Fear and loathing in Malaysia

Instead of going after only civil servants, why hasn't the Anti-Corruption Agency investigated Najib Tun Razak, who is also deputy Umno president, yet?

by Fan Yew Teng

Harakah English Section 

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Yet another year is about to come to its end, and yet another Umno General Assembly has ritualistically come and gone. This annual exhibition of Umno's culture of narcissism is by now predictably both amusing and sad, because it carries all the contradictions of a corrupt and dissipating political party which pretends to be a saviour of the Malay race in particular and of the Malaysian nation in general.

The predominant party in the Barisan Nasional ruling coalition is led today by Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, whose political mumbo-jumbo is endless talk about 'integrity'.

But, notwithstanding the antics of his minister for misinformation, Zainuddin Maidin, the utterly vulgar and illegal misuse and abuse of official radio and television facilities during the Umno general assembly belies and betrays all sincerity about 'integrity'.

This year an added misuse and abuse of public funds at the Umno general assembly is the politicisation of the so-called Malaysian astronaut – in truth a very expensive but mere space tourist: about RM100 million.

To please the childish follies and fancies of the powers that be, millions of ringgit have been spent on our first tourist; more might be spent on the Soyuz spacecraft that the Russians seem keen to sell; yet more might be spent on our second space tourist; and yet much, much more might be spent on 'our programme' to land on the moon.

Does this mean that we will soon be on another spending spree to purchase more arms from the Russians and the Americans? Not to mention our very expensive first submarine from the French. By the way, who are the government's registered arms dealers? What are the percentage cuts for the commissions and kickbacks? Can the defence minister, who happens to be also the deputy prime minister, please enlighten us?

Instead of going after only civil servants, why hasn't the Anti-Corruption Agency investigated Najib Tun Razak, who is also deputy Umno president, yet?

After 50 years of formal independence, many of our schools are still without proper facilities and basic amenities. Many of our children in the rural areas have to risk their lives on a daily basis going to school on unsafe boats on fast-moving rivers or across shaky wooden bridges. Yet we have hundreds of millions of ringgit to waste on a dubious 'space programme'.

Do not forget the Port Klang Free Zone scandal, which cost the Malaysian people more than RM4 billion.

The government claims that it can no longer afford subsidies on essential items like cooking oil, diesel, kerosene and petrol and gas and yet it has money to waste on highly questionable prestige projects like the nearly RM500 million sports complex near London.

Price inflation has been going ever upwards over the last two years; the government blames local traders and world events for this. In fact, it would like to blame everybody and everything else except its own policies and actions and its own spendthrift ways.

In fact Najib Tun Razak would like to conclude many more arms deals around the world. Never mind that our oil is steadily running out.

Sadly we have a prime minister in Abdullah who doesn’t seem to care or worry about the colossal waste in our unending arms purchases, including arms and military vehicles which do not work, as exposed in recent years. Billions of ringgit hard-earned through the sweat and blood of the Malaysian people gone to waste. Why should Abdullah and Najib care? It's not their money, that's the attitude.

Perhaps that Abdullah is too weak politically and personality-wise to exert leadership about national savings and thrift?

Perhaps he is perceived by criminals to be weak and rather rudderless that crime has become so prevalent and so horrific in Malaysia these days? After all, he is not only a perceived weak prime minister; he is also a perceived incompetent internal security minister.

Under Abdullah as internal security minister, Malaysians young and old, particularly women and girls, have paid and are paying an extremely high price for the commission or omission by the police of rules of engagement and investigation procedures.

The horrific abduction, sexual assault and killing of 8-year-old Nurin Jazlin in August-September still haunt Malaysians. After her father had lodged a police report on the very night she was missing, why did the police take so many days before they commenced investigations?

After Nurin's body was recovered on September 17 – almost a month after her disappearance at a night market, Prime Minister and Internal Security Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi suggested schools should have only one session. Was that all he could offer? How could he be so ignorant of the facts of the case?

What about a most serious security breach recently at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport involving a stowaway on an SIA flight to Singapore?

The police shooting of live bullets into unarmed protestors recently at Batu Burok in Terengganu is another case in point: they had surely violated standard police procedures of crowd control.

If further confirmation is needed of police personnel not following their own established operation and enforcement procedures, then surely the more recent tragedy of a police anti-drug raid at Sungei Buloh in Selangor gone terribly wrong is sufficient proof that not all is well in the police force, apart from the high incidence of corruption among members of the force.

The disease of incompetence and waste under Abdullah is of course not confined to the sphere of internal security. The health ministry has a lot to answer for: a weeks-old baby having to have her arm amputated at the Klang General Hospital; the severed fingertip of an 11-year-old boy was flushed down the toilet at the Sultanah Bahiyah Hospital in Alor Star by one of its employees. And what has the health minister said?

In an apparent mad frenzy to become world class, the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (National University of Malaysia) has engaged Dr Tan Hock Lim of Australia as a Distinguished Professor for four years, at a montly salary of RM168,000 with effect from October. Simplistic reasoning from simpletons, if you lack quality, perhaps lots of money can buy you some.

When Malaysian workers and the Malaysian Trades Union Congress asked for a miserable RM900 as minimum wage per worker per month, plus RM200 COLA, the minister for human resources and his deputy waxed eloquent about the dangers of scaring off foreign investors from our shores. When the MTUC started picketing over the issue, all sorts of anti-labour threats and utterances were made by the powers that be.

Which brings to mind that 40 years ago, when Malaysian teachers went on strike in Peninsular Malaysia for two weeks, all sorts of threats were hurled at us. But today's more satisfied and more committed teachers are a direct result of that historic industrial action.

And, similarly, the courage of the Malaysian Bar Council and its members to go ahead with their "Walk for Justice" will help considerably our struggle for a judiciary which is truly independent and uncorrupted, regardless of what idiotic things the police or Minister Nazri have said.

Datuk Bung Mokhtar Raden, the BN MP for Kinabatangan, for his sometimes sexist remarks in Parliament had rightly been severely castigated before. But never write off completely the ability to redeem of an occasionally rude character.

In late October, the Member for Kinabatangan stood up to deliver a timely and highly justified swipe at failed ministers. He said that in many countries, especially in South Korea and Japan, ministers take responsibility for mistakes of their ministries or government by resigning and even committing suicide.

Bung Mokhtar said: "We do not want our ministers to commit suicide, but don't you think that ministers who are irresponsible and bring disgrace to the government should resign?"

Bravo! It would be nice to know how many Malaysians would like to associate themselves with those highly reasonable sentiments.

It is a very serious subject, all to do with integrity – a word Prime Minister Abdullah used to, until lately, to talk a lot about. A word which many ministers, including the defence minister, seem to pretend not to notice, let alone recognize, most of the time.

But the message and its urgency are clear: when even an MP like Bung Mokhtar Raden can, in his saner and wise moments, talk earnestly about the sins and crimes of ministerial irresponsibility and what self-respecting ministers ought to do, then you can be quite sure that the state of our county is rather messy, if not worse.

For how long more are Malaysians to live with fear and loathing? Afraid about the collapse of public safety even in broad daylight, and disgusted by rising inflation and galloping corruption. How much longer? Surely it is in the hands of the Malaysian people themselves.