We are now in the last week of the year 2016.

Its time for reflection and introspection – not so much as to what went right but what went wrong in our nation as 2016 is an even worse annus horribilis for Malaysia than 2015.

A year ago, the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak in his 2016 New Year message, told Malaysians that his RM50 billion 1MDB and RM2.6 billion donation twin mega scandals had been resolved and were no more issues.

Najib could not be more wrong as Malaysia’s international repute and standing suffered an even worse battering this year with the ferocious pounding of the twin mega scandals in the international marketplace of opinion, to the extent that Malaysians felt embarrassed in admitting that they were Malaysians when abroad.

Malaysia was cited for the third “worst corruption scandal of 2015” by international website foreignpolicy.com in the last week of last year, but we went on to accumulate more dishonours this year – like TIME magazine’s ranking in March as second worst example of global corruption, Economist’s ranking in May as second in its index of crony capitalism and in July, the US Department of Justice (DOJ)’s largest kleptocratic lawsuits to forfeit US$1 billion of 1MDB-linked assets in the United States, United Kingdom and Switzerland from US3.5 billion international 1MDB kleptocratic embezzlement and money-laundering scandal.

These were not the only woes for the country for this year – as the country is going through th worst crisis of confidence as evidenced by the worst plummeting in the value of the Malaysian ringgit and the worst racial and religious polarisation in the nation’s history.

What went wrong and how can we put the country right again, so that Malaysians can hold their heads high, whether at home or abroad? Read the rest of this entry »