Civil servant privileges and the upcoming horizon of tax burdens

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim (right) viewing his guard of honour during his March 2024 German visit.

APRIL 4 — The Prime Minister announces his second handout to government servants.

A RM500 Raya aid, which translates to RM600 million. Or 0.15% of the 2024 budget (RM394 billion).

In late February, civil servants got at least RM2000 as an early incentive which totals RM2.4 billion or 0.8% of the same budget.

Put together, an amount shy of a percent.

Hundredth of RM304 billion, the total operating budget.

When we beat Syed Saddiq what else goes out of the window?

Menteri Belia dan Sukan, Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman

In this reality, not an alternate one, in about three years there is a fair chance Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman is whipped in prison.

Two get ouf of jail options remain, at the Appeals and thereafter the Federal Court, to undo the predicament he finds himself after High Court Judge Azhar Abdul Hamid found him guilty of four counts of abetting in criminal breach of trust (CBT), misappropriation of assets and money laundering.

The facts of the case are quite damning, but it is what the verdict can do to the rest of the country which gives me the shudder. If this country canes the most *refreshing shift in national politics in the last fifty years” even — if ultimately heading to failure — what does it say about change or new? Is this the proverbial boot stamping a Malaysian face, forever? Do not dare operate out of of the way things are done in Malaysia otherwise the might of everything mighty crashes on you.

Last of the three to go, the past is now really the past

Bernard Sinnathamby died this week. He’s been ill, so his passing at the age of 85 is not a surprise for the community, certainly not for the family, though he will be sorely missed by his large Catholic family. I forgot counting the number of kids, some of them I grew up a short time with, but he and his wife stacked up the numbers.

They live one door away, however, our lives cross longer than our stay in Taman Cuepacs Cheras.

He served in the public works section of the armed forces with dad. They used to be housemates in the bachelor days at the Sungei Besi Camp. I cannot remember a conversation longer than a minute with him, however he is the last connection to my dad who passed on 31 years ago.

The years they keep racking up, and memories they have a way of morphing, not into meaning as much as nostalgia.

They were one of the earliest to move in, Phase One of the government union’s housing project in Cheras. Around 1981. They were one of the earliest to leave couple of years later, only to return more than a decade later.

It is the camp days that fascinate. In that they are purely a collection of recollections from my mom, other people and faint episodes. By the time I was born, they had moved out of the camp.

Fiirst, the three of them, my dad, Bernard and Bennet lived together in the camp. Then dad got married, and then Bernard did. Bennet married latest, but died between the two housemates’ deaths.

Yes, two Bernards, that was the oddity. Two Malaysian Indians of the Catholic faith in the same outfit, living together in the 1960s with the same name, albeit spelt differently.

There was litttle more to the tale than that.

My dad’s single life was always that period, with the two Bernards. After that, it was with mom, and the family they made.

So this death, this funeral, on October 28, 2023 is a marker. Not quite anything to almost all people, but for me a certainly, a telling tick in my life’s scrapbook that the past retold to me is more, just the past I have lived through.

It is not an achievement to have enough happen before. But it is in the acknowledging that the present gets to have clarity.

Sekinchan gets on with it, quite nicely with a Javanese-speaking rep

Ng Suee Lim is on cardio duty, Sekinchan Fishermen’s New Village, August 8, 2023.

AUGUST 8 – It was sparse, the crowd in the fisherman’s village square inside Sekinchan. A new village, it was all Chinese, except for one of the two policemen on duty.

Ng Suee LIm is not a household name in Selangor, in fact few know the state assembly speaker outside Selangor’s northwest. But those who do understand he is quite the proposition.

He spoke last, and in Chinese. Damansara MP Gobind Singh spoke before in Malay before him. The author does not know Chinese, but it was no contest who was more excitable. It is difficult not to feel the energy he brings the venues even if in another language.