Nothing good will come of politically motivated RCIs

Public has almost no confidence in the government, and is not very bothered about findings of forex trading scandals and such.

COMMENT

By P Ramasamy

Malaysia is perhaps one of the few countries that engages in excessive politics to the point where the public has little or no confidence in the government of the day.

Financial and other scandals have been so politicised that the public pays little attention to the reports or findings of these scandals.

The RCI Report on forex trading that incurred hefty financial losses in the 1990s is a fine example of a major political exercise by the government in power to discredit principal opposition leaders like Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Anwar Ibrahim.

The government is not really interested in investigating the losses suffered to the tune of RM31.5 billion but more keen on putting the blame on Mahathir and Anwar, who were then the prime minister and minister of finance.

In other words, the Barisan Nasional (BN) government is more keen to discredit the opposition from gaining votes in the coming general election.

There is no such thing as a time bar in investigating and exposing financial scandals or other wrongdoings.

But why investigate a scandal that occurred in the 1990s but disregard other equally serious scandals of a few years ago like 1MDB that cost Malaysian taxpayers around RM50 billion.

I would agree that the RCI was needed for the forex losses, but I would also agree that we need another for the 1MDB fiasco.

I am not saying Mahathir, Anwar or Nor Mohamed Yakcop are innocent just because the “crime” might have taken place 18 years ago. But the RCI was set up for political reasons. So that the BN government could face the general election scheduled soon with a weakened opposition.

After the RCI report was presented in parliament, a police report was lodged by the secretary to allow for police investigations to proceed.

It is strange that a report on a major financial scandal that occurred in the early 1990s that caused a major financial blow to the nation could be exempted from being debated. Why is the BN government afraid to allow a debate? Is there anything the government wants to protect or hide?

While Lim Kit Siang, DAP’s leader, feels vindicated that the financial losses came close to his own calculation of 18 years ago, there are others who think that the actual financial forex “adventurism” could probably be less, given the ringgit depreciation in relation to the US dollar in the early 1990s.

In the initial phase of trading, the value of the ringgit to the US dollar was around 2.4, but within one or two years, the value dropped to 2.8.

Given this, it is estimated that the losses could be less, certainly not the figure announced by the RCI Report.

The question arises as to why the report did not consider currency depreciation when estimating the value of the losses. Was this an oversight or deliberate?

Was this a deliberate act to embarrass certain leaders in the opposition that the losses suffered as a result of their own irresponsibility were nearly equal to the loses suffered in the 1MDB scandal?

In more simplistic terms, was there a deliberate attempt to bring the losses suffered as result of forex trading nearer to the RM50 billion mark (which are the losses suffered under the 1MDB scandal)?

As long as the country’s top leaders are corrupt, nothing good will come from appointing commissions or committees to investigate financial and other forms of scandals.

P Ramasamy is Penang deputy chief minister II. -FMT