COMMENT Governing, no matter who does it, is part philosophy, part exigency, part panic, part payoff. And it is never easy to ascribe precise percentages to each factor.

However, the 2013 Budget of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, unveiled last Friday, is so patently an electioneering one there is no difficulty making an inference as to its prime motivation: it is to buy votes through payoffs even if that means a steadily worsening national debt situation.

The coupling of ill-affordable munificence with entrenched misallocation of resources is accompanied by nervous anxiety that this time the ruse may not work...