Who will rescue us from this stinking hole?

It is becoming increasingly apparent that there has never been any desire to find out the truth behind 1MDB.

COMMENT

By TK Chua

Let’s face the charade head-on. In this country, only money and position talk. There is no value, no honour, no morals, and no integrity. Politics is raw power; so there are no rules, no boundaries, no democracy, no decency. We could actually put Joseph Stalin to shame.

I think that by now everyone in the country knows the situation we are in. But do we have the common view on how to get out of this stinking hole?

Why have we allowed corruption and abuse of power to perpetuate to this extent? Why have institutions of government set up to provide safeguards and checks and balances, failed us completely? Why have various levers of power failed to act in the face of the most blatant abuses of power? Why are Malaysians so corrupt and greedy that they can be so easily bought and sold with position and money? Why are Malaysians so despicable that the moment they are in positions of power, they seem to lose all sense of right and wrong? Why are Malaysians so ignorant, pathetic and tolerant that they actually cannot see what is going on and are willing to take every piece of crap thrown at them?

I think the issue now is how do we get out of our present predicament and once we are out, prevent ourselves from falling into the same hole again? Otherwise the vicious circle will repeat and we will end up no better from how we started.

I do not claim to know the answer, far from it actually. But I do feel that how we are handling the situation now is ridiculous. We are merely reacting and are being dictated to like puppets.

They said let the Auditor-General and his team conduct the audit on 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). We eagerly waited, only to be told that the interim report was confidential. Now we do not even know when the final report will be ready and if the public will ever get to know the truth.

They then said the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) would investigate it and we waited. But we know the top people at 1MDB (one former, the other present) avoided the hearing by offering flimsy excuses. Others who were supposed to testify have disappeared and cannot be traced. Now the PAC has almost been obliterated with key members having been suddenly moved to the executive branch.

They said a task force consisting of the highest ranking officials from key institutions had been formed to investigate. However there has been no progress report thus far, and suddenly the Attorney-General, a key member of the task force, was asked to retire. And now we react by asking why the Attorney-General was removed, and whether it was legal and constitutional. Can’t we see we are like sheep being led to slaughter?

They said Malaysia was the world’s best democracy and they respected transparency, freedom of information and freedom of the press. But they have allowed some newspapers to carry perpetual lies and have shut down others that carry some semblance of truth.

I think by now we should all know we have been taken for a ride. The Auditor-General’s interim report is completed but made confidential. PAC’s hearing has been sabotaged with its next hearing likely eons away. The special task force has lost its most important member. The publication called The Edge is now fighting in court to have the suspension imposed on it rescinded.

I think it is time to decouple ourselves from this comical circus. It is obvious the investigations are getting nowhere. It is as clear as a bright sunny day that there was no desire to find out the truth in the first place.

Hence, reacting to these charades are a waste of time. I urge clever and right-minded Malaysians to think outside the box to come up with more cogent strategies to handle the situation at hand.

TK Chua is an FMT reader