When no one is right

By admin-s Last updated Apr 9, 2015

Mahathir lost money too, and it doesn’t matter that we know where it went.

Scott Ng, FMT

It looks like Dr Mahathir Mohamad has no intention of letting Prime Minister Najib Razak escape his scrutiny. Despite the two having had a “hot and cold” meeting, it appears that Najib has not managed to convince Mahathir that he is the person most qualified to lead our nation.

This is evident in a recent blog posting by the elder statesman, in which he established that the questions he originally asked were still valid. And to be fair, they are valid questions that have been raised by the opposition and other concerned members of society.

Now, we could speculate further about Mahathir’s blog post and Najib’s shortcomings, but one point made by Mahathir warrants discussion.

If one digs back far enough into Malaysia’s history, one finds Mahathir at the losing end when it comes to handling the country’s finances, like his ill-advised attempt to play with the Forex market. Mahathir mentions this in his blog, but he excuses himself by saying that we know where the money went, which is better than trying to look into the bottomless black hole that the Najib administration has consigned our money to.

Mahathir’s assertion that his shortcomings are more acceptable because we know where the money went is a specious argument at best. It does not excuse him from the responsibilities of a leader, specifically the responsibility of being accountable to the people for the money spent by the government, which must be stressed is not the money of the ruling party, not the personal funds of politicians, but money belonging to the public.

At the end of the day, a loss is a loss, and it truly doesn’t matter exactly where the loss went. We as a nation lost money when our leaders made bad decisions. As far as reality goes, both Najib and Mahathir are responsible for the decisions made by their respective administrations.