Lahad Datu Incursion: The Accountability Question

by JD Lovrenciear@http://www.malaysia-chronicle.com

Barisan Nasional (BN) leaders and their proxies are already blazing their guns on Opposition members even before the rebels’ smoking guns have been buried in Lahad Datu. That speaks of a lack of accountability and ownership in the face of a crisis.

What is happening in Lahad Datu could not have been a sudden development. It certainly is a situation that has gone ignored for some time.

To begin with, when the citizens of Sabah complained and groaned about the rising presence of aliens in their midst, the BN leaders silenced the rakyat by lambasting that Opposition members were politicizing and instigating the rakyat to go against the ‘government’.

Today, with the on-going RCI on the treacherous IC-Project, we are beginning to force un-earth the diabolic, short-sighted and certainly most foolish political agenda that was set in motion by the leaders of BN.

Tengku Razaleigh has just admitted this act of treason – but in cloaked words, consistent with his thoroughbred heritage. But BN now chooses to hammer the Opposition political opponents of having links of sorts and talking with the rebels. Between talking to the rebels and granting citizenship to aliens by the millions, which is a greater sin against nation and people?

Armed men free to come and go as they please?

The other point that is being debated in the marketplace is the question of how come armed men could come ashore in boats and yet go un-noticed by our security people?

Who takes responsibility for this fundamental failure? How cone BN leaders are mum on this matter?

In the first place, we also all know of the ‘water community’ in Sabah. We have always wondered how come all these zinc and plank outcrop of dwellings remain so un-noticed in the sea where a colony of aliens have been rooting successfully for so long. Yet the authorities could not see?

And now in the face of an exposed IC racket and in the midst of the Lahad Datu attack where things are going wrong by the weeks, the BN leaders conveniently choose to train their guns on the Opposition leaders, especially Anwar Ibrahim and party members.

Does these all not smell of the same old modus operandi of the Mahathir era where make believe enemies were created to shoo and shore the rakyat to fall behind the BN-vote agenda?

Take responsibility

The least that the Prime Minister and his comrade-in-arms the Home Minister could do is to take responsibility.

The PM as the leader of this nation should owe up to the fact that this is a time where the safety, security and dignity of the nation comes first. Not party politics and election agenda.

As Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib is foremost a leader for all citizens and politicians and therefore he should recognize that in the face of a foreign and alien enemy, politicians from both sides of the divide in the country need to be collaborated and consulted with to work together to ensure the security of the nation is prioritized.

Not use a national crisis to shoot your political opponents down into the gravel.By blaming the Opposition and suspecting that they may be in cohorts with the country’s enemies only further exposes that the BN government has failed miserably in guaranteeing the safety and security of this nation.

Wonder, why the BN politicians could not see through this logic in the first place. It is time that the Home Minister took personal and professional responsibility in the wake of the blotched Lahad Datu invasion.

Why did we  end up having to surround on land, a group of armed men numbering some hundreds when the only way for them to enter the country was by sea? Where was our border security? If it was absolute failure, then let us say so in the best interest of protecting King and country in the future.

BN’s incompetence revealed

It is too late in the day to continue dishing out the same old worn statements that “we are investigating”; “stop the rumours”; “we know what we are doing”. The rakyat are asking some very pertinent, simple and honest questions out of concern, care and worry for the nation, its King and democracy.

The talk in the market place and corporate corridors is: If we cannot even stop a hundred armed rebels what would we do if there was an aerial attack or a platoon crossing into the country through the jungles that border our nation?

And what would you expect if the millions of foreign labor comprising of a pot-pourri of legal and illegal as well as ‘naturalized’ citizens, become sympathizers to future rebel invasion? Perhaps, for starters Tun Dr Mahathir may want to answer to the citizens. But certainly, the current Prime Minister and Home Minister owe the rakyat better answers.