Are the kleptocratic UMNO leaders the worst enemies of the Malays and the nation in the challenges for Malays and Malaysia to compete with the rest of the world?

Yesterday, I asked Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah whether he agrees that Malaysia needs a new national consensus to return Malaysia to the road of a world-class great nation and save it from the fate and ignominy of a kleptocracy, kakistocracy and a failed state.

Are the kleptocratic UMNO leaders the worst enemies of the Malays and the nation in the challenges for Malays and Malaysia to compete with the rest of the world?

In 1957, Bapa Malaysia envisioned the country to be “a beacon of light in a difficult and troubled world”.

In 1970, the Rukun Negara was promulgated as five nation-building principles to create an united people from a multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-religious and multi-cultural nation.

In 1991, the Vision 2020 was conceived to make Malaysia a “fully developed country” by the year 2020 - economically, politically, socially, spiritually, psychologically and culturally - creating a Bangsa Malaysia out of the diverse people in the nation with a strong sense of unity and common purpose.

All these three visions of Malaysia as a world-class great nation failed.

Are we prepared to conduct a post-mortem to answer why all these three visions failed?

We have in the Cabinet today Ministers who rejected these visions of making Malaysia a world-class great nation, leveraging on Malaysia’s unique position as a confluence of four great civilisations – Islamic, Chinese, Indian and Western – to create a new and better Malaysian civilisation.

A few days ago, the Barisan Nasional secretary-general Annuar Musa warned that the ruling coalition must remain united or lose out to “pro-liberal, pro-socialist” Pakatan Harapan (PH) in the “mother of all GÉs” – the 15th General Election.

He claimed that the “pro-liberal and pro-socialist” PH administration’s attempt to regain control was fuelled by its failure to ratify treaties such as the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and the Rome Statute.

Annuar cannot be unaware that the person who tried to ratify ICERD and the Rome Statute during the PH administration is now in the Muhyiddin Cabinet as the Minister for Communications and Multimedia, Saifuddin Abdullah.

Why is Annuar Musa continue to perpetrate a lie?

Will Saifuddin come clean to admit for instanced that the 2018 ICERD fiasco was solely his own making when he was Foreign Minister in Pakatan Harapan Government, when he first talked about “a deep state” in the Malaysian Government, when the DAP knew nothing about the proposed ICERD ratification although DAP was the target of demonization for being anti-Malay, anti-Islam and anti-Royalty over the ICERD issue?

I was in China on a visit when the ICERD fiasco first blew up at the end of 2018.

On 19th November, the then Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad said that the ratification of ICERD would entail an amendment to the Federal Constitution which was “an impossible thing to do” without two-thirds parliamentary majority.

On 24th November 2018, in a speech at the Malaysian Association of Jiansu Annual Gala Dinner in Souchou, China, I said that no Malaysian would want Malaysia to ratify ICERD at the price of another May 13 racial riots in the country as there was no doubt that there were irresponsible elements who were seeking to incite and escalate racial and religious distrust, animosity and hatred to engender the conditions to replicate another May 13 racial riots in Malaysia.

I stressed that ICERD was not against the Malaysian Constitution, anti-Malay, anti-Islam and anti-Malay Rulers as 99 per cent of the 1.9 billion Muslims in the world live in countries which have ratified ICERD and that 55 of the 57 nations in the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) have ratified ICERD, except for Malaysia and Brunei.

Furthermore, 36 out of 38 countries which have monarchical system have ratified ICERD and that there is absolutely no indications that the ratification of ICERD by these countries dating as far back as 1970 had undermined the monarchical system in these countries as to lead to their abolition.

But I agree that Malaysia should not ratify ICERD until the ground is prepared to convince the Malaysian population that ICERD is not anti-Malay, anti-Islam and anti-Malay Rulers.

The ICERD fiasco was in fact the best example where the New Malaysia vision of the Pakatan Harapan government was sabotaged by lies, falsehoods and fake news to demonise the Pakatan Harapan government as anti-Malay, anti-Islam and anti-Malay Rulers because it was allegedly dominated by the DAP.

The kleptocratic UMNO leaders behind this demonization campaign are the worst enemies of the Malays and the nation, as they distracted the Malays and the nation from the real problems in the country – and among them, corruption, abuse of power, kleptocracy and hypocrisy.

Dr. Mohamed Rafick Khan recently wrote on the Tabung Haji controversy and he said:

“When Pakatan Harapan (PH) took over in 5/2018, a group of professionals was assigned to look at Tabung Haji (TH) books. It was a mess. TH was run by Malay Muslims. There was no ‘CINA DAP’ in the board or the management. There were only Malays who called themselves Muslims that squandered TH and brought it to the ground. The good guys failed to stand up to the bad guys and make public the management's wrongdoing. Hence they are also accountable.

“It was saddled with so much accumulated debt and despite that, with creative accounting, good steady dividends were issued. Against good governance and accounting principles, TH continued to issue dividends to ensure that Malays will continue to support the government. The PH government has NO CHOICE but to rescue TH as it is a Government Guaranteed Statutory body.

“It was Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng’s effort to turn around TH. Yes, a ‘Chinaman i.e. a DAP Chinaman’ looking out for the interest of the Malay Muslims. He took all the bad business (Valued at RM9.63billion) out of the books and transfer them to a MOF SPV name Urusharta Jemaah Harta (UJH) at the end of 2018 and UJH assumed all TH debt (RM27.56 billion).

“Deputy Minister of Finance II, Mohd Shahar Abdullah (BN) said that UJH has declared for FY2019 a gross income of RM234 million (Dec 2018-Dec 2019) and a net loss of RM9.95 billion. As part of the takeover, MOF will inject a total of RM17.8 billion in TH through UJH over 10 years to ensure that TH can continue to function. (As announced in parliament.)

“This is the state of the financial health of TH and yet many Malays are so ignorant of the corruption and politicking surrounding TH and continue with the ‘not my problem attitude’. Instead of being grateful for the effort of government and the Cina DAP in helping TH, the politicking Malays attacked PH and LGE for selling all the assets and played the Malay and Islamic sentiment. How gullible and stupid are we?”

As Dr. Rafick concluded:

“The Malays should play a greater role by demanding an explanation and force TH management and board to be more accountable. The members should demand detailed annual reports and question those managers and board members of their role and integrity.

“This country is down because of the corrupt Malay political leaders who have no integrity but portray a pious image. Don’t blame the DAP or the Chinese. It is the Malay leaders who are making life harder for the population (who are significantly Malays in the B40 group). As Malays, we need to wake up to save the country and our children.”

The question all Malaysians should ask is whether UMNO can return to its founding decades when UMNO Presidents were known for their unquestioned integrity and honesty?

Lim Kit Siang MP for Iskandar Puteri