The Johore state general election is about whether Malaysia can do a national turnaround to stop the decline of last half-a-century and start the arduous task to become a world-class great nation by Malaysia’s Centennial in 2063
I was born, bred and schooled in Batu Pahat, Johore although in my political demonization, I was accused of being China-born and swam to Malaysia when I was 18 years old.
After secondary schooling in Batu Pahat, I worked in Singapore as a journalist for nearly five years.
I was never involved in any form of politics in Singapore although I was elected Secretary-General of the Singapore National Union of Journalists.
But throughout my stay and work in Singapore, I never felt at home in Singapore as I wanted to be back in Malaya.
I believe these are the same feelings of the 200,000 Johore voters in Singapore, who are in Singapore working for better pay but have not been fully Singaporeanised and feel that they are more Malaysians and Singaporeans.
We admire Singapore for its successes as a world-class great nation but it has its flaws.
We also believe that Malaysia can become a world-class great nation but in different ways although Singapore’s success is a tribute to the talents of Malaysia for Singapore is what it is today also because of the contributions of Malaysians.
Malaysians want to be proud as Malaysians just as Singaporeans are proud to be Singaporeans.
At the present, many things prevent Malaysians from being proud as Malaysians.
Lets take a look at what is currently happening in New York and Johor Baru.
In New York, the trial over the multi-billion-dollar looting of a Malaysian government fund, the 1MDB fund, has started and is expected to last for six weeks.
Roger Ng, Goldman Sach’s former head of investment banking in Malaysia, is charged with conspiring to launder money and violating anti-bribery law in his dealings with Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund.
The trial is renewing scrutiny of Goldman’s role in the international scandal that led to a 12-year jail sentence for Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak.
“The defendant saw an opportunity to make millions of dollars by cheating, and he took it,” Brent Wible, a lawyer with the US Department of Justice, said in an opening statement.
Ng has pleaded not guilty and his lawyer has said he is a “fall guy” for one of the biggest financial scandals in Wall Street history.
The scandal stems from some US$6.5 billion in bonds that Goldman helped 1MDB, launched by Najib to spur economic growth, sell from 2009 to 2014.
US prosecutors say Goldman earned US$600 million in fees from the deals, but that about US$4.5 billion of the funds raised was embezzled.
The bank in 2020 paid a US$2.3 billion fine, returned US$600 million in ill-gotten gains, and agreed for its Malaysian subsidiary to plead guilty in US court as part of a deal, known as a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA).
Wible said Ng helped two co-conspirators – his former boss, Timothy Leissner, and a Malaysian intermediary, Jho Low – launder funds embezzled from 1MDB and used some of the stolen money to bribe officials in the south-east Asian country to win business for Goldman.
Ng received US$35 million in kickbacks from Leissner, Wible said.
Defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo countered that Ng had no role in the scheme perpetrated by Low and Leissner and that he even warned Goldman management not to trust Low.
What is important to Malaysians is that the 1MDB scandal, which the then United States Attorney-General Jeff Sessions had termed as “kleptocracy at its worst”, was not a figment of the imagination and truly existed, as its colossal debts would have to be borne by future generations of Malaysians.
But in Johore Baru, one of the two protagonists of the 1MDB scandal had no compunction whatsoever for the 1MDB scandal, and was in fact preparing his campaign which he hoped would culminate in the 15th General Election and his return as the 10th or 11th Prime Minister of Malaysia.
What is presently happening in New York and Johor Baru underlined one important question about the the Johor state general election – whether Malaysia can do a national turnaround to stop the decline of the last half-a-century and start the arduous task to become a world-class great nation by Malaysia’s Centennial in 2063.
The 200,000 Johore voters in Singapore can make a difference in answering this question – whether Malaysia is condemned to be a kleptocracy, kakistocracy and a failed state by 2063 or whether we have the wherewithal as a Malaysian people to buck up, undergo institutional reforms to revert to the nation-building principles of the Malaysian Constitution and the Rukun Negara and return to the era of the early founders of the Malaysian nation like Tunku Abdul Rahman, Razak and Hussein Onn for Malaysia to fulfil Tunku’s aspiration to be “a haven of peace, harmony and happiness” and “a beacon of light in a difficult and distracted world”.
While I will continue in Part 2 of my Open Letter tomorrow, I ask for two things:
Firstly, that in view of the Omicron wave in the two-year Covid-19 pandemic in Malaysia and Singapore, the 200,000 Johor voters in Singapore should register as postal voters on the Election Commission website by Friday Feb. 18, 2022;
Secondly, that the Election Commission should extend its registration of postal voters by a week from Feb. 18 to 25, which should pose no problem in the Internet Age.?