The government, the petrol and the people went berserk

I remembered the time when my sister and cousin called telling me to fill up the car with petrol because the petrol price going to hike the day after. I confidently believed that it will not happen as I the day before read on daily express that the hike will only happened on August as it quoted by some dude minister in a press conference. The public went berserk filling up their car and this caused massive traffic jam all around the nation. I witness the massive jam personally but believed that it would not happen as the hike going to trouble some other policies such as the subsidized fuel that went to the commercial business such as the small fisherman and the public buses transport.

When i reached home, PM announced and confirmed the price hike about 40 percent. It means we need to pay up to 2.70 for a litter from previous 1.98 previously. I listen in disbelieve thinking how the PM can do this to the people and let the people running like a headless chicken queuing to fill their car. Malaysian was used to being pampered by the previous PM that believes a price hike will only hurt more than save the nation economic. Indeed, it sound nice to the people but crap to the business people and whoever invest and has interest in the business. We dream to a free and liberal human rights but not ready for free and liberal economic structure. Ironically is true but painfully to believe.

Today, living turn to be more challenging compared ten years ago. The changes become more obvious and fast and we not getting used to the new change, and were introduced to a new policies. It is not a new thing for government to change its policies. I previously experience it with the national education policies. We still have problem to use Bahasa Malaysia or Melayu to our national language and cannot decide to use English as education language for Math and Science. The change on Education Minister Portfolio means that changes will be happened. I believe it so much that now I’m suffering from the uncertainty of this changing policies and make most my generation become uncompetitive in the real society.

Recently, there were some rumors spreading telling the petrol station will be close for few day as protest against the low profit margin over the fuel hike and the credit card charges. Again the people went berserk again and went to the filling station to fill up their car. I was again tempted to fill up my car because the fuel indication went so low. After looking at some ridiculous line in the filling station, i went back to home without getting my car filled. It was later found out the news was not true and just a rumors that spread around the Kota Kinabalu town and not the whole nation.

At first, I wondered what really the petrol station operator thinking when they want to stop selling petrol to the people. What really they think if the groceries shop or rice dealer stop selling the rice because the price not right. Will they think it is crazy too? Even the boycott by the petrol operator wasn’t true; I believe it was still an option to them to take it as a bargain chip with the government. Even it is not a fair action to the people; it has to be done because it is only the way to convince the government to act fair to the operators by making the people into an unconvinced situation. What if the electric power station operators decide to turn off the plug because the price is not right? Will the petrol operators understand the reason with a mutual understanding and not trying to ask for a compensation loss over the period that they not dealing the business.

Malaysia experiences a new and very difficult situation and political imbalance. People are no longer able to predict what step will be taken by the government next. Will the government choose to satisfy the well connected big corporation over the welfare of the people? The sources of these problems are certainly come from the uncertainty of the world political and economical uncertainty. Malaysia can choose to isolated from the changes by will or flow along with the changes and problem that will affecting the people generally.