In the recent twist of event, the most unexpected happens.
Malaysia, of all countries, is involved in the network of trading that helps the proliferation of nuclear related resources to Libya. The revelation was done by Pakistan’s nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Though the government seems to have no whatsoever role in the trade, a Malaysian engineering company has been singled out as the liable entity. According to today New York Times’ dead tree edition, one of the shareholders of the company is the son of Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi while the chairman is a former secretary general of Malaysian international trade ministry.
To see such an important device to slip though the hand of the Big Brother could only means three things – they are incompetent, they secretly endorse such action or we are seeing encapsulation at work.
Though I am tempted to say that the Malaysian government is incompetent (as in most cases), I don’t believe it is a reasonable deduction. Saying the government of being incompetent is probably underestimating the far reaching hand of a conservative-styled government.
More interestingly, in some of part of the article in the NYT, the author made an interesting point:
Malaysia was an unwitting participant in all this,” an official in the prime minister’s office said. But with the tight control that the Malaysian government has traditionally exercised, many Malaysians and foreign diplomats doubt that a sale of this nature would have been possible without the knowledge of at least some senior government officials, probably in the military
To say the government secretly endorsed the activity is a serious allegation. One needs more proof than merely presenting the fact that Malaysia “has traditionally exercised” tight control.
Yet, the allegation holds water. Malaysia has a conservative political medium. Every information receives by the public possibly goes through the information ministry. At the same time, it has a strong law against subversion like the Internal Security Act and the Official Secret Act.
It is hard to accept or reject, due to information asymmetry. We simply don’t know enough about it and I would imagine if it is true, the concerned party or parties would try very hard to cover it up. Thus, only time will tell.
The most innocent possibility is the prospect of it being simply as an encapsulation problem. Encapsulation is one of the basic philosophies in programming. The idea is, the user doesn’t have to know what is going on in the program. the opposite is also true- as long as the program works, it’s not the programmer’s problem to find out whether the user will use the program for legal or illegal purpose.
In fact, the Scomi Group is asserting the same idea. They have issued a statement saying that it wasn’t told by the buyer on the purpose of the purchase. I would go as far as saying that they didn’t care.
Applying the same idea, the government also doesn’t care as long as the Scomi Group pays their tax. Maybe now they wish they had cared.
So, which one is true? I don’t know about you but I’m betting my head on the last one.