Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 1 June 2015 issue)

Dear Kam,
Where did these Rohingya come from? What’s going on?
Boatman

I’ve been away on holiday for two weeks and in that short space of time the avalanche of Malaysian news stories has continued. It never seems to end. Let’s see if I can remember them all. 1MDB continues being a truly remarkable disaster and MAS has announced it will soon begin a dramatic restructuring by sacking a third of its 20,000 workforce. And then there has been the harrowing human crisis of the Rohingya refugees and the awful discovery of secret camps and mass graves in the jungles of Perlis, with the bodies of 139 migrants already counted. How much of a “secret” were these camps? Did nobody know they were there?

The tragedy of the Rohingya has been brewing for a long time. They are being persecuted in their own homeland of Myanmar where the authorities won’t even accept them as legitimate citizens. Unless the Myanmar government changes that policy (not very likely), the Rohingya exodus will only get larger and larger over years and years. Malaysia must come up with a strategy and beating the boats back into the middle of the sea is not a workable solution. That would be mass murder. Obviously, we don’t want to become swamped by migrants, but at the same time, how we deal with the Rohingya tragedy will define what we are as a nation, as a people. Are we a compassionate people? We need to decide because the world is watching.

Dear Kam,
I really don’t see what all the fuss is about with 1MDB. I bet they’ve done a really terrific job. And I really don’t see why I need to wear this straitjacket anymore. I’ve been taking my medication and writing my dream journal. I’m feeling much better now.
Honest.
Hallucinating

It is possible that 1MDB is actually a staggering success and not a financial disaster. It is possible that 1MDB has made billions for Malaysia. Not necessarily billions in cash but perhaps in the much more valuable “units”. It is possible that there is a perfectly reasonable explanation and all the doomsayers will be proven wrong. There was a time when I was really broke and I found RM100 in an old jacket. So anything is possible.

But for now, 1MDB lurches on like an extremely expensive zombie, with nobody able to give it the final shot to the head. It feels like the end must come very soon, any day now, and yet each week it manages to lurch on. There is simply no denying that 1MDB is a major problem with information and accounts not being made available. Both the present and former CEOs of 1MDB recently failed to appear before the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee. Did they give reasons why they couldn’t make it? Well, maybe they both entered a tunnel at that moment. If PAC wants to see you then there is simply no excuse for not turning up.

It feels like it will happen any day now but it will probably be several more months before the issue comes to a conclusion. And yet there is an easy solution, one that is built into our system of government. There is always the possibility of an embarrassing scandal in government. Obviously not in the Malaysian government because, well, that’s just not possible. The Malaysian government is like Taylor Swift – absolutely perfect. But other governments in other countries are not perfect. They’re more like Miley Cyrus. Countries with a parliamentary system have found that having separate ministries with their own ministers is a good way to limit the fallout of a scandal. So if the country were facing the possibility of a major financial calamity then ultimate responsibility would rest with whomsoever is the prime minister. But a PM could perhaps escape trouble by saying that he was kept in the dark by the Ministry of Finance and the PM could subtly point the finger of blame at the finance minister. The finance minister should really know what’s going on, but he could conceivably say that he too has been kept in the dark and he could blame (in Malaysia’s case) 1MDB and the, let’s say, chairman of its Advisory Board who has, as the title suggests, been advising them. And then the buck, as they say, could stop there. If everybody pushes all responsibility towards (in Malaysia’s case) 1MDB then the government doesn’t lose too much of its reputation or even fall, and nobody significant gets the blame. Three separate entities with watertight bulkheads in between so the ship doesn’t sink. Unless they’re all the same person, but who would do a silly thing like that?

But if a scandal were ever to happen then we would face a uniquely Malaysian problem. Somebody would have to resign or be sacked. And unfortunately, it simply is not possible for an important Malaysian middle-aged man to resign or be sacked. What a lot of people don’t realise is that if an important Malaysian middle-aged man is forced to resign or is sacked, then his head would quite literally explode. And not only would his head explode but the explosion would lead to the complete destruction of everything within a 15-mile radius, and then that land would become uninhabitable for 1,000 years. At least I’m assuming that’s the reasoning because I’ve never seen an important Malaysian middle-aged man resign or be sacked because of a scandal.

Dear Kam,
I must be imagining things but there are obvious scandals going on, so obvious that I can see them, and yet nobody high-up seems to see them. Am I going mad?
Madhatter

There’s a funny scene in the movie Casablanca where the Chief of Police has to come up with an excuse to shut down the popular Rick’s Bar. He blows his whistle and tells everybody to leave. His old friend Rick (Humphrey Bogart) is understandably angry and demands to know the charge.

Chief of Police: “I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!”

Waiter: “Your winnings, Monsieur.”

Chief of Police: “Thank you very much. Everybody out!”

I have a feeling that we’ll be hearing a lot of this sort of thing in Malaysia fairly soon. A lot of people will suddenly be shocked, shocked!

Reprinted with the kind permission of