It’s a new year, but Malaysia seems unable to progress, weighed down as they are by the burden of past mistakes, unexplained mysteries and half-baked leadership.
The country was plagued by a host of scandals in 2015. We had 1MDB, the RM2.6b donation, countless inane comments from the leadership — such as nasi goreng GST and working two jobs — and the MACC’s failure, so far, to solve what may be the country’s biggest corruption case in its recent history.
Some may argue that we should leave such incidents as water under the bridge. But the foundation of the future is built upon the altar of the past, and time cannot heal anything if nothing is done to fix an open wound.
Let’s not beat around the bush. Corruption, abuse of power, nepotism and cronyism — these are not new wounds. They’ve been left to fester for decades. They’ve become a cancer that has spread to many parts of our body politic.
Yet every time attention is called to these issues, the solution proposed by the government isn’t to cut the tumour out at its source. Of course it can’t. Doing so might cull a significant part of the administration. So those in charge keep going back to smoke and mirrors, to diversions and the silencing of critics.
In his New Year’s message to the nation, Prime Minister Najib Razak said that the 1MDB issue had been settled. The message was widely reported in the conventional and alternative press. But it’s easy to forget that the only thing 1MDB’s rationalisation plan has settled is the reduction of its debts. No explanation has been given of the PM’s involvement in the issue of how 1MDB got into its mess in the first place. And the MACC, the agency in charge of getting the answer to the question, has confessed that it can’t reveal it to the public.
People are told that the Chinese are pillaging the country, but the real thieves are shielded by the law and political connections. People are told that differences in opinion are welcome, but either they don’t get a chance to speak or they are arrested for doing so. When there’s a street protest against the government, people are told that freedom of speech is alive, and yet the roads are blocked to deter them from joining in.
The government keeps claiming that it practises democracy; yet it doesn’t listen to the masses. It claims it has the mandate of the people based on the result of the last general election, but it forgets that the people have grown frustrated with the realisation that the leaders they elected in 2013 have not lived up to their promises.
As time passes, the avenues for change get ever narrower.
After all, can the choice between a party whose leadership cannot explain a RM42 billion debt and a party whose leadership thinks child marriages are an answer to statutory rape really be considered a choice? And while the opposition wants to play saviour to the people, it has yet to get its act together or figure out the composition of its coalition.
A change of heart in the current leadership seems unlikely because, while this is a democracy or some form of it, the government doesn’t need the general population’s support.
Not everyone who has a vote matters. The government only needs the support of the winning coalition to stay in power, and if the recent Umno general assembly is anything to go by, the fear-mongering and overt racist overtones has kept the Malay-majority vote intact.
There will be more half-baked and ill-thought policies coming our way as the government tries to alleviate our frustrations and to convince us that our interests are being protected, but change doesn’t seem to be on the horizon.
But since it’s a new year, perhaps it’s best to keep old hopes alive. Life is full of surprises, after all. So this is the hope: enough of the cheap parlour tricks, enough of the smoke and mirrors.