From the Selangor Times 22 March 2013. Ask Lord Bobo is a weekly column by LoyarBurok where all your profound, abstruse, erudite, hermetic, recondite, sagacious, and other thesaurus-described queries are answered!
Is Shahrizat right to say she has nothing to apologise for? (Hardest Word, via email)
For readers who may not have kept up with the news, according to media reports, Datuk Seri Shahrizat Jalil said in court this week that she has nothing to apologise for over the NFC scandal.
Regular readers of this column (Lord Bobo offers you the furriest of furry hugs) will know that we occasionally mention that the concept of “accountability” is foreign to most Malaysian politicians. This is just the latest example of that fact.
Shahrizat is not an anomaly – she is the norm.
But hey, put yourself in her expensive shoes. All around you and throughout your career, colleagues have been “doing deals”.
Why should you be the one singled out? Just because some jambu decided to get on your case? Why should you have to sit there while people such as Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz take pot shots at you to distract from their own scandals?
So who do you blame for this lack of accountability? Malaysians have to learn that you cannot simply depend on the politicians or the authorities.
The system is broken beyond recognition. Don’t just sit around hoping and waiting for a “saviour” to show up – particularly if you expect that this saviour will be a politician.
Really, Malaysians have to adjust the deeply-entrenched mindset of waiting for politicians to lead.
It is the nature of politicians that they will try and get away with as much as they can.
After all, they’ve been getting away with it for decades now.
It is up to the Malaysian public to create a culture of accountability. Question your leaders instead of rolling out the red carpet and kissing their hands all the time.
Unfortunately, this task is made difficult because of the impotency of the mainstream media.
Despite this, slowly but surely change is possible.
His Supreme Eminenceness has seen many good people doing great things to help to change the hope for change into a reality. But everyone must play their part.
I just watched the Sarawak expose video that everyone has been talking about, and I’m in absolute shock. How could all this be happening without anyone knowing about it? (Shockalingam, via email)
Are you in shock because you didn’t know that all this was going on? Do you really think no one knows about what has been happening?
If so, Lord Bobo feels so sorry for you, and hopes that it was a comfortable rock that you’ve been living under all these years.
Corruption is so rampant, and no more so in the Wild Wild East that is Sarawak. But let’s not be ignorant of the fact that it is happening in Peninsular Malaysia as well. And this doesn’t just involve the biggest of the big fish, even lowly land officers are involved in corrupt practices of varying scales.
The fight against corruption has hardly even touched the surface of the problem. Every Malaysian will either have first-hand experience of corruption, or at the very least know someone who has personally experienced it.
There is no enforcement. And there is no political will to see proper enforcement.
Sure, every once in a while a big fish or two will be “caught” and paraded around to show that the authorities are taking corruption seriously.
But for the most part, it’s just small fry who are being grilled. And to really solve the problem, we need to stop focusing on the french fries and start chomping hard on the prosperity burgers and T-bone steaks.
Lord Bobo, now that revelations at the Malaysian Bar AGM on PI Bala’s second statutory declaration seem to be pointing towards a clear mastermind, will we finally get to the bottom of the whole Altantuya mystery? (Public Investigator, via email)
Don’t hold your breath, kiddo. We’ll get to the bottom of something all right – we just don’t know what.
We can expect revelation after revelation as GE13 approaches.
It will feel as if there has been a revelation constipation all these years, and they will come at us thick and fast.
It is sad that the murder of a beautiful young woman can become so deeply entangled in political intrigue.
The truth is, you don’t need to be an omniscient hyper-intelligent wonder typewriting monkey to know that the real perpetrators will probably never have to answer for their crimes.
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I read that P.I Bala passed away. And also that Oliver dude from France who was handling the Scorpene/DCNS case. I understand that we're experiencing an unprecedented flow of revelations thanks to the natural laxative qualities of the upcoming GE13 but these deaths are rolling out like sushi on a conveyor belt. Have I been sufficiently poisoned by our political environment to immediately think of foul play?