The ongoing Daim financial saga

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The ongoing Daim financial saga

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 28, 2023: The New Year 2024 is only three days away and Malaysians are in awe of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) going after a real suspected “financial ikan jerung (shark)”.

Going after former twice finance minister and super rich Daim Zainuddin was surpeising because the MACC’s perception to Malaysians is that it only goes after the financial ikan bilis (anchovies) and also selectively prosecutes.

Perhaps, it is time to give the MACC the benefity of doubt that it takes much time and the right time to gather enough evidence to act against the “sharks”.

Can’t read enough of the MACC’s case against Daim?

No News Is Bad News reproduces below a two-part opinin pice published by Focus Malaysia: 

 

 

Legalised corruption: A reflection on the meaning behind the seizure of Daim’s Menara Ilham (Part 1)

By Nehru Sathiamoorthy

 

THERE is a meaningful definition of corruption and a legal definition of corruption.

Meaningfully, you can consider someone corrupt if they choose to elevate something of a lesser value at the expense of something that is greater in value.

When you say an individual is spiritually corrupt, what it means is that person has chosen to elevate their material well-being at the expense of their spiritual well-being. A thief, for example, can be said to be spiritually corrupt because their thieving ways would weaken and silence their conscience although it will materially enrich them.

When you say a public official is corrupt, it means that the official has chosen to look after his/her personal self-interest or the self-interest of his/her family or relatives by weakening the institution that they serve. A policeman who takes bribes, for example, is corrupt because he is eroding the reputation of the force for the sake of enriching himself.

However, this definition is not the legal definition of corruption. I don’t know the specifics of the legal definition but what I do know is that in our law as in the law of other countries around the globe, there is a specific definition of corruption.

 

This is whereby you have to prove that a person is specifically corrupt according to these definitions before you can act against them by law.

An example of what I would view as a corrupt activity in terms of meaning and principles but not viewed as a corruption by the definition of the law is the action of five opposition MPs who supported the Madani government while remaining in the opposition fold.

I consider this corrupt because the shameful action of the five MPs is debasing the parliament to enhance the survivability of the Madani government which is tantamount to weakening that which is of higher value for the sake of something that is lower in value.

Seeking evidence

Although I consider their action to be corrupt in principle, what the five MPs did is not considered as corrupt by the letter of the law because of technical details like the absence of money changing hands or because the MPs in question did not directly break the anti-hopping law.

One of the biggest problems with the old order is the reign of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and all those who embrace the values of Mahathirism. The old order has basically legalised corruption.

What I mean by this is that during the Mahathir era, laws were made and enforced in such a way that it is possible for a small group of people to legally weaken the nation in order to strengthen their own personal well-being.

 

Laws are not necessarily principled or just. History is replete with laws that have been written to legalise unjust and unprincipled activities. Slavery, for example, was a legally approved activity in the past in many parts of the world.

Colonialism – another practice that is universally condemned as unjust today – was perpetrated in the past with the full backing of the laws of the colonial powers. The apartheid system which is categorically condemned as anti-humanity and evil today was a legally approved concept in South Africa during the apartheid era.

That these corrupt and evil practices existed within the aegis of the law just goes to show that to write a law, you don’t need to be just or principled. If you have enough legal power, you can pretty much write any law that you want.

This is because in the latter half of his reign, Dr Mahathir and his inner circle held near absolute power.

Even then, it will be difficult to prove that what Dr Mahathir and his inner circle did to Malaysia is corrupt in legal terms although meaningfully, it might be as clear as daylight that at least some of their activities are corrupt simply because they were the ones that were writing the law at the time.

Legalised corruption

Having the power to write and interpret the law of the land for decades, they would have naturally written and interpreted the law in such a way, that though their activities weakened the nation to elevate the self-interest of their circle, their activities will likely be considered legal from the point of view of the law.

It is an open secret, for example, that the wealth of Dr Mahathir’s children was not accumulated in the right way. None of his children, for example, have come up with any goods and services that are well received by the market.

They have no great talent like being able to sing well or play football well. They did not inherit their great wealth from their ancestors either.

Dr Mahathir might claim that his children made their immense wealth through their own merit but common sense tells us that his children could have only made their wealth through wheeling and dealing which they could only have done because their father was not only the longest serving premier in the country but also a part of an elite inner circle that was empowered to move the wealth of the nation or the organisation that they belonged to in any manner that they deemed fit.

Despite that, I don’t think that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) will be able to legally prove that people like Dr Mahathir or Tun Daim Zainuddin – a member of Dr Mahathir’s inner circle – is corrupt even if it is as clear as daylight that the vast amount of wealth that they possess could not have been obtained in an improper manner.

The very fact that Daim owns the RM 2.3 bil Menara Ilham which was seized by MACC last week can only logically be explained by the concept of legalised corruption. – Dec 27, 2023

Nehru Sathiamoorthy is a roving tutor who loves politics, philosophy and psychology.

The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.

 

Legalised corruption: A reflection on the meaning behind the seizure of Daim’s Ilham Tower (Part 2)

By Nehru Sathiamoorthy

 

 

Editor’s Note: This is the second part of the opinion editorial that was published yesterday (Dec 27).

IT IS extremely unlikely that former finance minister Tun Daim Zainuddin was such a good businessman to the extent that he was already wealthy before he joined politics.

When you are successful in a field, you won’t abandon it to do something else in another field. Shah Rukh Khan, Leo Messi, Taylor Swift or Warren Buffett, for example, will not abandon the field that they dominate in order to involve themselves in some other fields like politics simply because they are extremely successful in their respective field.

If Daim was so successful as a businessman that he was extraordinarily rich before he joined politics, he would not have joined politics in the first place.

If he became rich only after he joined politics, it can only mean that he used his political connections and positions to move the wealth of the nation or the organisations he belonged to in a way that benefited him and his associates.

His actions, however, might not be legally wrong even if we can argue that it is wrong in terms of principle.

By principle, it might be wrong for a white man to capture a free black man from Africa and turn him into a slave in America but we know for a fact that that what the white man did was within the ambit of the law of the times because it is the white that wrote the law of the times.

Tun Daim Zainuddin (right) with Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad

In the same way, even it is wrong by principle for the elite inner circle that Daim and Dr Mahathir is a part of to use their power and position to gain an extraordinary amount of wealth, it is not necessarily the case that we will be able to prove that what they did was against the law because they were the ones that wrote the law at the time. 

Not easy to act

The reason that Dr Mahathir and his inner circle had the absolute power to write and interpret the law is because we empowered them to write and interpret the law. Likewise, the reason that we empowered them to do so is because Dr Mahathir and his inner circle promised to deliver us something we wanted, hence we thought we could trust them to do right by us.

Singaporeans also trusted Lee Kuan Yew and his inner circle to do right by them. He had also used the near absolute power that the Singaporeans had granted him to him to make all sorts of laws, including one that banned chewing gum in the city state.

But Kuan Yew owned up to his promise of turning Singapore into a developed nation and making Singaporeans one of the richest people in the world without making himself or his family extraordinarily rich in the process.

On the contrary, Dr Mahathir and his inner circle only delivered a fraction of what they promised while making themselves extraordinarily rich in the process.

He and his inner circle might have failed to own up to the promise that they would make Malaysia a developed nation but instead made themselves immensely rich in the process despite failing to deliver what they promised.

However, considering that they did deliver successes in the form of the PETRONAS Twin Towers and Putrajaya, they will probably argue that they did not break their promises or betray the country because they did develop Malaysia to an extent.

Henceforth, there can be argument that what they took from the country is a fair and proportionate amount that commensurate with their contributions.

Once we give someone absolute power so much so that they can write any law to legalise everything that they do in the hopes that they will use the power that we give them to get us what we want, we cannot act against them later even if we feel that they had not lived up to their end of the bargain.

This is because we will have to break our own laws in order punish them for their sins and shortcomings. More so, if we make it legal to break our own laws, we are basically signing up for a revolution that will sever our ties to the past.

Tun Daim Zainuddin (left) with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim (Pic credit: Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s Facebook)

Pulling ‘strong cables’

The problem with dealing with the excesses of Mahathirism is two-fold. On one hand, we need to do something to exorcise the ghost of Mahathirism that is continuously haunting us.

If we do not exorcise ourselves of Mahathirism, we might never be able to return to our pre-Mahathirism root and once again become people who believe that wealth is only rightfully accumulated by creating value in the market.

Instead, we will continue believing that all we have to do to become extraordinarily rich is by having “strong cables” without needing to create anything of value in the process. If left unchecked, this type of belief system will continue to lead us down the path of deterioration and ruin.

However, we might need to break our own laws to rid ourselves completely off the excesses of Mahathirism or to act against the remnants of Mahathirism that still exist today.

But once we break our own laws, we might sever our ties with our past to such an extent that the Malaysia we have today is no longer the same country as the one that was formed in 1957 and 1963.

So how do we ensure that the errors of our past do not continue to colour our future without severing our ties to our past?

Herein lies the rub. I don’t think there is any easy answer to this question. To address this matter, we will have no choice but to rely on the wisdom and sagacity of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and the Madani government.

Now that the Madani government has seized Daim’s Menara Ilham, it looks like they have decided to take firm and concrete steps to exorcise us of the excesses of Mahathirism.

As to whether they will be able to redeem our country from the mistakes we made in the past without completely severing our ties to the past or starting a revolution is something that we are going to find out one way or another in the near future. – Dec 28, 2023

Nehru Sathiamoorthy is a roving tutor who loves politics, philosophy and psychology.

The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.