Year of the Detox?

Surfing the Chinese horoscope sites recently in a desperate search for good omens for the forthcoming year, I was delighted to see one of them listing Barack Obama as an ox person.

But my happiness quickly turned to horror when I read further down the list and discovered that the roll of famous oxen also includes Richard Nixon, Saddam Hussein and Adolph Hitler.

So what, I wonder, can the world expect from President Obama? Will he prove a good ox, characterised by one soothsayer as "a born leader to be followed with trust and a good partner for life filled with good fortune"?

Or a bad ox, one of those who can be "stubborn, bigoted and easy to anger, and whose blind pursuit of their plans can make them harsh dictators"?

One encouraging sign, apparently, is that in 2009 "the bullish and belligerent aspects of the ox are toned by this year’s nurturing earth force".

Thank goodness for that, as the world needs Obama at his oxic best if he’s to have any chance whatsoever of cleaning-up the toxic mess that George Bush and his neo-con cowboys have handed him.

Billions, trillions and squillions of dollars in toxic debt, for a start, thanks to the ill-planned and monumentally wasteful War on Terror and the obscene greed of the warriors of Wall Street.

Financially speaking, Obama and most other world leaders are faced with not so much the year of the ox as the year of the paradox: having to spend huge quantities of public money – taxpayers’ money, our money – on rescuing the very thieves and incompetents whose expertise we believed we were banking on.

And even worse than having to be cash-cows to offset all the toxic debt has been having to stand by and witness a ceaseless tide of toxic misery and death.

Only hard work will do

Hundreds of thousands of civilians killed and maimed in US-led attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan and proxy-wars on southern Lebanon and Gaza. Millions left for dead in Zimbabwe, Sudan, the Congo and other cesspits of corruption and lawlessness in Africa. More millions left to their fates in dictatorships just as evil as that of Iraq, like Burma and North Korea.

I can’t wait to see whether the Obama administration will prove more even-handed, compassionate in its advocacy of genuine international freedom and justice than the Bush regime has been.

But at least it’s signaled its intention to work fast to fix one situation that the civilised world has a major beef with, Camp X-ray at Guantanamo Bay.

Of course the US can’t solve all the world’s problems, especially given the resolute opposition of the two anti-democratic would-be superpowers, China and Russia.

But it could certainly do a great deal better if it spent more money on genuine aid and less on armaments, or at least used its military might to protect more of the ‘forgotten’ victims of the terrorism it so abhors, in locations like Darfur and Somalia.

But whatever Ox President Obama may or may not do to bring about the changes of which he speaks so eloquently, my astrological sources inform me that this year promises to bring "good fortune to troubled economic times," but "only through discipline and hard work".

This prediction will seem strange to the citizens of Kuala Terengganu, no doubt, who’ve already achieved an astonishing degree of good fortune before the ox year’s even started. And with no hard work whatever on their part beyond putting-up with the inconvenience of a by-election.

According to a list compiled by Malaysia’s National Institute for Electoral Integrity, Barisan Nasional showered the voters of KT not just with early ang pow , but everything from a RM1 million ‘fishermen relief fund’ and free weaving machines and e-books, to RM10 million for a cardiology unit, RM50 million for Chinese schools, RM100 million for low-cost housing and RM408.6 million to the state of Terengganu in oil royalty payments.

And most astonishingly of all, given that gambling is as haram as corruption is, Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak conducted a lottery that awarded 583 prizes of tender-exempt projects worth RM15.8 million.

'Everyone wins'

Najib even reportedly had the gall to brag that "this is a world record. In this lucky draw, everyone wins. Everyone gets a contract," adding that if BN won the election there would be more and bigger contracts so that Class F contractors would "continue to make money and the country’s economy would continue to grow".

No problem with toxic debt in Malaysia, apparently. Just the same old toxic government up to its same old toxic tricks, in anticipation of yet another year of milking the nation’s economy for all it’s worth.

But, like the electors of Permatang Puah in the previous by-election, and those of five states back in the March 2008 general election, the majority of voters in Kuala Terengganu showed that they’re sick of being bought and sold and treated like so many lembu by BN.

As a ‘horse’ myself, I see that, though I can’t expect much good luck in the Year of the Ox, at least I can look forward to a "significant improvement" compared with the Year of the Rat. Any improvement is fine by me, and I can hardly wait for it to start happening.

Meanwhile, here’s wishing you and your loved-ones a hearty Gong Xi Fa Chai . Here’s wishing Obama lots of luck in ridding the US and the world at large of the poisonous legacy of George W Bush.

And here’s hoping that all Malaysians who are no longer cowed by BN threats or misled by BN bull can finally rid themselves of this political pox, and make this the ‘Year of the Detox’.