Problems are like a washing machine, they twist us, spin us and knock us around. But in the end, we come out cleaner, brighter and better than before. Malaysians hope that this phenomenon will happen to Malaysia or else, Malaysians are going to have a difficult road ahead. The future generations will not enjoy the life we once had. We have achieved many things which we once thought were impossible. We have sent our own man to the moon. We once had the tallest building in the world as well as formula 1 Grand Prix races in Malaysia among many others. But, today what we see is putting all of us to shame. We have lost huge amounts of money. Many Malaysian companies are struggling to stay afloat with debts and losses of billions. Our ringgit is struggling to maintain its value. Politically, the government is hanging on to a thin majority. All these accumulated problems have put us in a serious predicament.
A situation in which no one wants to be in is losing money. A lot of public funds have been lost in Malaysia. The BMF debacle is among the earliest. Then we had the PKFZ. Some stated that the scandal has a storyline fit for the silver screen, with its political intrigue, mismanagement of public funds and with a few of the main actors brought to trial. According to reliable sources, the famous Forex Scandal saw Malaysia losing between 20-30 billion. Then we had the Perwaja, M.V. Agusta and Submarine scandals. This is only the tip of the iceberg as we had many many other scandals resulting in losses of billions. A lot of money was also lost in bailouts of companies that were in the red. The most famous being the MAS scandal which had two bailouts and still, MAS needs another bailout. Additionally, there are also many other companies needing bailouts. And the most recent being the Sapura scandal. The company needs a bailout to the tune of about 10 billion. Some big political guns want the Government to give Sapura a new lease of life by pumping in about 10 billion in cash. But the question is why must the government do it? The loss is due to mismanagement. Reports by independent websites quoted that the CEO was paid about 983 million in different kinds of payments between 2009 to 2018. This is daylight robbery, why must he be paid such amounts of money for running a company that was losing a humongous amount of money? If the company was making billions then his pay can be justified.
Another major issue now in Malaysia is corruption and abuse of power. Corruption has reared its ugly head in Malaysia for some time but lately has become more serious and is making headlines all over the world. Malaysia placed 62nd among 180 countries in the Corruption Perception Index. This is not a good standing for a developing country. The mother of them all is the 1 MDB scandal which involves a loss of about 40 billion ringgit. A former Prime Minister and many top governments and private company officials are involved in this scandal and the 1 MDB case trial is currently ongoing in Malaysia. Apart from this massive case, there are many other ongoing cases. Among others are cases implicating the former Deputy Prime Minister as well as another case linking the former Prime Minister’s wife. All these cases involve hundreds of millions of ringgit. Just like Covid 19, many Malaysians have come to live with corruption. The onus is on the youths to seriously ponder this matter. If you allow it to happen then be ready for a miserable life. History has shown us that corruption will ruin a country so we have to act fast now.
A financial crisis will bring about the devaluation of the country’s currency. And sadly it’s happening in Malaysia. The good old days are over. When we travel to Thailand, Indonesia or India before, we have always gotten an excellent exchange rate but now the old rates are no more. We get less money so our travels will cost more but we may still be able to afford it in these countries. But try Singapore, if we travel in Singapore it will burn a big hole in our pocket. Our money is shrinking day in and day out. Compare ourselves to our neighbour Singapore, one Malaysian ringgit is only about 31 Singapore cents. Food prices in Singapore are about the same as compared to Malaysia. If fried rice is 7 SGD it will be about RM 25 ringgit for Malaysians. Even lunch will be a big burden to Many Malaysians travelling there. For a long time, we were on par but now Singapore’s currency has skyrocketed while Malaysia’s currency has plummeted, Why?
Bad financial management I believe is the main reason for the drop in the value of our currency. Apart from this other contributing factors are corruption and loss of public funds. All three factors: loss of public funds, corruption as well as the devaluation of currency may cause great economic problems. We have so many natural resources but we can’t match many South-East Asian countries lately. Malaysians hope that our leaders are sensitive to these problems or else we have to look at Indonesian President Jokowi or Lee Hsien Long of Singapore for wisdom. The present young generation must also look into these matters and respond wisely or Malaysia may have serious problems in future. We don’t want to see all the development in the country brought about since Independence go to waste.
Palaniappan Karuppan is a content writer under Headliner by Newswav, a programme where content creators get to tell their unique stories through articles and at the same time monetize their content within the Newswav app.
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