I refer to “Opinion: It's too late for Muhyiddin”.
The writer opined that ex-Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin did nothing during his 18-month tenure but waited for things to fall on his lap. The writer is absolutely right and I can't agree with him more!
Muhyiddin took over on March 1, 2020, when Covid-19 was starting to rapidly spread in the country. When the Movement Control Order (MCO) was in place on March 18, the economy was going to tank due to global lockdowns.
In Malaysia, a lockdown on such a scale and duration was unprecedented and there was no telling how it could affect our country's economy, although the general consensus was that it was going to be badly hit.
And while Muhyiddin was sitting in his plush office chair in Putrajaya, a comprehensive, well-thought economic plan must have just fell on his lap! Maybe there was a hole in the ceiling and someone placed the economic recovery plan there for it to fall when the PM was in office.
Or maybe the economic recovery plans, which went by names like Prihatin, Pemerkasa, Permai and Pemulih, which ran into billions of ringgit just went "poof" and appeared on the PM's desk just as how a genie would, when Aladdin rubbed his magic lamp.
There was no thought on how to tackle the worst health and economic crises the country has ever seen. The pages in the economic and health recovery proposals wrote themselves, possibly in the middle of the night when everyone was toggling between watching Netflix and keeping track of global Covid-19 fatalities.
No one burnt the midnight oil, certainly not Muhyiddin, because the writer must be imagining that the country's eighth PM was sleeping through during one of the most critical junctures in our history. Some whacky imagination going on there!
Having those plans is one thing. Rolling out is another. Magically, the plans must have become alive on their own. Like how Jack saw a giant stalk grew in his backyard overnight after watering the magic beans, things like food baskets for the needy just pop up in the homes of recipients.
Or how money magically appeared in the bank accounts of companies which were at risk of going under - allowing them to keep their heads just above water. Or in the bank accounts of the B40 so that they could put food on the table. There were so many other initiatives like employment incentives, retraining programmes and EPF withdrawals.
And at a time when nations were competing hard to land the Covid-19 vaccines, Malaysia became one of the first and quickest to implement the National Immunisation Plan - all because Muhyiddin did nothing, except perhaps waved a magic wand and the vaccines appeared in the vaccination centres nationwide.
Yes, Muhyiddin did nothing because he was a wizard. He did not steer the country out of the worst economic and health crises by rolling out a series of economic stimulus packages while keeping an iron-clad grip to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
All these problems worked themselves out, just like how the pots, pans, brooms and chairs organised themselves in the Disney animation "Beauty and the Beast" for the grand dinner for Belle and the Beast.
Muhyiddin did nothing as he had a magic wand and everything just fell into place. But come to think of it, Muhyiddin would make a better Prime Minister - with his magic wand - than one who breaks promises and takes the voters for a ride.
Abdul Rahim Md Noor is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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