However, I was not excited at all with the latest development.
I felt detached reading the story.
Maybe it's because I have made up my mind not to get involved.
I'm not going to say this candidate is good, or that candidate is bad anymore.
This is now an Umno matter, and as a non-member, I think I shouldn't try to be too clever about it.
All I would do is to ask Umno members to vote wisely for the future and survival of their party.
That's all.
I'm actually following an advice given by a friend who is an actual Umno member.
He said I have been writing with too much emotion about Umno of late without knowing the true situation within the party.
I think he was right.
I did get emotional quite a bit of late.
So, that's it. I'm just going to wait for the outcome of the Umno elections.
Personally, I think Umno needs to survive to provide a check and balance in our country's political system.
We are indeed back to the one party system of the past after the BN's comprehensive defeat in GE14.
The once mighty coalition is in very bad shape now that it can't even be considered as a viable opposition.
The same goes to Pas.
PH could do almost anything it wants now.
Combined with the parties which had left BN, they may even have a two third majority in parliament to initiate constitutional changes.
I believe that the only hope for us to have back the two party system of post-2008 general election is for Umno to revive itself and rebuild BN or initiate a new similar coalition.
It's the only chance for Malaysia to have a healthy democracy in the near future.
Hopefully, this coming Umno elections will produce a good line-up of leaders who are capable of saving the party and later on offer us with an alternative to PH in the next general election.
I'm still at the house in Puchong where my father's immediate family members gathered for the first day of raya.
It's actually the house of my aunts.
All three of them are singles.
All are life-long BN supporters despite none being member of any political party.
I joined their conversation in the kitchen this afternoon and among the things we discussed was a little bit of politics.
They seemed to take the recent BN's defeat in good humour.
"Memang dah teruk, patut lah kalah. Cuma yang power sekarang ni DAP lah. Padan muka kita," said one of them with a laugh.
That's more or less the tone of their little political talks.
Interestingly, they didn't seem to care much about Umno's future and its coming party polls.
"Umno macam tu lah....tak kan berubah nya. Cerita pun buat letih je," said my other aunt.
They were actually more interested about PH, especially Dr Mahathir's leadership of the ruling coalition.
One of them is still a great admirer of Dr Mahathir, another is now against him after he went against BN, and the third, should I say, appeared neutral.
The one who is now against Dr Mahathir raised the question of what will happen to PH after the handsome old man is no longer around to hold the coalition together.
"Kan dah janji nak bagi kat Anwar," said my neutral aunt.
Then the two of them got quite a bit serious on the merits of Anwar replacing Dr Mahathir at the head of PH and as PM, with Azmin's name being mentioned several times as an alternative.
My other aunt, the one still admires Dr Mahathir then suddenly came out with a surprising remark.
"Daripada bagi kat Anwar tu jadi PM, lebih baik lah bagi kat Lim Guan Eng," she said.
My other two aunts laughed at that but it turned out that she was quite serious about it.
She really doesn't like Anwar.
She was a UPM student in the early 1970s when Anwar was a popular student leader.
"Anwar tu pandai buat bising dengan buat kecoh je. Menyusahkan orang. Baik la Lim Guan Eng tu lagi. Alang-alang, bagi je DAP perintah," she said.
Well, maybe she has a point.
Why not, right?
Hahaha....whatever lah.
Still, I hope Dr Mahathir will be around for a long time more.
I think it can be quite scary if he's no longer around.
I'm now in Puchong where my father's immediate family members are gathered for Raya.
Found myself a cosy little corner to write this.
I'm actually the only one in this house not wearing baju Raya.
That's because I have decided not to celebrate the occasion.
I did the obligatory salam and Selamat Hari Raya Maaf Zahir Batin things and that's about it.
I even visited Pizza Hut before coming here because I don't want to eat too much of the ketupat, rendang and such.
What is Raya, anyway?
I don't think it's even mentioned in the Quran.
Did the Prophet Muhammad and Muslims during his time celebrated it like Muslims in Malaysia do?
What I understand is that it's to celebrate the end of Ramadhan where the Muslims congratulate themselves for their success in performing the month-long fasting.
That sounds vain, isn't it? Sorry.
In Malaysia, it's the most celebrated of the Muslims festivities, while in most other countries, it's the Raya Haji, which marks the end of the haj season.
It's more a Malay festival than anything else, if you ask me.
And as with almost everything else which is Malay, the tradition of Hari Raya has most, if not all of its elements borrowed from other cultures.
The most glaring is the practice of giving duit raya, which is a direct copy of CNY's ang pow tradition.
I had previously stated that I refrained from giving out duit raya because for me, it's bad for the Malays.
Money shouldn't be handed out like that.
Money should be earned.
Now you know from where the dedak culture which ended the Malays' political dominance originates from, okay.
Back to the Raya thing, do you all really think there are such things as baju Raya, kuih Raya, lagu Raya, pelita raya, mercun raya, rancangan hiburan Raya etc during Prophet Muhammad's time?
Even if there were such things, do you think Prophet Muhammad would approve of them?
I don't think so.
I believe all those were copied from CNY, Deepavali, Christmas and festivities of other cultures and religions.
So, why should I celebrate those traditions, right?
If I want to make a racket with firecrackers in the middle of the night, I'll wait for CNY.
If I want to feeling feeling as if I'm a white person, then I'll wait for Christmas.
Like that lah.
That's the thing about the Malays, they tend to just follow what others do....especially the not so good things.
By the way, since Raya the way it's celebrated here is a Malay thing than anything else, I rather not indulge in it.
Anything Malay these days is not very fashionable, okay. Too much of it and you'll be whacked Racist! Racist! Racist!
Really, I kena already.
Since that's the case, I have decided that from now on, I will only celebrate just one festival.
Bon Odori.
Yup, since Japanese is back in fashion now, I have decided to celebrate only that one.
Feeling feeling Jepun lah pulak. Can, right?
Bon Odori is next month, actually.
Click on this link to know more about the celebrations here in case you all want to go Japanese crazy too,
First of all there’s the exchange risk – the MYRJPY index has a standard deviation of about 11 points, or in other words, it could move ±20% in any given year:
That’s a pretty hefty risk to take on, and fully hedging it exposes the government to considerable loss every year if it gets its FX forecast wrong (which with FX and given the likely tenor of such a loan, is a near certainty).
Leaving that aside, follow the money trail:
Government borrows in JPY but needs to convert it to MYR to repay MYR debt. This is done through the onshore market, which results in the banking system being short of MYR;
BNM will respond to this by buying the JPY in exchange for crediting the accounts banks maintain at the central bank with MYR. In other words, BNM will print money to maintain MYR liquidity in the system. The reserve managers at BNM will also then need to invest the newly acquired FX in JPY assets, such as 10 year JGBs which currently yield exactly 0%;
The government repays MYR loans with the MYR it purchased, reducing higher yielding MYR debt with lower cost JPY debt;
This debt repayment, paradoxically, adds liquidity to the system which BNM will have to absorb. They’ll either issue BNM bills at the prevailing market rate, or as they’ve done for the past few years, do repo operations instead. This reduces the liquidity back to normal again.
The end result:
Government reduces MYR liabilities, but adds lower yielding JPY liabilities, a net cost advantage.
BNM adds low yielding JPY assets, but also adds MYR debt at domestic market rates, a net cost disadvantage.
In essence, what’s happened is that the government has just transferred the interest cost it was bearing to BNM.
The same effect could be achieved by the government just issuing lower yielding debt securities to BNM in exchange for new money (which BNM will have to sterilise with it own higher yielding liabilities), but without taking on the FX exchange risk.
In other words, refinancing MYR debt with JPY debt makes no sense at all.
Last point: the irony, for those who are aware of the situation in Japan, is that any Japanese government loan to Malaysia will likely be funded by the Bank of Japan’s own money printing. The BOJ has been engaged in quantitative and qualitative easing (QQE) since Governor Kuroda took over at the BOJ in 2013, aggressively buying up to JPY80 trillion of government securities, or about USD725 billion, every month. Nearly half of Japan’s government debt is currently held by the BOJ.
Well, that's about it.
Okay, okay, some of you may not be happy about what I wrote on Raya here. For you all, here's a Raya song,
A special Aidilfitri aid of RM400 will be given to 66,258 mosque officials and religious teachers nationwide, with the cash deposited into their individual bank accounts, Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng said today.
Nice, right.
Errr....this one not considered dedak, right?
Surely not, Guan Eng from DAP, not Umno :)
Okay lah, enough of my rambling.
Need to sleep now. Got to get going early in the morning.
Najib, who was previously also Finance Minister, said he was glad that Finance Minister Guan Eng chose to come clean on the official federal government debt by stating that the official federal government debt remains at RM686.8 billion or 50.8 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
"(And) not 65 per cent of GDP or RM1 trillion as previously claimed.
“The level of 50.8 per cent is much lower than the 103.4 per cent reached during the first reign of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad," said Najib.
Najib said his administration had always complied with international public debt reporting guidelines as defined by the IMF and World Bank.
“Therefore, the figure of 50.8 per cent is a universally accepted measurement,” he added.
He said contingent obligations, such as guarantees, have never been included in the official measurement of government debt, not even during Dr Mahathir's previous reign
So, based on the report today, Moody's has confirmed that Najib was right and Guan Eng was wrong about the national debt.
It's not RM1 trillion as claimed but a reasonable RM686.8 billion or 50.8 per cent of GDP.
Let's compare that to my favourite foreign country Japan.
The Japanese public debt exceeded one quadrillion yen or about US$10.46 trillion in 2013, more than twice the country's annual gross domestic product.[1][2] By 2015, the figure rose to US$11.06 trillion. As the country adopted key economic initiatives, this figure start to dip so that by the end of December 2017, the debt stood at US$9.94 trillion.[3]
In August 2011, Moody's rating cuts Japan's long-term sovereign debt rating by one notch to Aa3 from Aa2 in line with the size of the country's deficit and borrowing level. The large budget deficits and government debt since the 2008-09 global recession and followed by earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 contributed to the ratings downgrade. In 2012 theOrganization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Yearbook editorial stated that Japan's debt "debt rose above 200% of GDP partly as a consequence of the tragic earthquake and the related reconstruction efforts."[4] Due to the ballooning debt, former Prime Minister Naoto Kan called the situation "urgent."[5] Indeed, by 2014, Japan had the world's highest debt per GDP.[6][7]
Well, compared to Japan's, I think Malaysia's debt is not so bad.
