(News snippet – only in Malaysia this happens on a regular basis and it is not a laughing matter. After all, this country is best of the best when it comes to corruption-free Government and corruption fighting agencies, eh?. Cartoon source: http://johnnyongcartoons.blogspot.com/)
Whilst we are largely preoccupied with MH 370 tragedy and have been keeping up our hopes for some kind of closure, some Malaysian politicians have been having some strange itchiness and have been trying to outdo each other in making themselves to look like an ass in public.
Snippet 1 – World’s Most Corruption Free Country: Malaysia
It’s very obvious that some people in the country still living in a cocoon (perhaps high on coconut water). It must be one hard cocoon that they are living in as evident from this:-
Malaysia antara negara terbersih daripada perbuatan rasuah, kata Menteri di Jabatan Perdana Menteri, Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim.
Shahidan menafikan dakwaan Malaysia sebuah negara yang kerap mengamalkan rasuah dan menegaskan dakwaan tersebut tidak wajar dikeluarkan kerana akan memberi kesan kepada pihak lain.
Beliau berkata, Malaysia juga mempunyai sebuah agensi memerangi rasuah yang terbaik di dunia iaitu Suruhanjaya Pencegahan Rasuah Malaysia (SPRM).
(Source)
Translated in simple English:-
Malaysia is one of the most corrupt FREE countries in the world and has one of the best corruption-fighting agency in the world (referring to MACC).
Mind you, it is coming from a seasoned Minister) and wait for the hard cold reality to hit you.
That is what happened to me when I first read this statement. I was speechless. I was in shock. I do not know which version of Malaysia that Shahidan is talking about (obviously exists in a galaxy far, far away) but it surely cannot be the same Malaysia that most of us are living in.
The Malaysia that we live in has been ranked as one of the most corrupt nations by Ernst & Young. That is not a big revelation! We all know that for a long time now and we also know that MACC (the so-called best of the best) is toothless (can’t blame them) when it comes to nabbing those in political power when it comes to corruption.
Snippet 2 – Deputy Minister Assumed RMAF Assumed Crap
One of the sourest point (until this presentation was made) in the search for MH370 is the failure for RMAF to correctly identify and intercept MH370 when it deviated from its original flight path. If this been done, we could have identified MH370 immediately and would not have wasted valuable time, resources and assets over the South China Sea for days.
Then the Deputy Minister of Defence revealed that RMAF assumed that the plane had turned back because the air traffic control had ordered them back. The part of RMAF “assumed” did not go well with many people – after all, we expect the military to be more precise and professional especially of those monitoring the air space above Malaysia.
We expect them to be on high alert and track things out of the ordinary. We expect them to pick up the phone and give DCA a call. With all that technology and expensive military hardware, we had never expected them to work on an assumption basis. That is why we were pissed off when the Minister said RMAF had assumed this and that.
Then we had a 180-degree turn:-
Deputy Defence Minister Datuk Abdul Rahim Bakri today admitted he assumed that the Subang air traffic control had asked lost Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 to turn back, adding his assumption was not accurate.
“In relation to my statement in the debate for the Royal Address yesterday, in which I said MH370 did a turn back probably because it received instructions from air traffic control, I want to clarify that it was just my assumption and one of the possibilities that could have happened.
“After making checks, I would like to stress that my assumption is not accurate,” Abdul Rahim said in a terse two-paragraph statement in Kuala Lumpur today.
(Source)
Now the good Minister turns around and says that it was he who made the assumption and not RMAF. Didn’t he check the facts before he opened his mouth in the Parliament? Did he mislead the MPs with unverified facts and wild assumptions?
If this is not the case, then what would be the real reason for RMAF not scrambling their jets to intercept the rouge plane?
Even if they claimed that DCA did not inform them of the missing plane, wouldn’t that make an even more compelling case for RMAF to scramble and intercept the plane? Someone obviously had slept on the job and it is very unsettling to know that we may have huge holes in our defence system. We still want to know what really happened otherwise we may find ourselves with another plane deviated from its flight path.
Snippet 3 – 44 Firearms Lost – A Small Matter Only
It may sound like they had only lost 44 soiled underwear so we have “nothing” to worry but it is not the case:-
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is satisfied with the explanations given by police over its loss of assets, including 44 firearms highlighted in the 2012 Auditor General’s Report, said its chairman Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed.
“The amount is quite small and does not justify further investigation,” he said, adding the loss of assets in any organisation is normal and this included the police force.
“We have to accept there will be some losses when the police are on duty, but in terms of the overall firearms, the number of losses is quite small.
“It’s not significant. In audit terms, it’s not significant for us to warrant further investigation,” he told reporters after chairing the PAC meeting today.
(Source)
Well, I don’t know about you but for me, what is important is not the number of items lost but rather what was lost.
If the police had lost say 44 key-chains, it is nothing to shout about. But if you consider that the item lost is a firearm, then even a loss of 1 is a big issue. The police had lost 44 firearms. It could arm a small army to its teeth. It could be used for armed robberies and assassinations.
It is significant and it does warrant further investigation.
At end of the day, heads must roll and that is what we expect PAC to do. We don’t expect PAC to trivialize the 44 firearms lost and then sweep it under the carpet. Sigh, I sure hope PAC did not buy into the “fallen into the sea” crappy explanation and decided to close the issue.
The outcome is very disappointing.
Snippet 4 – Too many newspapers will confuse Malaysians
Well, too much of something is not good for anyone – I agree but making the same case on newspapers and news is simply dumb (especially at this age of the internet):-
The Home Ministry had rejected FZ Daily and Malaysiakini’s application for publishing permits to protect the public from the confusion of having access to “too much news”.
“The (number of) newspaper publications with approved publishing permits is sufficient considering the number of readers in the country,” Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said in a parliamentary written reply Tuesday.
(Source)
When the case was taken to the court, the High Court judge ruled that the Home Ministry’s rejection was “improper and irrational”. And the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s decision and thus reconfirming that the rejection was indeed “improper and irrational”.
So telling off that having too many newspapers is a bad thing does test one’s logic. At the end of the day, it all depends on the selling the right news (not the crappy & racial ones from you-know-which-newspaper) and having sizable readership to continue to run the newspaper.
No one dies from having too much news. No one goes crazy from reading too many news. And at times (in Malaysia, make it “most of the time”), it makes more sense for one to actually read both sides of the story and come out with the right conclusion.
At the end of the day, knowing what Malaysiakini published on the internet, it is nothing but a political laced decision to simply silence the critics and keep the truth on the wrongdoings from surfacing.
And to rub salt on the wound, here we go again – all-knowing, charitable and most gracious, whiter than angel politicians wanting to protect the feeble, weak, dumb public from the great danger.
If we need any kind of protection, there will be only one – protect us from dumb politicians and their propaganda. We all know why Zahid is shitting in his pants over the application for a permit to publish by Malaysiakini. We are not as dumb as he wants us to be.
Well, anyway have a great weekend ahead. Let’s just hope by chance, some of the politicians would start using their brains and we’ll finally hear more intelligent statements from next week onwards.