In 1979, at the UMNO General Assembly, the then Prime Minister , Hussein Onn warned that Malaysia will be destroyed if its leaders are “dishonest, untrustworthy and corrupt” and expressed the hope that the Bank Rakyat scandal would be a “bitter lesson to other government institutions and agencies including companies and subsidiaries set up by the Government”.

However, Hussein Onn’s warning 43 years ago that Malaysia will be ”destroyed if the leaders are dishonest, untrustworthy and corrupt” fell on deaf ears and will be proven true before Malaysia’s Centennial if there is no reset of Malaysia nation-building policies and principles to get out the present trajectory of kleptocracy.

Four things reminded me of Hussein Onn’s warning 43 years ago.

First, I went to Bukit Aman yesterday because the police wanted a statement from me over my media statement last month warning Malaysians that Malaysia should not become another Sri Lanka of becoming a failed state and where the houses of the Prime Minister and Ministers of Sri Lanka were set on fire by angry protestors?

I said “This is not going to happen today, this month or this year” but asked:

“Will it happen before Malaysia marks its Centennial in 2057 or 2063? Are we following in the footsteps of Sri Lanka, at one time a ‘jewel’ in terms of development prospects in South Asia?”

I had not incited anyone, any class or community of persons nor had I any intent to incite anyone, any class or community of persons. I had also not created or initiated any transmission which was ‘obscene, indecent, false, menacing or offensive in character with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass another person’, but I am prepared to go to jail for warning Malaysians not to become another Sri Lanka.

Secondly, Malaysia has lost it way in nation-building after 65 years, failed to become a Tiger economy or a world-class great nation.

We have increased our national per capita income by 30-fold from 1970 to the present day but we have increase by more than 63,000-fold the corruption and financial scandals in this period, as illustrated RM100 million Bank Rakyat scandal in 1979, the RM2.5 billion Bumiputra Malaysia Finance (BMF) scandal in 1983 and the RM42 billion 1MDB scandal in the last decade.

In the past half-a-century, Malaysia lost out to Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam.

Will we lose out China and Indonesia before the end of this decade in the annual Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index (CPI)?

Will we lose out to more countries in economic development, even to Indonesia and the Philippines, come 2,040 or 2,050?

Thirdly, the recent memoirs of corporate lawyer Chooi Mun Sou, one of the three men appointed to the Ahmad Nordin Bumputra Malaysia Finance (BMF) Inquiry Committee in 1984, whose book “Malaysia My Home – Quo Vadis” reminded me that Malaysia may be spared the mega multi-billion 1MDB scandal and the infamy, ignominy and iniquity of “kleptocracy at its worst” if the recommendations of the Ahmad Nordin Committee had been acted upon by the government in 1986.

Fourthly, the indecent increase of the allowance of the Chairman of FGV Holdings Bhd to RM480,000 from RM300,000 and the allowances of the directors to RM150,000 from RM120,000 as compared to the meagre cash transfer announced by Putrajaya for people struggling with rising cost of food.

Hussein Onn’s 1979 warning to the UMNO General Assembly of “dishonest, untrustworthy and corrupt” leaders not only in government but in “other government institutions and agencies including companies and subsidiaries set up by the Government” come to mind.

I am not an UMNO member but how many UMNO leaders and members remember Hussein Onn’s warning or live by it?

In fact, we can even ask, is there a Hussein Onn in UMNO today?

I said in Parliament in 1979 during the debate on the Bank Rakyat scandal that if the New Economic Policy objectives of eliminating poverty regardless of race and the restructuring society were to succeed, the saboteurs of NEP in the public enterprises and companies must be got rid of.

The NEP is supposed to have life span of 20 years from 1970-1990. Who sabotaged NEP and ensured its failure as the overwhelming majority of the Malays remain poor?

Where have Malaysia nation-building gone wrong?

Probably, the greatest wrong was it continuing the corruption, abuses of power and breaches of trust in the NEP in 1990 instead of replacing it by a needs-based policy declaring a war against poverty regardless of race, religion or region.

Where has Malaysian nation-building gone wrong?

This is a question all Malaysians who love the country must ask and find an answer.

(Speech by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang at Ipoh Barat constituency’s “Malaysian Dream Continues” Dialogue at Guntong, Ipoh on Saturday, June 25, 2022 at 12 noon)

(Versi BM)

Reading lawyer Chooi Mun Sou’s memoirs, “ Malaysia My Home – Quo Vadis”, I was most touched by the unfinished letter written by Jalil Ibrahim to his wife and children before he was murdered in the Regent Hotel, Hong Kong on July 18, 1983:

“The problems in Hong Kong are not my making and from today onwards I am going to think of myself and my family first and put the interests of the Bank, the race and the country behind me. If those directors had thought of the interests of the Bank, the race and the country first they would’nt have made all those blunders in the first place. I have sacrificed enough and suffered enough for their blunders…”
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(Versi BM)

Yesterday, a news item reinforced the thought that it is not only UMNO, but also MCA and MIC which are behind the “Apa Malunya BOSSku” campaign to revive kleptocracy and plot the return of Najib Razak as Prime Minister of Malaysia.

It is something which the first four UMNO Presidents, Onn Jaffar, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Razak Hussein and Hussein Onn in the first 35 years of UMNO’s life; the first four MCA Presidents, Tan Cheng Lock, Lim Chong Eu, Tan Siew Sin and Lee San Choon in the first 35 years of MCA’s life; and the first six Presidents of MIC including Devasar, Sambanthan and Manickavasagam in the first three decades of MIC life, would not have done, approved or countenanced. Read the rest of this entry »