Malaysia's two megadeaths in one week

by Azly Rahman

We died twice this week.

First we agreed to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), approved at the level of ‘the Malaysian people’, taxed but without feeling a full representation. In times of Colonial America, that is called ‘taxation without representation’, a slogan that led to the American Revolution.

Next, we heard of the official closing of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s case of the personal donation received from the Saudi Kingdom. We are yet to be told the truth of it all as well the real name of the person generous enough to throw us the cash that is supposed to cream and grease our elections or fight our home-grown jihadists.

Preferably we hope that there will soon be an official statement from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia if indeed there was such a donation and if the kingdom does give money to other countries in order to influence internal politics of those countries.

We had two megadeaths in a week. We are told to move on - perhaps like a dead-nation walking, not knowing which way to go to arrive at this so-called ‘high-income nation’ when our national coffers are being emptied.

A partnership of slow death

We can’t even handle its own economy and keep the people’s money safe and now wish to play the game of the sharks and vultures of corporate America who hold the power of international legal instruments to destroy nations. But congratulations, the votes are in for the TPPA for Malaysia.

Good luck. May we not become another Mexico, Greece, or even Turkey, if not Vietnam of the 60s. At the rate of what is happening with the country's cleaning up to coffers and laundering money, getting huge donations from UFOs and aliens, we might as well ask Donald Trump to run our country by Skype, if he loses the presidential race.

Those who voted ‘Yes’ for the TPPA do not understand American history and the power of the multinational corporations. The voted perhaps because they were told to. Their understanding of the anatomy, physiology, ideology, and the colonising and imperialistic tendency of the corporations is probably minimal, limited by what some neo-liberal governmental think-tank advised them.

Knowledge is power, said Sir Francis Bacon and this goes the same with the need for a comprehensive, critical and constructivist knowledge of this complex agreement such as the TPPA. Do our parliamentarians have knowledge, that would help differentiate between signing a national suicide note and saving an economically ailing nation and treating and healing it from within?

And here’s another story of our megadeath - the donation from a foreign nation to influence to outcome of our election.

Do the Saudis give such a donation, by the way?

“... A Saudi government official, while declining to comment specifically on the prosecutor’s statement, said the Saudi ministries of foreign affairs and finance had no information about such a gift and that a royal donation to the personal bank account of a foreign leader would be unprecedented. Representatives of the royal family couldn't be reached for comment.

“Critics of the Malaysian prime minister said it was implausible the money had come as a personal donation...” says a recent report on the Saudi donation to Malaysia.

But isn’t Saudi Arabia allegedly an ally of Israel? Isn’t this country with poor human rights record, ruled in part by mad mullahs? And Malaysia is letting a donation from the royal family dictate her politics? What a shame? Don't we have a sane philosophy of foreign policy?

Can the opposition leaders now accept donations from foreign governments in order to win the next election and fight against race-based politics, religious bigotry, and the re-election of massively corrupt political parties? Have we legalised something we declared illegal? Something bordering on treason, is this not?

In addition, didn’t Malaysia, alongside other countries, ban foreign donations for political campaigns, as reported below?

“ ... As of 1995, countries banning foreign donations included the following:

“Brazil, Canada (partial ban), France, Germany (partial ban), India, Israel (partial ban), Japan, Malaysia, Poland, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, United States, Ukraine.”

(Sources: Library of Congress, Law Library, Report for Congress: Campaign Financing of National Elections in Selected Foreign Countries. Washington D.C.: July 1995, LL95-4,95-1354, Table 5 and Association of Central and Eastern European Election Officials (ACEEEO), Election Law Compendium of Central and Eastern Europe. Kyiv: International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), 1995. For Albania, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Moldova, Romania, South Africa and Yemen: Yves-Marie Doublet, Le financement de la vie politique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, Second Edition, 1997, p. 24.)

The supreme god called Money

The cause of Malaysia’s two megadeaths this week is the will of the god called Money. It is now worshipped alongside the regular personal god ascribed in the belief system of one’s religion. It is in fact as supreme as the Supreme Being in the latest ‘Star Wars’ movie - a being close enough to that creation called man that has turned evil.

When money, too, becomes god’s angels, become god’s prophets, messengers, becomes the bank vault to pay scribes to write the scriptures, and when money and more money is used to have people believe in the verses and use them to legitimise getting more money so that more gods would be create, worshiped, and ultimately be used to become both the chair and the chairperson of the day of judgment - at a time like, even more I become a cynic sceptic, a misanthrope, bohemian, and the most radical existential anarchist rooted in the tradition of stoicism and yearning all the more to be freer that Nietzsche and his superman combined.

In other words, I am totally sick of how politics which is supposed to be a noble enterprise is now controlled by those who not only worship only money but wish to become gods of money. That is what Malaysia is now.

Welcome to our well-crafted Armageddon, before you step into the pearly gates of paradise, choose your gods wisely.

How many more deaths we can bear as we crumble depends on how much more intense our leaders worship the gods of money and how much closer these gods are brought to the jugular vein.

Read more: https://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/328683#ixzz3ybtE9WIL