My 1Bangsa Malaysian dream

KJ John

The New Straits Times (NST) headline editorial last Sunday screamed, “Collective Integrity” as a response to the Auditor-General’s Report tabled in Parliament.

They also carried a full and exclusive interview with the auditor-general of Malaysia focused on this issue of “our collective failure to stand up to the test of our national integrity being audited”.

I have always argued this as my prayer for our nation, with the words “to integrate with integrity”. Therefore, allow me to totally agree with the NST’s hypothesis that we have serious need for much more “collective integrity; as a people and nation-state”.

But, we must go beyond, mere “public service accountability”, we must demand such standards of integrity within our entire nation. This is therefore my call for excellence as a value and virtue we should all crave for.

We must demand for integrity in all matters, and especially related to the financial and economic accountability.  We must demand the same for every sen spent by any government of the day, on behalf of all citizens, and defined by the public interest.

But, where should such responsibility and accountability be located? Cannot such responsibility and accountability be assigned to all public commissioners, whether it is the auditor-general, or the human rights commissioner, or the public services commissioner, or the anti-corruption commissioner?

And should not all such public accountability and responsibility report directly to the Parliament, and not anymore merely to the Executive?

Moreover, already the inspector-general of police, the attorney-general, and the armed forces chief, for example, do not sit in the cabinet, but are directly only responsible and accountable to the cabinet ministers.

But, are we satisfied with their performance defined by their key performance indicators (KPIs)? What about all other director-generals? Who are they ultimately accountable to, if not our elected assembly?

To me, these responsibility and accountability issues are huge concerns as we approach the 13th general election.

Bribery, corruption, and truth

Everyone loves sports. Not everyone, however, loves to be totally accountable and responsible for clearly-defined external standards of performance of equally high quality of inputs, processes with measured outputs and outcomes. Winning is always what leadership defines winning to be.

Recently, a world-renown cyclist has been found guilty by the leadership of the world body and stripped off seven seven years of global titles, and ordered to repay all his past winnings to the tune of about US$4 million.

This guilt has finally been established by the World Sports Body, after quite some years of heavy-duty investigation and science-based forensic study, which was well coordinated with a choreographed system of integrated bribery with corruption, which then led to the use of the performance-enhancing drugs, to keep winning at all costs.

Truth must matter to all of us, even about this.

Private equity versus public investments?

The New Yorker, in an editorial on Sept 19, 2012 wrote:

“If the keynote of (United States president Barack) Obama’s  administration has been public investment – whether in infrastructure, education, or health – the keynote of (Republican presidential nominee Mitt) Romney’s candidacy has been private equity, a realm in which efficiency and profitability are the supreme values”.

Our choice as a nation, too, swings between these options. Do we really need to allow the creation of more wealthy individual investors or corporations premised merely upon public goods delivery, aided and abetted by the government incentives, or, do we not need more focus on social investments of the entrepreneurial kind to address the needs of the bottom 40 percent?

Organisations today do not exist merely for profit maximisation. The profit of any business-type operation is the lifeblood for survival of its system of legitimate interests. Profits are income that exceeds expenditure related to costs of operation. Therefore, profits for any legitimate organisation (including NGOs), are like oxygen for breathing for humans.

No human being lives merely to breathe; neither does any company live only to make profits.  Profits, like oxygen, are necessary for survival of any organisation but it is not the sole purpose of her existence. All organisations have some other more important legitimate purpose; a raison d’être or reason for existence.

Therefore, it is conceivable that organisations exist, not just for profits, but for some larger and meaningful purposes of the creators. Most organisations therefore have an option; whether they exist for public good investments or private goods equity acquisition.

Most not-for-profit organizations, like Suaram or  Oriental Hearts and Mind Study Institute (OHMSI) or  Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF) are never illegitimate but instead have as legitimate an agenda as the private equity ones with equally requisite reasons for their existence.

Let us therefore not be misled by much hype.

Whither then our ‘collective integrity’ as a nation-state?

Professor Shad Saleem Farouqi titled his magnum opus on the Malaysian constitution: Our ‘document of destiny’. I call it our “our common vision for integration with integrity.” The Malaysian federal constitution defines all our laws and values for good behaviour as a nation-state of three collective British colonies.

All nation-states are always artificially crafted and are only about 60 to 70-years-old as a modern ideal. We, as one nation with three states, are fortunate to have been birthed when we were under the influence the British Commonwealth.  Our Malaysia is now in her 49th year and moving towards our 50th Birthday.  It is our Jubilee year.

Our rulers were directly involved in historic negotiations, and therefore their role and responsibility remains to uphold certain key features that we agreed to and wrote into the laws of our nation.

Likewise, as peninsular Malaysians, we also have an agreement with Sabahans and Sarawakians which too needs to be honoured for our future and survival.

All these “demands” make up what former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad (left) dreamed of as Vision 2020; or what he called “The bangsa Malaysia challenge”.

But, we cannot just become 1Malaysia as argued by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak by the push of a button; we can only become 1BangsaMalaysians; when the people are fully integrated with integrity. The nation-state (or 1Malaysia) already exists by definition of the federal constitution.

Many challenges therefore remain, not the least of which is our family conversation about what is and is not an Islamic state?

The Truth Matters Forum is co-organised by IRF and OHMSI to help us to think through what our vision for our future is and is not.

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KJ JOHN – This was the text of the opening speech delivered by the writer on the occasion of the Islamic state discourse at FGT in Subang Jaya on Nov 3, 2012.