Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s government has made shocking revelations about corruption. Ministers, politicians, their aides, family members and close business associates, and civil servants, even those based in our overseas missions, have been implicated.
Do those involved have no sense of right and wrong?
They seem to see the rakyat as easy prey. They take advantage of migrant workers who are desperate to work in Malaysia. They take advantage of the never-ending desire of successive governments to help the bumiputera companies. They also take advantage of the price controls on some items.
Perhaps the corrupt feel “protected” because they have connections to the top. Perhaps they have people on the inside of some crucial government agencies, like the police, to alert them of an impending raid or arrest.
People who steal from the rakyat are not poor. They do not want for anything. They are just greedy.
A former prime minister claimed that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission did not consider him a suspect and tried to fob us off, by claiming that he was only helping with their enquiries.
But the head of the MACC issued a statement the day after and confirmed that he was a suspect.
The amount of money involved in that particular scandal is staggering and dwarfs the RM42 million that former prime minister Najib Razak was convicted of laundering.
Malaysians are sick to the core of career politicians and their aides who appear to hold the belief that stealing from the rakyat is a benefit of being in power. They feel as if it is their entitlement.
The Jana Wibawa scheme was made possible because of emergency rule and the pandemic lockdown. Questions from Pakatan Harapan, then in opposition, could not be raised in Parliament, which was suspended.
The amount of money allegedly appropriated could have helped millions of B40 Malaysians in food and financial aid.
A fortnight ago, the son of a senior opposition politician was charged with producing fake invoices on the sale of subsidised cooking oil to a local retail company.
Cooking oil is a controlled item and with the run-up to Hari Raya, one can imagine the eye-watering amount of money that could have been made by crooked means.
What has happened to the Malay sense of values and their Islamic teachings?
The latest scandal to hit Malaysia is the provision of migrant labour from Bangladesh. In other words, human trafficking.
Ordinary Malaysians must pay an exorbitant fee to acquire the services of a migrant worker. In Bangladesh, the poor worker who seeks to improve his family’s fortune by working overseas will have paid good money for an agent to find him employment in Malaysia.
Is there no end to this corrupt practice? People involved in such schemes seem to have been consumed by greed and have lost all sense of values. What happened to their religious convictions, ‘thou shalt not steal?’
For how long have the crooks been fleecing the Malaysian public? They did not just start a few months or years ago. They have been cheating the rakyat for ages and managed to get away with their crimes only because the controls that were put in place were never enforced.
The government should not have any mercy on them. The billions of ringgit they stole could have been used to help the rakyat. - FMT
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.
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