Shooting messenger doesn’t kill message

A man walking back from a mamak thinks he sees a theft in progress. He shouts “Thief! Thief!  A passer-by who sees this, takes a photo on his smart phone and uploads it to social media. Because it’s now viral, a local paper publishes the news.

A foreign news desk then picks it. The Malaysian authorities vow action for this atrocity, this utmost violation of social justice!

So the Foreign Affairs Ministry tries to extradite the foreign journalist, the Home Ministry suspends the local newspaper, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) hunts for the guy who posted it on Facebook, police arrest the guy who first shouts “Thief”.

In the confusion, the thief walks away, probably to use his new ill-gotten gains for a China-made phone in Low Yat Plaza.

As absurd as the scenario above sounds, that’s what appears to be happening in Malaysia these days. Over almost every scandal Malaysia faces, the whistle-blowers are the first targets. For 1MDB- we’ve arrested unheard-of people, some small-time businessmen, office-workers, and even a despatch boy.

We’ve barred individuals who are not implicated in the least with the case from leaving the country. Opposition politicians who are merely doing their jobs in acting as a check and balance against a government-linked entity, members of parliament who were merely playing their role in voicing the concerns of their electorate.

The excuse?  Public security. But since when was raising issues of public concern, about public funds, concerning the public’s wellbeing, become a threat to public security? What harm can raising questions about public spending by public servants do to general public safety? Are the two even related? Is there even a basis of grounds to look at public security whenever an expose is carried out?  

Yet ironically, not enough grounds appear to be found to call in the two most-frequently implicated names for at least, questioning. Yet those who question the lack of questions are deemed dangerous enough to be. But that would be best left to the wisdom of our leaders.

Do we still have any?

For all the talk about the lack of leadership by the opposition and given the fact that their de facto leader is behind bars, and that the political alliance that they are a part of is in a state of flux with no indication of regrouping at all within the near foreseeable future, in the very least, they have a unified stance and speak with one voice whenever a crisis arises that threatens us as a country.

But what about the government? Do we have a solid answer to what we are going to do about the Low Yat incident? To date, there has been no clear, unequivocal stance on 1MDB. What we have is the prime minister vowing to get the bottom of it, and those loyal to him vowing to stand solidly behind him while he does.

But how do you get to the bottom of something while you’re technically still sitting on the top of it?  

So far, the strongest display of fervour has not appeared to have been to arrest neither the problem, nor the perpetrators perpetuating the alleged problem, but the people alleging there is a problem in the first place.

Apart from the “whistle-blowers”, the government has also acted against those reporting on the whistle-blowers. Access to Sarawak Report was blocked, its UK-based editor is being sought to be extradited, all for reporting about the issue.

In perspective, Malaysia did not appear to work this fast in hunting for Sirul Azhar, a convicted killer nor did we seek the extradition of Agimuddin Kiram, the man responsible for the Sulu incursion in which many Malaysian lives were lost.

But what the government appears to fail to understand is, in the Information Age, the more you attempt to suppress information and curtail its spread, the more people get curious about it and the more it spreads.

With multiple channels of communication available in social media, the Internet and via mobile apps, and with the usage of proxies, blocking access to a particular resource on one medium, will only cause it to go viral on three others.

Apart from reducing its own credibility, and increasing the popularity of the growing list of its critics, the only other thing the government might have succeeded in doing in this whole fiasco, is add to the growing readership of The Wall Street Journal, The Edge and Sarawak Report.

The government must learn that shooting the messenger doesn’t kill the message. You need to answer the question to stop the asking. But then again, if two former prime ministers, one deputy prime minister and two of his predecessors have failed to get any answers, what hope do ordinary Malaysians have to ever learn the truth about 1MDB? – July 29, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.