In a message similar to Chinese President’s Xi Jinping or Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s (Xi during the Communist Party Congress and Abe before the elections in Japan), Prime Minister Najib Razak boasted of ‘his’ economic success.
He also promoted ‘Najibnomics’ while saying in a quaint manner that he is not the one who invented the name, while he riled at former PM Tun Mahathir Mohamad and opposition leaders.
Sensing victory is at the tip of his fingers with an electoral budget in the making, Najib barely hid the personal feeling – in a lengthy statement published by the print media and their online sites yesterday and titled “Najib’s economic vision for Malaysia” – that he is probably the most successful PM and Finance Minister in the country’s history.
Feigning almost total ignorance of the of the 1MDB debacle (it is all settled and case closed for him in Malaysia), the PM said “Now it is true that 1MDB has had its share of problems, and we long ago revamped the management to correct the mistakes and bring it back to financial health.”
He further insisted that when the Bandar Malaysia project agreement is signed, you can expect 1MDB to make a decent profit that will more than recover its losses.”
But he also strangely said 1MDB saved Malaysia RM200 billion over the next 20 years in energy deals that have so far not delivered to expectations.
In the boastful tone, the PM also said he wanted to be very clear that the claim that GST was necessary to pay for 1MDB is an absolute lie – as the politicians making this false claim know very well.
He said while some have painted it as weak, our Ringgit actually performed better than the currencies of many other large commodity exporter countries. As our economy continues to perform well – as all forecasters predict it will – our Ringgit will regain its strength and an appropriate market rate.
His message was a prep before the long budgetary speech he will deliver on Friday, his last budget speech before the upcoming general elections in 2018.
It is clear that his budget speech will be rigged with the same tone that he adopted in this ‘special’ visionary message to the people before Friday, while editors of the local media should expect the same victorious tone from the PM during his media briefing ahead of the budget tomorrow.
HE also said as a country, Malaysia must move on to the next phase to be a developed high-income country where the standard of living and the quality of life for Malaysians is the top priority.
“This is my vision for Malaysia – a cause that is much bigger than myself. Malaysia has always punched above our weight, and I believe in our tremendous potential as a country.”