TIME TO EAT HUMBLE PIE: Putrajaya's pussy-footing & inefficiency also to blame for refugee problem

Indeed in this age and time it is most heart wrenching to witness how humans deal with the refugee problem. Leaders in the region have reacted with their statements and so have those concerned citizens about this large numbers of Rohingyas and Bangladeshis arriving into Malaysian waters.

Underlying this refugee problem is nation-responsibility. It is most un-becoming of leaders here in Malaysia and the country of origin of the refugees to have allowed the problem in the first place.

‘Sending’ nations cannot be forgiven for allowing their people to take to the high seas in an effort to find better opportunities for work or to flee from oppression. Their leaders should be condemned in the harshest manner by neighboring countries for their failed leadership and politics.

But Malaysia is pussy-footing with deputies expressing some concerned statements that seems to hinge towards mere blaming and sending emisssaries to plead for a cause.

Now that the problem has been silently allowed to be full-blown leading to boatloads of refugees pouring into our waters, leaders in Malaysia have a moral responsibility to put lives first above the nation’s needs, legality, and concerns.

For a country that parades its progress, wealth and employment opportunities to the region by hiring cheap, foreign labor legally and illegally, it already has earned a sizeable share in this refugee plight too.

Firstly, we never seem to have learnt our lessons well. This is not the first time that we are faced with fleeing foreign nationals. The Vietnamese boat people experience in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s should have made us more aware, prepared and be able to respond with compassion and effective government-to-government measures.

Secondly, as has been articulated by netizens, Malaysia being in the driver’s seat of the Asean Community, should demonstrate its highly effective leadership through the office of the Prime Minister.

Thirdly, the Bangladeshi arrival by the boat loads is not something that suddenly dropped from the sky and took the Malaysian government by surprise. Where was our intelligence gathering? What did we do to deal and plug the source where thousands of Bangladeshis were said to be boarding their boat of hope to a land of milk and honey?

Malaysia has a government-to-government relationship with the Bangladesh government going by the fact that tens of thousands of migrant workers are proudly brought in to fill our labor intensive industries.

And therefore, Malaysia should have protested much earlier if their intelligence gathering was working as efficiently as the arresting and charging of local politicians and public protestors seem to be.

Najib’s government should have been in a steering position to tell the Bangladeshi government long before the boats set sail that either they stop the gateway exit operations or their migrant workers are sent back by the ship-loads. Was it done?

Then you have the Rohingyas problem. When you collaborate with a junta government, you should know that they do not respect cross border politics. As a nation that claims to have a political party in power for sixty years, we now seem to be at the ridiculous mercy of a junta government in Myanmar.

Now, beneath all these pressing problems there are two significant lessons for the Malaysian government.

One, we must know that the root cause of the problem is ourselves. We have been totally ineffective in our border controls and immigration vigilante. The almost tens of thousands if not millions of illegal workers in the country – coming from Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Nepal, Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia all have deposited a story of confidence and luck back among their countrymen and women.

Our failure has opened numerous gateways and means for the illegal to keep trying their luck. Do we see this in Singapore? Or why not try doing the same by Malaysians to work as an illegal in these countries.

It boils down to a corrupt system. From politicians to paid civil servants to the business communities and slavery-entrepreneurs, we must accept the fact that we have allowed corruption to be our master and preferred option and shortcut to riches. Period.

Two, we need to be ready to pay the price. For as long as we have strengthened that hope of working legally and illegally to the citizens of our neighboring countries, they will not fail to see Malaysia as a easy point for escape from their hardships or persecution.

In all likelihood too, the Myanmar junta too knows all too well that Malaysia is weak in its border policies.

Now as the boat people have already set sail and are arriving within our shores, to drive them off with some food and medicine supplies is not going to earn the country brownies in the eyes of the global community.

In conscience too we are being barbaric and selfish if we send these people off to perish in the seas.

We must acknowledge that this is the problem we must face for failing to arrest that reputation that Malaysia is an easy country to get in and find your pot of gold – legally of illegally.

This is what happens when a government becomes too fattened using all kinds of oppressive and archaic laws like the ISA and OSA; too over confident after being in power for so long; too complacent when dissenting voices are silenced.

Imagine, if there was a war in the region or affecting several of these neighboring countries, the deluge of boat people arriving will soon displace this tiny nation’s own population.

Not only that. The millions of foreign workers already here themselves will lend support to their countrymen and women. That is human nature.

This is the price we are paying for our own systemic failures. Let us not kid ourselves with all kinds of complicated and seeming ‘foreign policies’ stunts. We made ourselves vulnerable. - MAILBAG