The projected Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is under continuous downward revision by the Bank Negara, alongside all other institutions which take an official stance in offering predictions of the future. In each and every case the official prediction is well supported by a hopeful confidence that things are soon to improve. No allowance is left for providence or chance.

They give a muted, still saddening, report that the present situation requires a downward revision of prior predictions. We are then told that in the second, or third, or perhaps the fourth quarter the economic situation will dramatically improve, giving an encouraging uplift. On this basis a prediction of future grandeur is again made.

The present trend in the GDP is down. Trends are identified by joining the points on a graph, in which the horizontal axis records units of time and the vertical axis is in units of economical activity. Freight car loadings, shipping containers, airline passengers, new car registrations, exports ... any and all of these may be used for the economical units of the vertical axis.

The projected GDP, when used as a measure of Malaysian economic health, is always positive, as given by the appointees of the party-in-power. Their public statements are carefully monitored to assure that they say nothing which might reveal any inadequacy in the guidance and management of the national economy. Their professional survival dangles; dangerously dependent upon a tripping tongue that tiptoes the tentlines of tethered truth.

A detailed analysis of the present situation is carefully omitted, and in its place is a brief statement that although latest figures are lower than those previous, There is no perceivable trend in place. The accompanying remarks lull with the opiate these declines are but transitory, soon to be surpassed by favorable circumstances anticipated in the near term.

The present circumstances are grim. The first quarter figures reported by MIER indicate a low GDP growth of around 1% or less. It is possible that first quarter results are negative. These figures are relative, and may be interpreted accurately by simply stating that the rate of economic activity is slowing appreciably. The term 'growth' is not appropriate. Shrinking or declining give more apt description.

A trend, once firmly in place, generally does not turn around abruptly. A trend is a direction, and the present direction is down. The figures for the second quarter will not be available for another two months. In the meantime the projection of 4% for 2001 rests solely on the expectation of significant improvement in the last half of the year.

Economists use the terms 'U-shaped' and 'V-shaped' to describe the graph of the Malaysian GDP. None dares venture a more probable 'L-shape' or a 'straight downslope.' The possibility for extended national and global reduction of economic activity is unthinkable. All touch with reality is lost. Such optimism is born of youth, habit and the subtle taint of politics.

The US, Singapore and Australia are realistically making new projections which discount significant improvement in the near term. Lowered trade figures for Singapore will certainly be reflected in Malaysia, and the present situation does not offer solid ground for imminent improvement.

The inability of the Malaysian government to accept the lowered level of economic activity is in accord with a policy of denying reality. The finance minister calls for transparency and honesty in public and private economic affairs, yet it is his department which fails to meet minimal standards of accounting. The prime minister offers new spending designed to buffer the present downturn, but this is deficit spending which he assures us is but temporary. The difficulty with his view is the failure to make provision for the repayment which must be made in the future.

In the meantime there is interest which must be paid. This policy, of deferring present realities in favor of future fantasies, is the recurrent theme that condemns Malaysia to a frustrating future, fraught with financing fit for a funhouse, failing any fundamental frame for fiduciary firmness.

The party-in-power resorts to every stratagem in its effort to bait a hook for the unwary. There are rights, warrants, unsecured bonds, inter-corporate loans, share swaps, put and call options, as just a small sample of the buffet. Somewhere in the Malaysian milieu there is a form of futuristic financing to fit the gullet of the gullible. This is made necessary by the profligacy of the past, along with a necessity to conceal monumental thefts for which the intent is that no accounting is ever to be made.

The Umno-Bn political party in Malaysia is an enormous and unwieldy assemblage of political patronage and power that requires a massive monthly meal of money. The money is now not forthcoming, and the seams are beginning to open. Rents and taxes are not being paid. Strident claims for payment which have not been allowed to be pressed in the past are now receiving an open airing. The finance minister has recently thrown up his hands in despair, leaving his post to anyone who cares to assume such an impossible imposition.

Every neighborhood has its Umno branch, with salaried members in residence. The rent and the salaries are monthly claims, and the nation-wide structure is straining to prevent wholesale collapse. Umno-BN is a political party pasted together with infusions of stolen money, not member fealty. In contrast, its opposition funds itself from voluntary contributions, and limits its liability to resources on hand.

The party-in-power has taken for itself all major corporations that rightly are in trust for the people, in what must be regarded as political insouciance unparalled in the new millenium. The insertion of political hacks as corporate executives relegates the industial base of Malaysia to the same fate other countries have found when politics overrides other disciplines. Mathematics suffers under political interference. Physics deteriorates under political domination. Biology under political leadership becomes ridiculous. Politicians who presume to dictate the curriculum of Chemistry make themselves foolish and Chemistry faulty.

Malaysia suffers from the intrusion of politics into every area of national life. It is a national malaise. Education must tolerate the supervision of un-enlightened politicians who neither understand the teaching profession nor the needs of society for graduates capable of creative and unfettered thought. Students are held to be less than trained seals, expected to abide ignorance and stupidity in their elected leaders.

Malaysians, like Samson of old, are enchained by salacious saboteurs who have used subterfuge and chicanery to subvert the newly independent country. Malaysians, like Samson of old, may destroy the temple of the national economy in order to save their cherished democracy.

The people, determined rather than despondent or demoralised, choose to defer domestic spending, abandoning the super malls and car dealerships to their fawning owners. If consumer spending sufficiently stops, the re-structuring of the political scenery is sure to follow. There may be falling stones and the dust of debris, but all the political prisoners will be freed.

Today the tendons of the terrible temple of torture are thin and threatened. Tomorrow, with teamwork and toughness, the trembling timbers will topple into the trashbin of troubled times.

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