Malaysian politicians are a weird bunch. When the whole developing world is staring at a possible food crisis, the politicians are busy planning about increasing fuel price when we do not have enough rice to feed ourselves.
How difficult can estimating how much we Malaysians eat rice? With a population of slightly more than 20 million people, estimating it would not take a rocket science degree.
Emphasis has always been to cash crops like oil palm…that’s why. The idiotic blowback to this notion is that while we boast to the world that Malaysia is the leader in palm oil biofuel, we will diminish lands that is used, planned to be used or make planters switch from growing food to growing more profitable palm oil. So, if you take lands to grow biofuels instead of rice, less rice is produced and prices would inevitably go up.
So this is how the rich actually starve the poor. Since the rich insist on cheaper fuel alternatives, more lands are being used to cultivate plants for producing biofuel like corn and palm oil. So it’s the case of feeding your car instead of your mouth. And in poorer countries, that also means taking food from starving children so cars could run.
Less rice means government has to import rice from other countries like Thailand, where we pay market price for it and sell to Malaysians at a subsidized rate to avoid civil disorder. Problem with this kind of problem solving (typical with our government) is that the government has to find funds to cover the subsidy cost. Since we know that the government has no money, an increase in fuel price cannot be avoided. So now, instead of having a civil disorder about rising rice prices, we have a civil disorder about rising oil prices. Since all industries depend on oil, we have across the board increase in almost everything from food to our electricity tariff.
Being a citizen to any country is not the same, some perks are enjoyed if the country has surplus of some natural resources. Venezuelans enjoy cheaper fuel than most other countries because they are a big supplier of oil. Same goes to most Arab countries. Americans enjoy cheaper grains as government have subsidies to help local farmers etc. We Malaysians are moving away from perks for the people and now moving towards a non-subsidized country.
My question is, what is there to be proud of our nationality if we do not enjoy what mother Malaysia has to offer of her bounty..?
Has the public transportation etc improved from the last increase in fuel prices as our PM promised..?
Has our ministers succeeded in doing their jobs as per our expectation..?
If not…something has to be done this December UMNO election. It’s time to get rid of the dead woods.
