On fight against corruption, Malaysia can show Australia a thing or two

According to the publisher Oxford Dictionaries, who annually chooses the English word of the year based on the ‘sheer scope of its application’, the word of 2018 is ‘toxic’.

And it’s difficult to disagree with the choice, in view of the fact that ‘toxic’ has recently become a buzzword in almost countless contexts.

In the endless battle of the sexes, for example, or more ‘politically-correctly’ of the genders, unreformed males are no longer reviled as sexist swine or macho morons, but as travesties of toxic masculinity.

Places of employment plagued by all the traditional power struggles, corporate politics, back-stabbings, bullying and harassments are now known as toxic workplaces.

Planet Earth and all its life-forms are reliably reckoned to be threatened by increasingly toxic levels of air, soil and water pollution and global warming due to toxic atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases.

And on a more personal level, it seems to me that I’ve been seeing more and more young women around Sydney with Botoxic-looking lips.

Meanwhile, more and more conservatoxic governments around the world, far from striving to come up with a cure or even a tonic for any of these ills are, encouraged by the eco-toxic, socio-toxic and above all truth-toxic example of Donald Trump and his current Washingtoxic administration, plus Fox and similarly toxic media, are hell-bent on making it worse.

As in the UK, for example, where the Tories have been preoccupied for the past two years, and will be for much longer, with their ridiculously Brexitoxic plan to leave the European Union.

As now in Brazil, where Jair Bolsonaro has been recently elected president on an Amazon rainforest-toxic platform.

And as currently in Australia, where the Liberal-National conservatoxic coalition is so hostile to emergent ecologically and economically-advanced forms of renewable energy as to insist on supporting and even subsidising a fossil-fuel-based wreckology.

While additionally, on the international front, the COALition’s Prime Minister Scott (Scottoxic?) Morrison has stupidly jeopardised a free-trade deal with Indonesia, and turned relations with both Indonesia and Malaysia from diplomatic to somewhat diplomatoxic by threatening to ape Trump’s move to shift the nation’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

And Australia’s treasurer, the Jewish Josh Frydenberg, didn’t exactly reduce the level of toxicity between his government and Malaysia’s saying in a radio interview reported by Malaysiakini that “the Malaysian prime minister has (antisemitic) form. He has called Jews hook-nosed people. He has questioned the number of people killed in the Holocaust.”

Frydenberg may well have been, and in fact was, speaking truthfully, but his timing could have been better in light of the outcry that hasn’t yet died down following Scott Morrison’s comment concerning a recent ‘lone-wolf’ terror attack in Melbourne that the perpetrator’s mental illness was no excuse for his crime, and that Melbourne Muslim community should do more to prevent such incidents in future.

Old resentments

In any event, Frydenberg and his ruling-COALition should be highly aware and appreciative of the fact that Malaysia’s new Mahathir-led Pakatan Harapan administration is one of the very few governments in the world right now that is striving to be the opposite of toxic.

And that this process of detoxification, hopefully including the neutralising of antisemitism along with all other aspects of racism and religionism, is worthy of encouragement rather than the raking-up of old resentments.

Though I and many others have expressed grave concerns as to the wisdom of admitting Umno/BN defectors to the Bersatu component of the Harapan coalition, and some have been critical of what they see as slow progress in the reform process, as far as I can see a great deal has already been achieved.

Reversing six decades of Umno/BN kelptotoxicity, especially when it’s not, thank goodness, a matter of summary justice but by the book according to the rule of law, is bound to take a frustratingly long time.

But in the short space of six months, we’ve already seen dozens of charges brought against a steadily growing list of suspects.

And I’m personally admiring of and encouraged by the fact that they’re netting the big fish first and working down toward the smaller rather than concentrating their efforts on a few token ikan bilis as the Umno/BN regime used to do to try and fool the populace into accepting that they were active against corruption.

Speaking of which, and returning to Australia for a moment, I strongly suspect that there’s more than mere conservatoxic ideology behind the Morrison COALition’s unwavering support for the fossil-fuels industry, and that this is the reason for the same government’s prolonged refusal to set up a federal Independent Commission against Crime and Corruption (ICACC) like the ones successfully instituted long ago by all of Australia’s state governments.

What dodgy dealings, I can’t help wondering, is the federal government at such pains to keep quiet these days, as their predecessors did so strenuously back when executives of the Australian Wheat Board were allegedly implicated in the Iraq Oil for Food scandal, and some of the management of Securicor, at that time a subsidiary of the federal treasury, in bribery scandals involving the printing of banknotes in Malaysia and elsewhere?

And while we’re on the topic of toxicity, what about the Australian government’s ongoing attempts to prosecute the person (together with his lawyer) who blew the whistle on its illegal bugging of the East Timor cabinet room during negotiations over oil reserves years ago?

For decades I could never have imagined myself saying this, but maybe the new Malaysia, as reprehensibly antisemitic as its leader has been in the past, and I hope is capable of reversing in the future, has something to teach Australia’s conservatoxics about fighting federal-level corruption.

That would be absolutely fantastic. Or, to express this thought in a non-existent but at least highly-appropriate word, fanantitoxic.

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DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he coaches and mentors writers and authors and practises as a writing therapist. Published compilations of his Malaysiakini columns include "Mad about Malaysia", "Even Madder about Malaysia", "Missing Malaysia", "1Malaysia.con" and "Malaysia Mania”. - Mkini