Shooting the messenger ad hominem

Are we shooting Lim Guan Eng as the bearer of bad news or are we shooting him for using Mandarin on his disclosures about the Tun Razak Exchange (TRX) bailout?

"Shooting the messenger" is a metaphor for the act of blaming the bearer for bringing bad news and not the source. Except in this instance, we seem to miss the substance of the bad news and blame Lim for something else totally unrelated.

Both Rais Yatim, the Parliament speaker-in-waiting and Khairy Jamaluddin, Umno’s presidential candidate, are wide off the mark in their sliding tackle on Lim for using Mandarin in an official press release.

It’s interesting that both are from opposite ends of the political divide, yet they speak the same lingo. And Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the new prime minister, has tried to diffuse the rage by saying:

“It's a minor mistake, I don't want to make it into an issue. Sometimes, we make mistakes. For the Chinese audience, he (Lim) will issue (statements) in Chinese that's all.” But what’s the mistake?

The whole saga is beginning to look like what in Latin is known as argumentum ad hominem (to-the-man argument) where genuine discussion of the topic is avoided by attacking the person associated with the argument instead, rather of tackling the substance of the argument itself.

Some rank ad hominem low down on the hierarchy of argument or disagreement, next only to idiotic name-calling.

In football, ad hominem would be known as playing the man, not the ball. The "ball" is our personal view and the "man" is someone with the opposing view.

Let’s look at the context. Six days ago (June 21), the Finance Ministry issued a trilingual statement in Bahasa Malaysia, English and Mandarin on the TRX bailout.

Subsequently, Lim issued another statement on his Facebook to respond to the “Friends of BN” Facebook page which questioned the need for a Mandarin version of the ministry's statement. However, the minister's Mandarin-only response on Facebook drew brickbats from those who could not understand the language.

What was his statement about? According to Lim, the federal government would have to fork out RM6.5 billion in total to bail out the Tun Razak Exchange (TRX), a brainchild of former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak, who was also the previous finance minister.

He added that of the amount transferred to TRX thus far, RM3.067 billion had been misappropriated by 1MDB, mainly for 1MDB loan repayments. As a result of the misappropriation of funds, TRX does not have enough money to fulfil its obligations as the master developer for TRX, he said.

That’s the bad news, according to the finance minister. But Najib shot back immediately by accusing Lim of “telling half-truths and outright lies” in describing the new injection of funds into TRX by the new government as a bailout.

Najib said Lim himself had said the TRX project will be worth at least RM7.8 billion and (can) show a profit. "Surely it cannot be called a bailout if the money is to be used to generate a profit?" he posed in a statement.

Still, the bad news remains that the national coffers would have to cough out up to RM6.5 billion to service TRX debts to pay off Najib’s folly. The saga then takes a strange ad hominem twist when Rais and Khairy entered the fray to attack the man and not play the ball.

Fan the flames

Former federal minister Rais Yatim, who is now a member of the new ruling coalition and touted to be the next speaker of the Dewan Rakyat, urged Lim to stop issuing press statements in Mandarin, saying that statements in Bahasa Malaysia were sufficient. He added that issuing government press statements in Mandarin was not appropriate.

Khairy, the former youth and sports minister in the defeated BN coalition and now contending for Umno’s top post, wasted no time in attacking Lim's defence of issuing official statements in Mandarin. He said it was unacceptable.

According to Khairy, Lim is attempting to set a new government practice on language use and accused the DAP leader of preventing the promotion of Bahasa Malaysia as the national language.

"My concern is this act will continue to fan the flames of anger among the majority who are feeling increasingly threatened in recent weeks," Khairy said in a Facebook posting. He did not elaborate.

Then, in a statement, former Johor menteri besar Mohamed Khaled Nordin described Lim's action as insolent and an insult to the status of Bahasa Malaysia.

Other opposition supporters also accused Lim of undermining Bahasa Malaysia’s status as the national language. Among those who criticised Lim was Mydin hypermarket boss Ameer Ali Mydin (photo). The Mydin chain was a beneficiary of the failed Kedai1Malaysia, another brainchild of Najib’s.

Fortunately, the younger lawmakers of the ruling coalition saved the day with their level-headedness.

“I think there is no issue to translate any official statement from the government of Malaysia. Nevertheless, priority should be given for the use of Bahasa Malaysia for the first press release. This procedure can help avoid much confusion and misunderstanding,” Muar MP Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman said in a statement.

Syed Saddiq said Section 2 of the National Language Act 1963/67 already provides for the national language to be used for official purposes. Separately, PKR's Lembah Pantai MP Fahmi Fadzil defended Lim’s move, saying that there is a necessity for Lim to issue his press release regarding the government bailout for TRX in Chinese.

Fahmi said press releases are typically issued in Malay and English but there are times when Chinese press releases are necessary to avoid confusion.

“All statements regarding his job as the finance minister are written in Malay and English but in view of some technical terms had been misinterpreted or mistranslated in Chinese (this caused a Chinese press release to be issued).”

“I have been made to understand that since he became the Penang chief minister (in 2008), he had prepared Chinese translations for the Chinese press but the original statements are in Malay and English. For me, there is no issue. We need this for technical, financial terms to ensure that it is (correctly) translated into Chinese, Tamil or other languages,” he said.

However, Lim, who is also DAP’s secretary-general, seemed to have lost the plot midway through by defending the use of Mandarin for his press statement as reflecting the current government’s recognition of multilingualism and globalisation.

He said that his critics were making “racist accusations” and he would not bow to them.

“The statements of the finance minister will continue to be published in Malay and English,” he said, adding that Chinese translations would be included where necessary.

The whole issue here is about bad news and how to communicate precisely the extent of that bad news and not about shooting the messenger ad hominem.

The choice of language is not an issue but Lim has become a victim of circumstances of his own making by defending a non-issue.

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BOB TEOH is a media analyst. -Mkini