It shows when rampant corruption is taking its toll on the finance of a country. Malaysia is a classic case of a country that is depleted of its wealth and additionally incurred huge amount of debts beyond its capability to repay. The wealth of the country has gone into personal accounts of a handful of elitist individuals.
When Covid-19 hit the country in 2020, the country was ill-prepared to fund financial measures to alleviate the burden on the people due to the requirement of lockdown to stem2 the spread of coronavirus that endangering lives. 1.5 million Malaysians of lower income would be adversely affected by any lockdown that stalls economic activities. In Malaysia's failure to offer financial assistance to these people, the country allows them to withdraw their own money from the national employee provident fund putting these people at risk financially when they retire. You wonder if any other well-managed country in the world is doing the same. Does this government even care about the ordinary people?
The country faces a situation of knowing the dire need to lockdown but the government has no financial ability to withstand the economic losses. The government has no choice but to allow economic activities to go on. This limited lockdown has failed to contain new Covid-19 cases in Malaysia for the last 2 months. Somehow, the government thinks that if it keeps doing the same things that have failed previously, the same things may somehow become a success.
Malaysia is currently recording the highest new cases and new deaths per 1 million of population in the world! Malaysia has surpassed India and the USA on both counts. Yes, Malaysia is the reigning world champion in taking the brunt of economic hardship and loss of lives as a result of Covid-19.
The situation is so bad that the world renown kleptocrat, Najib Razak, who is also one of the elitist individuals from Malaysia is poking fun at the Malaysian government by showing the below chart.
