Too many cooks spoil the broth

Malaysians are capable of really amazing things, and I’m not talking about tallest teh tarik and biggest popiah here.

Malaysian sportsmen are world leaders in squash and badminton.

Malaysian inventors created the thumb drive and the half-boiled egg machine.

At one point, we even almost won Miss World!

But Malaysians are also capable of a great deal of stupid things. This week the collective IQ of Malaysia would have dropped a few points merely from sharing a viral WhatsApp.

I refer of course to this viral WhatsApp going on about a certain bank and the allegations made in the Wall Street Journal about an account with that bank used to channel money out “inappropriately”.

The viral message alleges that, it was some form of conspiracy, that the founder of that bank was killed because he found out about it, and even more curiously, that all IT heads of that bank were sacked as a result of this.

First of all, I don’t believe any IT head in the bank that were sacked in September 2013 ( I happened to be attached to the bank’s IT Department in 2013).

If there were mass-sackings, all of us working in the department, missed it completely.

Also, as a general rule of thumb, IT personnel have no access to personal account information. Bank Negara has strict rules on that.

The second part of the blurb suggests a hidden conspiracy that the founder of the bank (who no longer was involved in the operations of the bank for over 20 years) discovered and made multiple reports to Bank Negara and the police and indirectly suggests this is why he was murdered.

Many linked this to Pascal Najadi’s press statement, while the man himself did not make an allegation such as this.

So even a cursory reading itself should reveal to the average reader the absurdness of the blurb.

Why would IT personnel be involved in something unrelated to them, how would a bank sack all its IT managers without raising any red flags?

But Malaysians would of course, unquestioningly forward this as the gospel truth.

And that in itself is alarming – that we no longer trust the government to the point where something as sketchy as this blurb would not only be readily accepted as the truth, but that it is spread with such eagerness, as though we were hungry for something like this to quench our desire to make sense of it all, to the point of connecting invisible dots to form a line that was never there.

This isn’t the first time this happened. Often when we come across a news article or blurb that speaks against the opposite side or in favour of our side, we spread it without thinking twice. Sometimes, the content of the article turns out quite different from the headline.

But the general Malaysian attitude on social media has been forward first, think later.

While for politicians, this may come with the territory, but it’s a different question altogether for the business and corporate world.

A politician is likely to bounce back from a stupid statement by making, perhaps another stupid statement with very little credibility issues to worry about for the next five years.

However for the corporate victim, the effect is almost immediate and difficult to remedy.

The rumour that Cadbury chocolate had pork DNA in it and that Ikea serves horse meat as meatballs… are two good examples of this. I have friends who still refuse to eat both.

While we desperately want an end to the 1MDB saga and some conclusive answers, in my humble opinion, throwing off-tangent spin statements and rumours such as these not only does not help, but hinders the push for transparency and an end to this seemingly growing, unending litany of questions before us.

The first question that should be answered, and which to date, no one has, is did these transactions really take place?

And if yes, what are we going to do about it? And who? Perhaps if we stopped the spinning we'd start moving forward.

And then Malaysia can continue to go back on track and start paying attention to the things that matter again. Like what’s the difference between a wombat and a pig. – July 8, 2015.

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