By Mariam Mokhtar
Malaysiakini
Oct 6, 2014

My fellow Malaysians and I have saved the Malaysian government, Najib Abdul Razak and the nation hundreds of millions of ringgits. We provided free consultation services to spruce-up Najib’s image, rebuild trust in public institutions and foster good community race relations; but the ungrateful Najib hates local talent and sent the police after us.

That is why Domestic Trade, Cooperative and Consumerism Minister Hasan Malek is wrong when he said that our culture was to “respect our leaders, respect the nation and be grateful”.

Hasan’s attempt to pull more wool over our eyes, has failed. People who “respect” leaders who steal and spin lies, are devoid of any self-respect.

We are hypocrites if we respect a person who tells an international audience that he is a moderate, but allows extremists to roam scot-free. Respecting a leader who robs you is a sign that you lack integrity. No one should be “grateful” to the people who take our money to enrich themselves. Their only reward should be a jail term, courtesy of the Malaysian rakyat.

Few of us would dare take liberties and use public facilities, government property and taxpayers’ money, to go on overseas holidays to the French Riviera, a fishing trip in the Bahamas, attend an engagement party, fund our children’s wedding, or buy several luxury condominiums for our pet cows.

Hasan praised his ministry’s ‘Ops Titik’ and ‘Ops Harga’ which he claimed had “achieved a lot” and “saved millions of ringgits”. If only he recognised a bargain when he saw one.

My free consultations to Najib have fallen foul of the authorities, despite saving the nation a small fortune. Najib dismissed my good intentions and probably thinks I am not good enough. Instead, he opted for Apco. My Malay friends said, “Najib suka glamour. ‘Made in Malaysia’ doesn’t sound as good as ‘Made in Amrika’”.

In 2011, Najib told Parliament that Apco’s fees amounted to RM77 million. He omitted to say that that amount was allegedly for the first year. When Apco’s contract was renewed, the service probably cost hundreds of millions of ringgits.

I have been conscientious about my responsibilities and did not employ eye-catching tactics, like jumping ship from one party to another, to strike a good deal.

Hasan needs a reality check. He claimed that under ‘Ops Harga’, a Myanmar national was jailed for six months for hoarding and profiteering. What about the elephant in the room called Umno Baru? Their subtle tactic, code-named BR1M, uses taxpayers’ money to fund payments to the poor. BR1M is just a vote-buying tactic.

Similarly, the smartphones and book voucher programmes force recipients to dish out more of their own money to obtain the said phones or books. These are government-backed scams. The only winners are government cronies.

Malaysia’s master profiteer

Will Hasan dare admonish former PM Mahathir Mohamad for his role in hoarding tin in the early 1980s, in what is known as the Maminco Affair? If profiteering was a business, Mahathir has the franchise rights and is Malaysia’s master profiteer.

Current Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein needs to be reminded of the humiliation Mahathir heaped upon his father Hussein Onn, in the aftermath of the Maminco scandal, which ruined the economy of Perak and turned Ipoh into a ghost town.

Hasan warned us not to be “cowards” like Alvin Tan who “fled Malaysia” after committing “those immoral things”.

Under Umno Baru, sex videos became political propaganda. Umno Baru denied justice for the Penan women who were raped by loggers. The murder of a Mongolian model, the mysterious death of a political aide, and all the deaths caused by people falling out of police stations or Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) office windows, are unresolved. Aren’t these immoral tactics, a sign of cowardice?

Najib disappears whenever the country faces a crisis or national security breach. The PM is too timid to confront Malays who use religious provocation, to threaten the peace of the country.

Thugs daub the offices of opposition MPs with chicken blood as a warning. Muslim girls are attacked for joining an opposition party and described as being “worse than prostitutes”. Who ordered the police to hound journalists, academics, students, NGOs and opposition MPs? Who are the real cowards?

If ordinary Malaysians were as committed, passionate and level-headed as 17-year-old Joshua Wong, the public face of the Hong Kong protests, Najib and Hasan wouldn’t stand a chance. Unfortunately, our level of participation is measured by the click of the ‘like’ button on social sharing sites.

We criticise the government and its many institutions because of genuine concern. We do not provoke because we are hiding an ulterior motive, like a former PM whose barbs are designed to divide the country.

We are not afraid of speaking out, even though cowards like Najib, his home minister and the inspector-general of police (IGP), use the sedition sweep to try to silence dissent. For these cowards, the end justifies the means. The end game is to keep themselves in power.

Remember also that the sedition crackdown serves as a distraction from the mismanagement of the economy and mishandling of the country’s security. The crackdown distracts us from the nation’s serious problems, including the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the increase in cost of basic goods, high-level corruption and violent crime. Fear is used by insecure people. Why should we respect bullies?

MARIAM MOKHTAR is a defender of the truth, the admiral-general of the Green Bean Army and president of the Perak Liberation Organisation (PLO).