What exactly is budget ‘recalibration’, a word the Najib government has been bandying all over town recently? Is there such a thing?

Firstly, you recalibrate something after it has been calibrated earlier. But no one ‘calibrates’ a budget. So if Najib’s budget had not been calibrated in the first place, then how can he ‘recalibrate’ it now? That is sheer nonsense.

I Googled the term ‘budget recalibration’ and found that all five pages of results pointed to reports about one man - Najib. No other page in the rest of the world seems to have reported any such thing as a budget ‘recalibration’.

So is this a Malaysia Boleh moment? Have we made history, should it go into the Malaysian book of records for the world’s first ever budget ‘recalibration’?

Well, yes, except what is happening beneath the PR-speak is Najib is admitting he made a mistake with his original budget, because he didn’t, surprisingly for a finance minister, expect oil prices to drop and the ringgit to sink.

In short, he didn’t factor in the possibility that his administration’s costs would go up over the next year, and surprise, surprise, it has far exceeded his calculations and he has to REVISE his budget.

Perhaps he believed the words of his former ministers who assured Malaysians costs would not go up after GST and Bank Negara and his finance minister II’s assurances 1MDB would not affect the ringgit’s performance.

Well, that’s what you get for having incompetent ministers, PM.

At least the PM has one real talent in his fold, if only in the public relations department. However, it wouldn’t do much good to Malaysians with half a brain, or those now affected in civil service budget cuts or students who possibly have their scholarships suspended, to realise the finance minister has bungled, big time.

With things going south the way it is now, both figuratively and literally in terms of investment and currency movements, perhaps those who had voted for BN might want to do a bit of voting ‘recalibration’ next time.