are just too many visible as well as discernible ills that underpinned my
nagging fears.

Indeed, my fears of and for the future of this land.

Our country's ailments are aplenty yet I seldom read about national issues and challenges that needed to be fully addressed, much less resolved, by our national leaders - both political's and otherwise.

All that I have been fed with were and still are claims such as ..."we are doing well...", "we are cautiously optimistic...", "...ours are healthy and within control...", etc. None, I say, none of our leaders came to the fore often enough and cited us reassuring though summarized facts backed by unsullied statistics for claims that they so often bandied about.

Had they done so, I would have at least read their claims with some iota of credibility. As
transpired theirs, to me, were and still are but questionable if not dubious claims!!

Yet when they did cite statistics, they often had an agenda. (Read more here at http://www.malaysianmirror.com/columnists/mariam-mokhtar/46626-a-personal-reminder-of-may-13)

I dearly wish to be able to fully trust my national leaders' statements through the press from time to time. Ah well, wishful thinking on my part, I reckon.

Come Merdeka Day next, I doubt if I can hold my head high!

Sad leh for an old bugger, no?

Are Ours morphing into a (Pseudo-) Command Economy ?

It is so oft-repeated that it now becomes a norm of national economic governance. Worrisome, so worrisome!

My lamentation here stems from the recent first reading of the Price Control and Anti Profiteering Bill 2010. What? Another impending bureaucratic obstacle to be surmounted by our harried businessmen - if and when the said Bill is finally gazetted ?!

Our government's broad policy orientations in the recent past have never failed to amaze me. A while ago, there arose a bloated PM's Department in the face of ballooning budget deficits. Among others, we now will soon have another obvious cost-centre that, when eventually established, will be (you bet) another black hole for dubious dealings (read potential corrupt practices).

Damn if I am wrong. Our government's practices over the past three decades have cumulatively and, aiyoo... inadvertently created building blocks for what would have been and will continue to be essentially parts and parcels of an ultimate but unintended centrally-planned economy!

How come?

Well, they have continuously been undermining the equilibrium seeking mechanism of a free-market economy lah...

Pushed to one's logical conclusion, all talks of enhancing national competitiveness, increasing productivity, becoming a high-income nation, etc. etc. are but 'bovine waste'.

Yet again for me, sad leh!