It's Their Mangoes To Begin With

Star Q

i.  STPM 2013

ii.  Speaking Activities

iii.  Lemon Grass Chicken

Beginning January next year, a whole bunch of people's representatives will be getting tens of thousands in pay hike.  Mind you, the pay hike is not the ordinary pay hike of 5 percent or 10 percent that  civil servants or other 'servants' of this country get on a timely basis.  This pay hike comes more than double for each of these representatives and this comes only after their second term in office.  I realise, you need money in order to give something back, but a pay hike of more than double your current salary, is certainly taking advantage of your positions and the trust that the people have for you.

I suppose in an attempt to silence the dissatisfaction voiced out by the rakyat (and justly so, albeit a few who still insist that the hike is long over due and in the best interest of the rakyat! Puhleez!) these representatives will be donating RM1,000 or 20 percent from their new salary every month starting next year to an education fund they themselves established.

I mean, if a representative gets RM29,250 per month, that means he will be 'donating' slightly more than RM5,800 a month to the fund.  That hardly makes a huge dent in his coffer when you consider the representatives current salary is RM14,175, which means he still makes a 'profit' of about RM9,000 a month.

And if you think about the idea of this donation carefully and with an open mind, the representatives will not actually be donating the money from their own wallets, but it is the money which has been taken from the rakyat and given back to the rakyat; the donation gesture is in fact just another rebranding or another way that they can show that they are actually providing some monetary aid.

This rebranding is just like stealing your neighbour's mangoes for example.  You steal ten ripe, delicious mangoes, eat five of them yourselves and turn the other five into some kind of dessert, for example Mango Pudding.  You eat three quarter of the pudding and what ever you have left, your give to your neighbour.  Your neighbour knows that his mangoes are missing but he is not sure you stole them.  He is happy with the Mango Pudding which you gave to him, but again, he can't help but feel that it was made using his mangoes!