MGG Pillai Commentary View

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When in doubt, mumble

MALAYSIAN SKYSCRAPERS ARE NOT designed to withstand earthquakes, but in "in one or two years", the rules would be designed to protect future tall buildings. The director-general of town and country planning Mohd Fadhil Mohd Khir says official guidelines has no provision for earthquake-proof skyscrapers. This is frightening: our "world-class" buildings become flimsy when earthquake tremors strike. The most recent, last Sunday, caused cracks in many skyscrapers. This is dismissed as one of those things. It is not. The director-general knows what he talks about. But why did his department not address this in the orgy of skyscrapers built in the past 25 years? Why did he reveal now his, and his department's, gross incompetence?

Though Malaysia is at the edge of the Pacific ball of fire, an area where earthquakes are all too frequent, even if we are at minimum risk, we went ahead at speed, and throwing all caution to the winds, to put Malaysia at the cutting edge of development. Corners were cut, rules fudged, to build the skyscrapers – business buildings and condominiums – and when disaster beckoned, most severely after the tsunami hit the Indian Ocean in December, it was ignored and side-stepped. That is understandable since Malaysia would not even admit she was in the direct path of the tsunami, in Penang, Langkawi and the northern coast of West Malaysia, and damage more extensive and widespread than admitted. The belief disaster can strike anywhere but Malaysia is built into the official mindset that they buildings and skycrapers as a rule are built sub-standard.

He now admits after the Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami in December, several skyscrapers had cracked walls, and in several areas around the country, sinkholes appeared as even this week. No doubt whenever a tremor touched Malaysia. The director-general of the Public Works Department, Tan Sri Zaini Omar. is equally lackadaisical: the PWD might reassess structure and safety of skyscrapers. He confirms Malaysian skyscrapers are not earth-quake safe. "In the wake of recent tremors and earthquakes the structural policy concerning buildings have to be reviewed as a preventive measures," he said, adding "there will also have to be a study carried out on tall buildings that were affected recently due to the tremors and earthquakes." I do not think he means what he says: new rules would be written for skyscrapers not for its safety but to respond to the tremors and earthquakes. In other words, there is no serious interest to resolve it, only how to pass the buck.

Passing the buck is what the information ministry excels in. It was set up to impart official information speedily so the people would not be swayed by rumours and false news. The principal channel for it is Radio Television Malaysia. But the deputy information minister, Dato' Zainuddin Maidin, proudly proclaims that is not its aim. "We are an infotainment channel ... and not a news channel which has a 24-hours news channel. We provide entertainment with the news," he said. It does not bother him there is no such word as "infotainment" as he lapses into gobbledygook: RTM has as its goal of being first on the scene and first on the screen. This would take time. The news room is not used to breaking news when it happens. Foreign news agency reports on coups and earthquakes the world over is fair game, but if it reports of Malaysia, it must await political confirmation before it can be broadcast. Which is why it took RTM two hours to broadcast the earthquake tremors felt in Malaysia.

Even official information from the right government department, in this instance the Meterological Services Department (MSD), is verboten until corroborated by a higher political authority. Dato' Zainuddin is obviously not one. He continues: "I informed them after midnight, but they could only get confirmation from the MSD at 2.01am." But RTM broke its own rules, and broadcast the information on television half an hour later, and immediately he gave the order on its radio channels. But his praise for RTM's quick thinking is misplaced. The station chief should have been called, and he should have extended the broadcasting hours automatically in a crisis like this. But then he is appointed for his political reliability not his journalistic competence or instincts.

It is this penchant for political reliability, when news organisations work overtime when an inconvenient politician must be politically destroyed – the Anwar Ibrahim affair, for instance – and it is first with the official news, with no attempt to get reaction from the target. A well-regard editor once, Dato' Zainuddin deserted his journalistic instincts to be handmaiden to authority, in the course of which he allows himself to be a laughing stock. Whatever he says would make no difference. RTM would function as irrelevantly as now when competence is punished, stupidity, incompetence and political reliability praised and promoted.

So it is in the Royal Malaysian Police. It shot itself in the foot yet again. On 25 March 2005, a 52-year-old business man, a dato', shoots a contractor on who came to collect a RM400,000 debt. He is arrested for attempted murder. Five days later, he is released on police bail. The city CID chief, SAC (II) Abdul Aziz Bulat, says investigations are incomplete. The DPP will decide if he would be charged. What concerns me is that police confiscated three pistols registered in his name. The rules about owning weapons is strict, allows one to have many weapons, but only one of a kind, and the reasons for wanting them specific. So how did this dato' come to own three pistols? Why were the licences not cancelled?

One chief police officer made himself rich, with grateful gun owners presenting him with Jaguar cars and hundreds of thousands of ringgit for their pistol and weapons licences. One chief of police in Kuala Lumpur, when in Kota Kinabalu, issued 50,000 gun licences, or one for every 25 Sabahan. The unwritten condition attached says it all: the guns had to be bought from his brother's arms shop. He was equally liberal in issuing gun licences when in Kuala Lumpur. It became a scandal that the Inspector-General of Police is now the sole authority to issue gun licences. What is unaddressed that many gun owners rent their weapons to armed robbers for a share of the loot.

So the IGP issuing licences only worsens the problem. His administrative and routine duties pile up, due to incompetence at the top which allows laws and regulations to be broken by officers junior to them, leaving him little time to strengthen and improve the forces. It raises, not only in the police force, the corruption one must pay even for routine services. It is a small step from that to bend and break rules and regulations for profit. When profit confronts security, profit always wins.

Today, ministers and officials fall over themselves to reveal how stupid and idiotic they are. They have no choice. In the past, information was tightly controlled. Now it is not. The webblogs are forcing them to react faster than their brains can think. National Front politicians and civil servants put their feet in their mouths when they can. That is tricky now. The websites and weblogs second guess official policies and actions so persistently that they get a wider distribution than the official and officially-leaning media channels. It is the latter that now calls the shots. Especially when their pearls of wisdom is unadulterated rubbish.

The political problems of the Sabah chief minister, Dato' Seri Musa Aman Khan, and the Selangor mentri besar, Dato' Seri Mohd Khir Toyo, began with weblog questioning of their misdeeds. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and his deputy, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, flounder on slippery ground because their political and other misdeeds are hotly debated in cyberspace. And lose ground for their belief that the internet and weblogs count for little because what they write go a limited audience, and decide a studied silence is how to deal with that. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is not. They are distributed all over the country in less than a day.

M.G.G. Pillai

pillai@streamyx.com