When can Prime Minister Ismail Sabri catch up with Malaysians who are now worried about the swirling scandal involving the MACC Chief Commissioner Azam Baki while he is still only seemingly concerned about the floods disasters last month

When can the Prime Minister Ismail Sabri catch up with Malaysians who are now worried about the swirling scandal involving the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) Chief Commissioner Azam Baki while he is still only seemingly concerned about the floods disasters last month.

The one-day Special Parliament on the floods disasters yesterday did not prove that Ismail is really concerned about the floods disasters, because he did not return to Parliament in the winding up of the Special Parliament yesterday.

Can Ismail Sabri tell Malaysians what he was doing that was more important than returning to Parliament in the winding-up of the Special Parliament on the floods disasters?

What was proved yesterday was that Malaysia has a Prime Minister who is very slow to respond to crisis facing the country.

What is Ismail Sabri’s position on the No. 1 crisis in the country – the Azam-gate – which had been the top news in the country for more than three weeks?

Does the Prime Minister really believe Azam Baki - whether he lied or not, whether the Securities Commission has really cleared him or not, whether his case had been referred to the Attorney-General or not or whether he had committed contempt against Parliament or not - is the best example in the public service of integrity, probity and accountability?

If so, something is very rotten with Malaysia!

How did Malaysia come to such a sorry pass in half a century of nationhood and after nine Prime Ministers, beginning life with such promise that Bapa Malaysia Tunku Abdul Rahman dreamt of Malaysia as “a haven of peace, harmony and happiness” and “a beacon of light in a difficult and distracted world”.

In the past half a century, Malaysia has failed to be “a beacon of light”: to Malaysians, how could we be a “beacon of light” to the world?

From nearly becoming a “tiger” economy, we have seen one nation after another overtaking us - Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Vietnam.

Are we to continue in this trajectory of national decline in the coming decades with more countries behind us overtaking Malaysia like Indonesia and the Philippines?

What is being done to buck up for Malaysia to take its place as a world-class great nation instead of a being a sick nation punching below its weight and whose ambassadorial appointments are rejected by other countries, something never happened before?

This is why Malaysians are concerned about the Azam-gate crisis, because Malaysians do not want the country to relapse to a kleptocracy and corruption so rampant as to destroy Malaysia’s potential to recover to be a world-class great nation!

Malaysia has a jumbo-sized Cabinet, validating an international study that on average, the more developed a country is, the smaller the cabinet.

We have Ministers with astounding intellectual prowess who could see lions in the Malaysia and spout strange theory that orang-utans in Malaysia would “kill you first” when they encounter human beings, rather than vice versa.

There are others who think that corruption is no offence provided the corrupt is a Muslim.

In the House of Commons this week, a Conservative Member of Parliament crossed the floor of the House of Commons to sit with Keir Starmer’s Labour Party MPs, declaring in a letter to the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson that he was “incapable of offering the leadership and government this country deserves”.

Nobody in UK called him a “frog” who had hopped parties because was prepared to be sold to the highest bidder in the market-place, as would be in the case in Malaysia – accepting his party defection as one based on political principles and not monetary self-interest.

Malaysia has a long way to go to buck up to join the ranks of the world-class great nations instead of the band of mediocre and failed nations forever in decline because of kleptocracy and kakistocracy.

What is Malaysia’s fate on its Centennial in 2063?

Lim Kit Siang MP for Iskandar Puteri