Lack of precision, lots of thievery

COMMENT Effective communication means, among other things, being precise. Especially with figures. Within limits, of course. In ordinary instances, it is most times unnecessary to go to more than one or two decimal places.

Being precise saves everyone time. It forestalls mis-communications or misunderstandings.

In engineering, it saves money. And possibly human lives as well. For example, precision engineering in the design and manufacture of internal combustion engines means less fuel used and more power generated. With capsule-transporting rockets, it means near-absent chances of fatal accidents.

The loan taken by SRC International from the Retirement Fund Incorporated (KWAP) was some RM3.8 billion and not RM4 billion. If we want to write down a round figure, we write ‘about RM4 billion’.

The 56-year-old senior official with the Youth and Sports Ministry alleged to have nicked RM100 million has not been at it with his abettors for “numerous years” as the minister has said.

It is assumed here that they have nicked exactly RM100 million. Have they? Or have they embezzled about RM100,000,000?

Nor has the alleged embezzler nicked a small sum at a time. As the minister has also said.

The alleged embezzler has been at it since 2010. That means some six years. ‘Numerous’ means very many. Six isn’t that many. Six hundred years would be.

RM100 million divided by six years times 12 months equals about RM1·39 million a month.

RM1·39 million isn’t a small sum - unless, of course, you are so used to stealing hundreds of millions and billions.

The minister was obviously trying to make the offence seem far less serious than it actually is, and that the oversight on the part of those uninvolved in the embezzlement but are employed in the ministry was excusable.

Yeah, of course, you must protect your own kind.

But they have been very quick and alert and observant when the sum involved is a mere 0·0000028 percent of RM100,000,000.

Yes, we have seven decimal places there. Because we have to be very precise in this instance.

They have been very quick and alert and observant because the sum has to do with the opposition. That’s the amount Lim Guan Eng has paid for his detached house.

Yes, it is a ‘detached house’ and not a ‘bungalow'. I can understand why a precision-minded reader of Malaysiakini, whom I would presume to be American and has bellyached about the misusage, has suffered a pain in his stomach.

A bungalow is really a modest (read ‘smallish and cheap’), single-storey dwelling.

After the British had sailed into India and decided to play maharajah, they borrowed the Hindi word ‘banglo’ and anglicised it into ‘bungalow’.

“A banglo, my dear fellow, isn’t exactly Mysore Palace, what?”

Say that in received English with a clipped voice while looking down your nose, and you’ll be as good as David Niven playing an officer with The East India Company.

O Noah, there’s no need to build an ark

The revelation of the RM100,000,000 theft has resulted in eardrum-rupturing cracks of lightning and earth-shattering roars of thunder.

“Corruption is a scourge that we must eradicate in our country, and the government will not stand for it,” he said.

That bit was stated in the fourth paragraph of the report ‘PM orders immediate probe into RM100m embezzlement’.

Who was the ‘he’? Was it the prime minister or was it the chief secretary to the government?

All that lightning and thunder is about as menacing as the fart of a mosquito.

Nothing will come of it. The Deluge won’t happen. There is no need for a modern-day Noah to build an ark. It is all sound and fury signifying nothing.

Because corruption is prevalent in Malaysia. It has been going on since God knows when. It is tolerated. That’s obvious, as hardly anyone culpable - except for microscopic fry filching relatively trifling sums - has been brought to book.

You have a pack-of-three-packets Maggi mee costing RM8 each, armoured personnel carriers costing RM30 million each when some other country got them for the equivalent of RM4·4 million at the most, ordinary coastal patrol vessels passed off as the far more expensive ‘littoral combatant ships’, police-issued guns capable of going to the sea to swim, etc.

I have written about the subject just after God said “Let there be light.”

And when you have someone suspected of having embezzled US$1 billion demanding a stop to thievery and making threats of impending doom for the thieves, even my usually serious Rottweilers went rolling on the floor, guffawing.

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ODIN TAJUE is a regular Malaysiakini commenter.