Malaysians are angry at their government. They are rightly so, especially after the recent cut in fuel subsidies that would affect everyone on the street irregardless of race and religion. The government, the economists, and the national oil company Petronas are saying that this is a necessary step to take considering the high cost of maintaining the fuel subsidies. ‘Change your lifestyle’ is again the message sent out by the government to the people.
There is nothing much the people can do with the reality of having to pay steeper fuel prices and facing the spiraling inflation. Some have called for nationwide street demonstrations, mimicking India.
Seeing the sentiment on the ground, there is a huge possibility that such calls would indeed be heeded by the people and the police force has sprung into action to once again to fulfill their primary responsibility - policing the people.
While Malaysians have every right to feel angry at the government, to me, their anger is largely misplaced. Most of them sees it as a failure of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s administration. In my opinion, it is more than that.
It is the two or more decades of economic mismanagement and planning on the part of the Barisan Nasional (BN) government. There was never any accountability in the way the BN government governed the country.
Billions of ringgit has been and is still being lost to scores of failed projects and failed companies that are controlled by the cronies closely linked to the elites in Umno, MCA, and MIC. Conflict of interest was the norm and corruption was the business of the day.
Inappropriate deals were the favorite means of accumulating personal wealth for these elites. And when these deals were exposed, the Official Secret Act (OSA) was invoked to protect certain bank accounts. One example was in 1979 when Lim Kit Siang was jailed under the OSA for exposing an inappropriate arms deal between the government and a Swiss company.
More recently, the OSA has been used to justify the need to conceal the highway toll concession deals. The OSA is so easily and quickly used that essentially any government document can be classified as ‘top secret’.
With the OSA, the government has given itself the power to commit closed-door deals however lopsided they are and the power to lock up anyone who dares to expose these crooked deals. That's how the government throws accountability out of the window.
Malaysians should be angry not just at the spiraling cost of living but more so at how the government runs the country with impunity and without being accountable to anyone. The Malaysian government should be held accountable by its citizens.
The only way to achieve this is to force the parliament to enact a freedom of information act and a whistle blower act while at the same repealing repressive laws like the OSA and the Internal Security Act (ISA).
It is time that the people channel their anger into action by demanding that the government be accountable to the people. Only after the enactment of a freedom of information act and the repeal of the OSA will the people of Malaysia have the legal means to demand that the government reveal Petronas’ accounts, the toll concessions deals and how many APs have been awarded to ministers’ and their relatives for free.
A freedom of information act may not be the cure-all magic medicine for Malaysia’s ills but it is definitely the first step for Malaysia to have a competent, accountable and transparent government.
