The Ball-Less PM ?

No One Can Be More Ball-Less Than Him !

The sitting prime minister of Malaysia, Muhyiddin Yassin, is not a person you will expect him to be a world-class leader. He has not dared to hold a press conference with open questions from the press ever since he took office. Instead, he read out press release and excused himself immediately thereafter.

He did not have the courage to allow his finance minister to present the next year's national budget to the parliament. He tried to call for the state of emergency (darurat in Malay language) in Malaysia with a view of bypassing the parliament in pushing through his budget 2021. Yes, he invoked the state of emergency for his own sake and conveniently drew on Covid-19 as an excuse. He failed in his attempt when the council of Malay rulers and the king rightly rejected his advice for the state of emergency. 

Illustration by Zunar. All credits go to Zunar.my

The prevailing laws on prevention of contagious diseases from spreading is more than adequate in Malaysia but the laws do not allow Muhyiddin to put into effect his budget without going through the parliament. Perhaps, he has many things to hide from the public as regards the national budget.

He however shamelessly turned around and convinced the king to urge all parliamentarians to support his budget in the name of fighting Covid-19. Well, he just did not have the balls to do his job and to convince the parliamentarians himself. How thick skin do you expect him to be?

It is obvious to everyone that he does not command the majority support of the parliamentarians in Malaysia to approve the budget but he wants to hang on to power nonetheless. Power crazy? It is for reader to interpret. Historically, the failure of a government to obtain sufficient parliamentarian votes to approve its budget may mean the government is a minority government. This prime minister may well be the most ball-less leader of any country in the modern history of mankind.

Fun Facts about Malaysia in 2020

When you are part of the ministerial cabinet members in Malaysia, you are exempted from complying with the Covid-19 prevention standard operating procedures (SOP). The general public have to comply with SOP unless risking fine and imprisonment, but not the cabinet members. Such is a rare privilege accorded to leadership of the country.

Furthermore, when Malaysia is seeing a spike in Covid-19 infections, surpassing previous highest record of cases, and the students for tertiary institutions are being turned away on the day they are supposed to be checking-in to the accommodation for registration, the prime ministers and a large number of cabinet ministers are busy playing golf and have sumptuous dinner at a remote resort while the students face tremendous hardship. This is a rare privilege accorded to leadership of this country.

At the same time, another deputy minister who is known to have fictitious university degrees went around attending official event without a simple face mask for preventing Covid-19 infection.