You’re only corrupt once you leave Umno

Paris, Thursday July 29, 1830 ... The city was gripped by rioting and armed insurrection as the people rose in revolt against the king of six years, Charles X.

Veteran diplomat Count Talleyrand looked out of the window of his home at the Place de la Concorde. In the distance, church bells were being rung, and the tricolour was being raised from the top of a building nearby.

"We're winning!" he remarked to his secretary.

"Who is 'we', mon Prince?" came the reply.

Talleyrand held a finger to his lips.

"Not a word!" he said. "I will tell you tomorrow."

― Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord

The speed in which the current Umno regime has lodged a report with the state security apparatus to investigate the “recommendations” of the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) into the Forex losses is the apogee of the hubris and lack of morality of the current government. 

The main targets of this report are political prisoner Anwar Ibrahim and more importantly – he who must be neutralised at all costs – the de facto leader of the opposition and father (for good or bad) of modern Malaysia, former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Despite what proponents of this RCI may claim, this was the very definition of a witch-hunt and the conclusions of this commission were no doubt agreed upon before its very first sitting. It is seditious to say this. What other conclusions can we draw from this? Indeed, what other conclusions can we come to, when the heist of the century in the form of the 1MDB fiasco remains clouded in bureaucratic denial and political malfeasance.

If the ordinary rakyat have no faith in our democracy or public institutions, it is because of the manner in which the political elite use both to hunt down and destroy political dissent by any means necessary. The cynical use of the state security apparatus to “investigate” political adversaries for alleged crimes carried out decades ago, while the country is mired in corruption, religious provocations and crimes that destroy the fabric of our society points to the reality that the current administration has no interests beyond sustaining its hegemony.

There are two important points in the persecution of Mahathir or as I referred to it as the “Malaysian dilemma”.

"Of course, the regime may actually incarcerate the former prime minister. This is why all this talk about Mahathir’s financial scandals are brought up by Umno minions and various state investigative bodies, determined to find out ‘what exactly happened’. Umno does this because they can lay the blame completely on Mahathir's door even though it takes a hegemon to build a kleptocracy.

“If this happens, it is game over for Mahathir but more importantly, it is game over for Malay oppositional forces in this country. If the regime manages to silence Mahathir, they would effectively have managed to silence that part of the Malay community that could affect regime change and if they do this, they effectively destroy the opposition. This, unfortunately, is the Malaysian dilemma."

We are living at a time when a high-ranking veteran Umno member can do business with North Korea and claim ignorance of international sanctions against that country and nobody in Umno bats an eyelid.

What we are witness to is a possible criminal enterprise linked with possible foreign intelligence services. This, of course, does not even take into consideration the possible links between North Korean intelligence services which does business here and possible collusion with China operatives plying their trade in this country. Here is what I wrote earlier on this issue –

“Now let us look at the Umno veteran Mustapha Ya'akub’s defence of facilitating what amounts to a North Korean spy/criminal enterprise here in Malaysia. He claims –

“1. He was unaware of the international sanctions against North Korea.

“2. That it was strictly business after his interaction with North Korean embassy officials.

“3. A business was set up with two ‘madams’ and then later run by a man from North Korea and that IGS (International Global System, which is linked to Glocom) was closed down after he learnt there were sanctions in place.

“4. He started another business with the same North Korean but it did not work out.”

To me, the corruption and bureaucratic negligence when it comes to this type of issue is far more important, then what happened decades ago. To be honest, if the current Umno regime could find a way to blame Mahathir and Anwar for everything wrong in this country today, they probably would. And yes, I see the irony in this statement.

Then and now

Meanwhile, the rest of the opposition is squeaking about like headless chickens because this was an epochal corruption scandal of this country and the most ardent voices of dissent against the Forex scandal are now aligned with alleged masterminds of the sandal and who now fight alongside them for regime change.

By far, this has been the most effective strategy in demonstrating how the opposition is one of political convenience and while I am disgusted by it, there is something to admire in the way how Umno has managed – through no creativeness on their part – to throw the opposition into disarray once again.

The idea of ‘who knew what and when’ it a load of horse manure. This is politics Malaysian-style and it would be absurd to make the claim that Umno potentates were in the dark of financial shenanigans on their watch. Similarly, if the former prime minister and then finance minister were in the know or misled or withheld information on that scandal, are we to assume that all has changed in Umno culture in the intervening years?

Would it not be logical - nay, it is the only sane conclusion that we could arrive at - that the current Umno grand poohbah and his deputy are complicit in the current 1MDB scandal? Can we not assume that the prima facie evidence of political corruption and bureaucratic malfeasance in the 1MDB issue ultimately lands at the feet of the current Umno masters of the universe? Do we need a RCI commission to tell us this?

What I would really like to know is which other current Umno members were involved in the forex losses. Of course, nobody in the establishment is interested in that because people only seem to be guilty of something when they leave Umno. It is as if as long as you are in Umno, your sins are camouflaged with religious piety and racial supremacy, which means you operate without consequences.

We survived the Forex scandal and indeed Umno thrived with huge electoral wins. This is the cruellest twist of the blade in the sad history of Malaysia. You could argue that the Forex scandal was the 1MDB scandal of its day. The only thing we can learn from this is that you are only corrupt once you leave Umno.

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S Thayaparan is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy.- Mkini