Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak said the government should not be blamed for price hikes. It is due to external factors like the fall in oil prices , which reduces government revenue and causes the value of ringgit to tank.

Assuming for a moment that the factor identified by our PM is true, i.e. it was the prices of oil which have caused us our misery.

But then, can we blame the government for its over indulgence and dependence on oil-related revenue?

Can we blame the government for not building up the reserves to handle contingencies like what we are experiencing now?

Can we blame the government for not being able to preserve and protect the value of ringgit as if everything is incumbent upon the prices of oil?

So, where is our prudential and national strategic management?

Despite repeated reminders that oil is a depleting resource, we continue to grow our expenditure as if revenues derived from it are going to last forever. Who do we blame if the government has become too big, created too many locked-in expenditures, and indulged in too much waste and extravagance?

Where are the “dividends” from lower oil prices? Someone should explain why the prices of everything have gone up, when the price of basic community like oil has come down by more than 100 percent.

A 'do-nothing' nation

Please explain to us why the value of ringgit, our national currency, is dependent on just one community? What about countries with no oil, how did their national currencies function all these years?

It would appear to me that we are a ‘do-nothing’ nation except extracting and collecting oil and gas royalty, taxes and dividends, if the PM’s explanation on oil dependency is to be believed.

If oil and gas are depleting resources, surely we must have used part of the windfall to build up our sovereign fund precisely to face contingencies and unforeseen circumstances like what we are facing now. But did we? Instead of having reserves to bail us out, we are in fact now saddled with insurmountable debts.

You know what, PM? The price escalation of goods and services and the plummeting value of the ringgit are like the “nationalisation” of hard-earned savings of millions of Malaysians - especially those who are near retirement age or have retired. They are in no position to earn “inflated wages” anymore.

The prices, once up, are unlikely to come down again. It is like millions of Malaysians are being robbed of their good life which many have spent decades building it.

It is time those high-paying wallflowers in the Performance and Management Delivery Unit (Pemandu), Economic Planning Unit (EPU), Treasury and Bank Negara give you a better answer than oil prices.

We deserve a better explanation as to why we are faced with this conundrum. The fall in oil prices is not an adequate explanation.