The challenge of Pakatan Harapan is to convince all voters that the victims of the RM50 billion 1MDB scandal are the 30 million Malaysians as corruption is not a victimless crime.
In normal crimes like theft, robbery or murder, it is easy to know the victims but corruption seems to be a remote and distant matter of little or no concern to the public, especially as there appears to be no victims.
This is however the greatest fallacy of all – that corruption is a victimless crime.
It is not an easy or straightforward matter to convey the message to the ordinary rakyat that they are in fact the victims of mega scandals or major corruptions like the 1MDB scandal, which has catapulted Malaysia to the global league as one of world’s leading corrupt nations in the past few years.
This is why Malaysia occupies the top three places in recent international rankings on global corruption, whether the third place in international website, foreignpolicy.com on the world’s “worst corruption scandal in 2015”, TIME magazine’s ranking of “global corruption” or the Economist’s second placing in its second index of crony capitalism.
It is an indictment of the role, responsibility and relevance of the three branches of government, viz the Executive, Parliament and the Judiciary (as well as the Fourth Estate with regard to the printed media) that they have allowed Malaysia to attain such international infamy and disrepute as a global corrupt nation in a matter of a few years without any attempt to salvage the nation’s good name and reputation.
Even now, while the whole world is agog at the depth of deceit and the immensity of the nation’s first global financial scandal – the RM50 billion 1MDB scandal – all the national institutions in Malaysia are engaged in a great pretence and charade that the 1MDB scandal does not exist at all.
The only way to burst this balloon of pretence and charade is for Malaysians to realise and understand that the RM50 billion 1MDB scandal is not a victimless crime, and that the 30 million Malaysians and future generations are the victims of this financial scandal as eventually the Malaysian government will have bear full responsibility for the 1MDB debts.
Parliament is meeting on Monday for two weeks. Will Parliament help to impress on Malaysians that the victims of the RM50 billion 1MDB scandal are the 30 million Malaysians and future generations or will Parliament continue to be a party to the greatest public charade of all times in Malaysia that corruption is a victimless crime?
(Speech at the “Pantang Undur – Berani kerana Benar” ceramah at Sungai Tong, Setiu on Friday, 13th May 2016 at 5 pm)