COMMENT Something has to really give way sooner or later at the rate that things are going in this country, once hailed as overflowing with milk and honey.

There are any number of parasites, leeches, blood-suckers, proxies, stooges and traitors out there, lurking in the corridors of power, where the fat cats rub shoulders with the powers-that-be.

They continue to be in a state of denial even as the country rapidly goes to the dogs in front of the whole world. Our past has surely caught up with us in the present to haunt our future.

The sooner Malaysia becomes bankrupt - forecast as early as 2015 or by 2019 at the very latest - the better it will be for all Malaysians. It will be a blessing in disguise because the Malay hardcore, an extreme right-wing fringe group, will then stop demanding, demanding and demanding from the state.

Since the federal government will be dead broke by then, it will not have the money to pour down the bottomless pit of the unlimited greed of the "Give me, give me, give me" ruling elite.

Of course, this will never materialise as long as the gravy train is still around and chugging along in a complete state of denial.

Still, the writing is on the wall.

Let nature take its course

So, the next best thing is to neutralise our karma by accepting it. Let's allow nature to take its course. Let the country slide into bankruptcy so that we will be rid once and for all of the riff-raff from our politics. At present they are prepared to even kill each other to be lowly branch chairpersons.

That gives them a licence to jump on the gravy train in Bolehland. And they are not above shamelessly breaking down in public, bawling like new-born babies on national television, when they are not selected to stand in the general elections.

NONE Why do you think that MIC President S. Samy Vellu ( left ) shamelessly refuses to give up his post to others? He still wants the crumbs that come his way in return for delivering the Indian votes en bloc to Umno.

This coming bankruptcy should be welcomed as a historical opportunity of a lifetime to set the nation on the right course for the rest of the 21st century.

We need to count our blessings and be grateful and thankful for what little we will be left with, as citizens of a Bankrupt Nation (BN), so that we will have even more reasons to be thankful and grateful tomorrow. Life is not all black and white, there being many shades of grey in between, and is a sum total of the choices that we make.

About turn

The fact that this bankruptcy thing will happen, as surely as the sun will rise in the east tomorrow morning, can be gleaned from Prime Minister Mohd Najib Abdul Razak's about-turn on the New Economic Model (NEM).

Najib has now decided that the NEM is actually not the federal government's idea at all, certainly not his for goodness sake, but one flogged by the National Economic Advisory Council (Neac) ‘experts'.

So, Putrajaya intends to r e-think the NEM and include the so-called Malay, if not bumiputera, Economic Agenda (MEA), proposed by Perkasa.

This is the tail wagging the dog under the direction of former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad who continues to selfishly dictate, if not determine the nation's agenda, for his self-serving reasons.

No one has any idea how Mahathir's Perkasian MEA will fit in with the NEM. But if the past is any guide, it will be business as usual. The MEA would continue with the gross economic distortions of the past 40 years.

The present system - where federal government projects will eventually cost the taxpayer twice, thrice or even up to ten times the actual tender price - will continue indefinitely. In short, the incorporation of the MEA will be a licence for the ruling elite to continue to steal the people's sweat from the public treasury.

NONE In case we have forgotten, this is the same skim cepat kaya (get rich quick scam) that has brought Malaysia down almost to its knees under the euphemism, politics of development, first made famous in Sarawak by Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud ( right ).

Today, the country is burdened with a national debt burden estimated by Idris Jala at 54 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Others have estimated the true figure as closer to 70 percent of the GDP. But why split hairs? The difference merely means that we might be bankrupt sooner rather than later or vice versa.

Idris didn't breathe a word at all, of the skim cepat kaya scam, in his recent warnings about Malaysia's imminent bankruptcy.

Addiction to subsidies

Instead, he blames our addiction to subsidies - as if we begged for them - being at the root of all evil in the country. He conveniently forgets that only 30 percent of the subsidies, in his own words, reach the target groups and that the rest leaks out to the less-deserving. He was silent on the corporate subsidies which are four times other subsidies.

Besides, it's the inherent dependency syndrome in the subsidy regime that fuels Umno's politics of corruption and moral depravity. Why didn't Idris mention this? So, what is there to prevent the Ibans for example, from doing an about-turn once they realise that the subsidy regime has ended for them and inadvertently freed them from the clutches of the BN?

idris jala pemandu subsidies Idris ( left ) plans to avoid this by proposing the idea of 'smart' subsidies to target the vulnerable bottom 40 per cent of the population.

Many a brave and foolish man preached the same idea when Idris was still a toddler. But in the end, nothing came out of it as the purpose of the subsidy regime, besides bringing in the votes, is to ensure that it leaked all over the place for ‘the boys'.

It doesn't matter that the beneficiaries eventually also include the Thais, Singaporeans, Cambodians, Filipinos and Indonesians and the millions that visit Malaysia every year.

Let's scratch the idea of the subsidy regime being ended. The skim cepat kaya approach to federal government development projects will continue and the bloated bureaucracy left alone.

It will be no wonder then, that we will surely earn our right to be the first nation in Asean to be declared bankrupt in the near future. We will have Mahathir, Umno and BN, in that order, to thank for this. Barry Wain gave us a preview of our future in his book ‘Mahathir the Maverick'.