The Prime Minister says IF Malaysians “live within our means, we will be alright.”
Najib is a member of the Pahang State aristocracy, and the privileged son of a prime minister. Upon graduation he was offered work at top Government-linked companies for a short stint before ‘inheriting’ his father’s seat. He was made deputy Minister at age 25- presumably because of his ‘pedigree’, and since then, he has been floating at the highest echelons of power.
From the perspective of less privileged Malaysians, what would Najib know about ‘living within our means’? What qualifies him to advise Malaysians on making choices or living within our means? For many Malaysians, there is no other choice than poverty, hardship, oppression, exploitation and a sure path into vicious cycles.
Yesterday, I forced my way into an apartment to help a widowed 80-year-old man who has no children or family. His neighbors contacted me, fearing the worst, as they had not seen him for a day. We found him alive but not well. We carried him down a flight of stairs using a makeshift evacuation chair because he had lost the ability to stand up or move. He was trapped in his stuffy, badly ventilated and hot rented flat for half a day. He is now in safe hands at the hospital.
For the last decade he has been unfit to work, and survived on a measly RM200 he receives from welfare and charity organisations every month. If he is to live within his means, he would have to be homeless and live on two very basic meals a day with water. The system has failed him.
Is this elderly man going to be ‘OK’ in the eyes of the Prime Minister?
A lady whose husband, an indebted gambler, disappeared 10 years ago was referred to me for help. After her mortgage repayments (their ancestral home was remortgaged by her deceased father few years back), she is left with RM1100 to feed and school her 3 kids, her 75 year old mother who is ill, and care for herself. Anyone who is still connected to reality knows that is no way to live or bring up three children.
She doesn’t qualify for single mother benefits, which wouldn’t be enough even if she did get it. To qualify for it, she will need to get a single party divorce, which will cost her money she doesn’t have. She will also have to earn one third less than she does. She is working 70-plus hours a week, which means that she can’t even seek alternative employment. She wouldn’t be able to survive being off work for a week. The system has failed her and her family.
She is a classic case of ‘hidup tak segan, mati tak mahu’. There is no lifestyle to speak of; certainly no choices she has access to without external help to better her situation. Is the Prime Minister saying that her plight is the outcome of the ‘choices’ she made?
Najib is free to defend his policies and even promote it, no matter how much they have failed him and the Malaysian people. But his patronizing advice has simply shown how utterly ignorant he is of the plight of common Malaysians. Asking Malaysians to make better lifestyle choices when many have neither a lifestyle nor the luxury of choice, is truly insulting.
Malaysians don’t need financial advice from someone as uniquely unqualified as Najib to tell us how to survive his government’s failings. We need him to do his job, which he has also proven that he is equally unqualified and incapable of doing.
What he is uniquely qualified in however, is advising crooks, thieves, and robbers in achieving world class success.