Can PM Najib's boast of global standing stand up to scrutiny?

After what he has trumpeted as a highly successful visit to US President Donald Trump's White House, on the return leg from which he had an equally acclamatory detour to UK Prime Minister Theresa May's Downing Street, Prime Minister Najib Razak declaims that Malaysia is now a highly regardedcountry in the world.

Selangor Menter Besar Azmin Ali begs to differ.

Azmin posits opposition-controlled Selangor more as the real success story and the more respected constituent state of an otherwise bedraggled nation.

The compelling reason for this admittedly self-serving distinction: Azmin yesterday disclosed that an investor from the United States will soon announce big projects to be sited in Subang and Klang, hubs of growth that help make Selangor the richest state in the Malaysian federation.

Azmin pointed out the difference between Najib's Malaysia and opposition-ruled Selangor:

“This is the difference between Selangor and them [the federal government or Najib's Malaysia]. Investors come to invest in Selangor, unlike some governments that take our money to the US.”

Najib crowed that Malaysia is highly regarded in the comity of nations in Kota Kinabalu, capital of Sabah which United Nations reports have claimed is the poorest state in Malaysia.

Azmin contrasted Selangor's magnetism with what he claimed was Najib's deluded conception of Malaysia, during his speech in Subang Tambahan, a Malay enclave that must vote the opposition, in concert with scores of similarly-peopled wards in the country at the fast approaching general election (GE14) if the coalition to which Azmin belongs, Pakatan Harapan, is to win the polls.

Right now, the people of Sabah appear to be more interested in asserting their rights within the Malaysian polity than in the economic nostrums that the PM is peddling to them.

This is the obverse of what likely are the aspirations of the people of Subang Tambahan: they are keener on the prosperity that investments such as Azmin said are streaming into Selangor than in abstract matters like rights, though Subangites are not about to slight the importance of the latter to their general well-being.

How, then, can voters resolve the question of whose version – Najib's or Azmin's – of Malaysia's global standing is the more accurate reading?

Rohingya test

Frankly, if the courts can rule that the prime minister is, within the constitutional and legal norms of the country, not a public official and shortly after such an astonishing finding, the PM himself can declare a public holiday to celebrate the country's latest achievements in the regional sporting sphere, then there is little hope we can resolve even matters that lend themselves to empirically easier determinants of their truth.

We are long past the stage where we share a single set of facts or ideas which will allow us to entertain the possibility that we could be unified and consensual on issues such as our country's stature in the world.

Malaysia's prime minister says that stature is weighty; the chief minister of the richest state in the federation claims it is flimsy.

Who are we to believe, especially now when a general election is around the corner and questions like these matter more than they would at any other time?

Could we set as a test of Najib's claim that we possess heft in global councils by getting China, with whom Malaysia has forged close economic ties, to adopt a more nuanced stance towards the Rohingya issue in Myanmar, such that the Chinese will step away from their announced position that the problem has to do with terrorism, not human rights?

If China continues to view the matter as an internal security concern of the Myanmar government, could Malaysia then cajole Asean into a declaration that would push Myanmar into doing enough to acknowledge the humanitarian dimensions of the problem, with Asean monitors in place to oversee restitutive and

reconciliatory measures for the Rohingya?

If Najib can lead the country successfully past these two tests of its supposed stature in global issues, even the opposition would have to concede that the PM is right in his assessment of our international clout.

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TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others. - Mkini