MH370: a wake-up call for our political dreamers
Lim Sue Goan, Sin Chew Daily
It has been the 14th day into the mysterious disappearance of MH370. Without the assistance from so many countries, we alone would not have achieved anything today, perhaps still fumbling over South China Sea for any clue of the missing plane.
The abuse of fake passports by two Iranians was disclosed by the Interpol. While our military radar detected some unidentified aircraft over our air space in the wee hours of that Saturday morning, it was the Untied States that helped corroborate that it was indeed MH370. Part of the key components from the flight simulator in Captain Zaharie’s house would have to be sent to the States for analysis.
In the latest development, from the commercial satellite images provided by the US, Australia said it had spotted some suspicious floating objects in southern Indian Ocean.
To be honest,. we alone have not done much in this whole thing although the chaotic and deliberately deferred dissemination of vital information has completely exposed our deficiency, and this definitely does not augur well for our aspiration to achieve the status of developed nation in a few years’ time.
It is no secret that we lack the ability to reflect on our own shortcomings. The only thing we are good at doing is to outright strike out any external criticisms. For instance former prime minister Dr Mahathir has slammed the outriders, in particular foreign media, for picking on our misdeed in our search operations.
It has been generally agreed that the first thing we must do after learning that a civilian airliner has gone missing is to locate it before reviewing what has gone wrong with our operations. Some say we should put the nation above all else and have called for all Malaysians to stay united to see through the current crisis.
However, without having the ability to reflect and improve, we will make the same mistakes again in looking for the doomed flight. Why is it not possible to address the deficiencies in our management the same time we search for the flight?
Passengers were allowed to board the flight on stolen passports because of incompetency in our passenger inspection procedures. We lacked the necessary technicians to analyze data because of our incomprehensive education system. The fragmented and messy pieces of information protruded our outdated management style, and all these could have spawned from our rigid system and mentality.
