RUTHLESSNESS

yesterday’s headline:

“FORMER RURAL DEVELOPMENT MINISTRY SEC-GEN GETS 5 YEARS’ JAIL

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 16:

Datuk Dr Abdul Aziz Muhamad received five years’ jail today for criminal breach of trust and cheating committed while he was Rural Development Ministry secretary-general in 1999 — a sentence the judge said was a deterrent but mitigated by other factors including the fact that he was cancer-stricken.”

The punishment, handed out by the Sessions Court which had on Friday found him guilty of diverting RM11 million from funds earmarked for the hardcore poor, makes him the most senior civil servant in recent years to be convicted and jailed.

i remember hearing about this case 5 years ago. and i remember getting extremely furious when i first heard about it. sure, CBT happens all the time… but this particular case involved money for a projek pembangunan rakyat termiskin! i mean, how ruthless can a person be? i wouldn’t have cared so much if they embezzled some money that was going to be used for military ke… jambatan ke… (although it would still be wrong), but this is something that was meant for the hardcore poor… what was the guy thinking? you know how before you do something that you know isn’t very right, you would try to justify your action to yourself? i would really like to know what he said to himself to justify his action before he decided to take a few million dollars from the hardcore poor. could it be… “ala.. sec-gen ministry lain songlap 50 mil, aku sebab kesian la songlap 11 mil je... ok la ni…” . gee, how thoughtful of you datuk... i’m sure all the hardcore poor families in malaysia are eternally grateful for your kind consideration…

what makes it worse is that, this person is of my race… the race that is (by stereotype) supposed to be more gentle, more sopan-santun, more compassionate, more gracious, more chivalrous, more religious even. we always argue that the reason why other races are more successful economically because they don’t care about the source where the money comes from.. tak payah kira halal ke haram… as long as it is money. but i can’t help being a bit skeptical here – how many of these ‘unethical businessmen’ would embezzle money that they know was going to be used to help the hardcore poor? perhaps my expectation of these ‘unethical businessmen’ is quite high but i don’t think a lot of them would do what this guy did…


when these things happen, it really makes me wonder what kind of people do we have running our ministries and government. it is an open secret that there is corruption everywhere, but at least i had thought that somehow these people would have the basic humanity and compassion that a normal person would have. i guess i was terribly mistaken…