Tag: trust deficit

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Politics & government Society

[2893] We are too eager fighting our culture war

There are hard positions in our society. It is the product of years of abuse and mistrust, and it will not go away anytime soon. One small issue that rekindles our prejudice in the smallest of ways would ignite a culture war sucking almost everybody in the most unproductive manner.

Some culture wars are worth the fight. Our society does need a can opener to open up its canned mind, especially so when too many of us are so coddled inside our small world to the point that wrongs go unchecked and eventually become a right. It has become so bad that many are beginning to be scared of doing the right thing, just because such action would hurt the feeling of immature persons on the internet armed with incomplete or even downright inaccurate information. Explicitly racist behavior should be called out. Some things just have to be done lest we slide to an equilibrium that is so unbearable that migration would be the only way out.

But a lot of the culture wars we are fighting today are unnecessary.

One example is the teaching of Malay calligraphy-Jawi in school. The Jawi controversy besetting us recently reveals what we have known for the longest time: we live in a sensitive society – sensitive is only a euphemism that would not take much to decipher. We do not need such controversy to tell us that. The whole episode came to surface through an oversight within the government. The course was set several years back. Too few people noticed it that it developed its own procedural momentum that in the end forced all of us into a situation where no one could paddle back, without incurring significant political cost.

This reminds me of a scene from the movie War Game where the artificial intelligence holding the trigger to a nuclear holocaust, after going through all simulations, concluded that the only way to win is not to play the game.

Too bad that we have no time machine to use, no restore point to return. To abuse slightly the meaning of the Malay idiom, terlajak perahu boleh diundur, terlajak kata buruk padahnya.

Another example is the conversion bill in Selangor. We know religion and child conversion are subjects our overall society unable to deal with coolly. So, we all should approach it with care. Yet, the Selangor state government thought pushing the controversial bill through was the wisest course of action. Not only that, once we were given the chance to pull the brake halting our vehicle resting dangerously close by the cliff, the state government instead insisted on playing the game that nobody would win. Has it got this bad that the game has to be played anyway?

Our society is damaged and this is not the most incisive observation of the day. The last election gives all of us a chance to repair it, and be better. This government is reforming our institutions that for so long abused have been for personal gains. The trust deficit is still there. That is a huge barrier to fight.

I truly believe for Malaysia to get to the next level of development, we need to improve our institutions. We do not need more big malls, more tall buildings.

And those institutions are not merely government institutions like the parliament, the police, the judiciary and anything of the like. It is also about our social capital, that is trust among ourselves.

Culture wars, especially the unnecessary and avoidable ones, do not build trust. Instead, it erodes it and makes bridge-building harder.

Yet, we all are too eager to fight it. And to one-up the others online (adversaries who we likely have never met in real life, or even human bots), we type the harshest words and switch on our scorched earth mode to burn everything that moves.

And god, there are so many other things to do. Yet, here we are with our culture. All heat, no light.

Categories
Politics & government

[2785] 1MDB, The Edge, two wrongs, institutional failure and the transfer of responsibility

It took some time to push the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal into the open. Now that it is firmly in the spotlight, I see some are troubled by a case of two wrongs making a right.

What are the two wrongs? One is the 1MDB scandal and another is how some info was obtained.

Here is some background for the uninitiated. A huge chunk of stuff we know about the scandal originates from stolen information. This is not to say everything we know came from stolen material. A large portion comes from 1MDB’s own sloppily published annual accounts that by itself raise questions. It is these questions that lead us here today.

A former employee of PetroSaudi International (PSI was 1MDB’s partner in a failed and suspicious deal) stole vast amount of data from his employer, which eventually ended up in the hands of several third parties. One of them is the Malaysian financial newspaper The Edge. Because the newspaper bought the info (or rather, tricked the former PSI employee into giving them the data) and used it to expose 1MDB, critics of the newspaper raised a red flag and said, “hey, hang on. two wrongs do not make a right.”

They are saying The Edge should not have obtained the data. And now that it has, The Edge is in the wrong. They claim there is a logical moral conundrum here.

I am firmly in the opinion there is no moral conundrum at all. If there is, then it exists only in isolation with incredible disregard for the context we live in: that context is the environment of pervasive institutional failure.

The institutions that were responsible to keep our government honest failed to do their job. The watchmen were not just sleeping, they ignored the signs, the warnings and the whistleblowers. They failed not because they were merely incompetent. They chose to fail. Truly, when the preliminary questions were asked several years ago before the leaks happened, the government simply dismissed the concerns with a nonchalant hand wave. When they could no longer ignore the scandal, they went for the whistleblowers.

The Edge did the investigation into 1MDB. What did the police do in the meantime? Why was it possible for The Edge to get to the documents but not the police? The authority lacked the necessary curiosity to do their job. Why?

I strongly feel the official investigation only began because of the leaks. Without the leak, the reasonably question to ask is, would there have been any investigation? I believe the answer is no. It is also arguable that the investigation started only out of political pressure and the need to be seen to do something. It is not out of their sense of responsibility. Those institutions failed and responsibility be damned.

The 1MDB scandal is not the first time our institutions are seen as biased in enforcing the law without fear or favor. How many times have the police been accused of selective prosecutions? There are enough instances to create widespread trust deficit in our society. In the 1MDB case, so far, the accused who are in power are being protected.

The check and balance mechanism is not working properly and the controversy (a minor appendix to the 1MDB scandal) surrounding The Edge demonstrates exactly the institutional failure.

Running parallel to the institutional failure is the function of the fourth estate, which is to keep the public informed. The creation of an informed citizenry is a form of check and balance. The function of the press is not merely trying to sell papers. Because some in the press have done their job, the press is possibly our last hope to right any wrong. And that what The Edge, the Sarawak Report and others have done: their responsibility.

The institutional failure of our government means the authority has transferred fully their responsibility to The Edge (and others as well).

Here is another related factor to consider. If the police had done their job and obtained the info either through polite request or by force, would the supposed dilemma arise?

Now, take the institutional failure and the implicit transfer of responsibility from the authority to the press. Once that is done, is there any more dilemma?

Categories
Politics & government

[2783] Public officials do not deserve privacy

Privacy very is important to me. It is important not just in the practical sense but also as a matter of principle with the context that I am a libertarian. Even in the internet age when doxing and hacking are almost normal and easily done, surveillance and privacy breaches are still a concern.

Now, the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal involves a lot of violations of individual privacy. Details of individuals’ bank accounts have been leaked out. Yet, I do not take it as violation in the libertarian sense.

Does this mean I am applying double standard in this case?

No.

So, why does the privacy for these individuals weigh less than that of others’?

These individuals — public official and their close relatives — do not deserve the typical privacy protection granted to the common men and women because they are in power. They are public officials. The higher up they are on the echelon of power, the less protection they deserve and the greater scrutiny the they should come under.

If they were accorded the same protection, it would create great opportunity for corruption and makes it harder to detect actual cases of corruption. For a clean government to exist, power must always survive skepticism. And so too for men and women holding public offices.

In fact, it should be the practice for public officials to declare their income and wealth to the public in the first place to reduce the opportunity for corruption. That very practice refuses them the right to privacy as far as income and wealth are concerned.

But in Malaysia, we do not have that declaration system and the public cannot access existing incomplete, inadequate asset declaration records. And this doubly means that these individuals of power do not deserve privacy that they are demanding.

Truly, leaks targeting 1MDB and others in power are now the only means for the public to ascertain the various allegations of corruption. These allegations are no more about sensationalist tabloid gossips. They are a matter of state administration and corruption.

Worse, sadly, the leaks have more credibility than most Malaysian institutions. I hold that it is these leaks that are forcing our institutions to investigate 1MDB finally. Without the leaks, these institutions compromised as they are, would have done nothing. The leakers, whoever they are, are providing public service.

This leads to another point. Our institutions suffer from trust deficit. Years of abuse by the government have robbed our institutions from the neutrality and the credibility they need to do their job.

And on top that, there is also conflict of interest just by the way our institutions are designed. In the case of 1MDB specifically, the attorney general who is leading the investigation suffers from conflict of interest. The AG office is both the public prosecutor and the legal counsel for the government. Since the AG office itself is under the Prime Minister’s Department, I fear the political reality means the AG will act more of a legal counsel to the government than as a reliable public prosecutor.

If the lack of very public asset declaration practice, trust deficit and conflict of interest has yet to convince you why individuals of power (public officials and their close relatives) do not deserve the typical privacy protection, then perhaps the awkwardness of them using the privacy laws to prosecute the leakers and prevent the public from finding out if there is indeed has been any wrongdoing.

At the very least, there is a very strong suspicion of abuse in 1MDB, a government-linked company. Any individual benefiting from the abuse deserves no privacy protection. They, instead of the leakers, should face the full force of the law instead.