Cons of Nations Humbled as Corruption Undermines Nation's Self-Confidence

Yudhoyono was elected in 2004, largely on a campaign to root out entrenched corruption and nepotism [EPA]

Leaked US diplomatic cables implicate the Indonesian president in corruption and abuse of power, according to Australian media.

The documents, obtained by WikiLeaks, contain claims that Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has been trying to influence judges and prosecutors to protect allies from prosecution, The Age reported on Friday.

Reports citing the cables also said Yudhoyono has used the country's intelligence service to spy on political rivals and a senior minister in his own government.

Other allegations attributed to the cables are that Yudhoyono's former vice-president paid millions of dollars to buy control of Indonesia's largest political party and that the president's wife and her family were seeking to enrich themselves through their political connections.

Marty Natalegawa, Indonesia's foreign minister, said at a news conference that the claims were baseless.

"We find it especially unacceptable that it has been suggested as facts," he said.

The US ambassador to Indonesia expressed regret that the cables - apparently written by his predecessor - had found their way to the public but could comment little on their contents.

Information exchanged between the embassy in Jakarta and Washington is "preliminary, often incomplete and unsubstantiated," Ambassador Scot Marciel told reporters.

"This is not an expression of policy, not of our final decision," he said. "These documents should not be seen as ... representing the US policy."

Yudhoyono became the country's first directly elected leader in 2004 largely on a campaign to root out entrenched corruption and nepotism following the 32-year dictatorship of General Suharto. He was re-elected in 2009.

Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen, reporting from Jakarta, described the reported cables as "very damaging" for the president.

"According to those cables, American diplomats think that he actually protected a political figure who happens to be the husband of the former president from going to jail for corruption, and the same person is now heading the People's Assembly," she said.

"This is something anti-corruption activists have said for a while, that mostly the "middle people" go to jail for corruption  but the big fish, like this person, always escape."

Yudhoyono is credited by many with bringing political stability and economic reforms to the country of 237 million, but millions of Indonesians still live in poverty, the country's infrastructure is poor and graft remains widespread.

“I do not subscribe to the doctrine that the people are the slaves and property of their government. I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.” - Gerrit Smith 

As a Malaysian, I've learnt to have very low expectations of our present administration and leaders, except that they should have intelligence above that of a parakeet and moral values above that of a snake. But even at this level, I may have set the bar far too high already. 

The current administration seems to be drunk with contempt for the intelligence of the rakyat and the rest of the world. The daily deluge of shameless and mindless communiqué emerging from Putrajaya is enough to propel this country into a perpetual global laughing stock.

As a catalyst to push the reputation of the country into further disrepute, we've a national news agency that is ever so eager to pander to the preposterous and the ridiculous. I suppose those who are accustomed to demanding respect from others as a right and a privilege will never put any effort into earning it, nor are they capable of according the same to others. 

The stillborn 1Malaysia programme has degenerated into nothing more than a cacophony of empty slogans and rhetoric. While the present leadership tries to masquerade itself as a multi-racial and tolerant administration capable of governing a diverse nation like Malaysia, with openness and fairness, in truth, it has openly allowed itself to succumb to its serpentine instinct to divide and rule the country via its proxies, Perkasa and Utusan Malaysia. 

Both seem to be a local hangover from the Third Reich. Nevertheless, this blasé administration is unashamed to be caught committing political adultery with the fascists of its own making. 

Moreover, what we have here is an administration bent on means most foul in discounting the contributions of the other races in the development of this country, by engaging in intellectual dishonesty, through revisionist history. 

This is the same administration that has been preaching about justice for the Palestinians in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, yet has shown itself to lack the honesty in enforcing social justice and truthfulness at home. 

Let the truth be told; without the contributions of the non-bumiputeras and its past colonial masters, this country would have only achieved a fraction of its present economic growth. In reality, 1Malaysia is nothing more than just a charade on parade. 

In trying to project itself as a unifying and democratic administration, that's exactly where it has failed miserably. While Malaysians are constantly treated to a fare of world class statesmanship by world leaders such as Barack Obama, Lee Myung-bak, Angela Merkel, Hu Jintao and many others, thanks to the Internet and television. 

Here, we've an antagonistic and dismissive Third-World administration, coupled with weak minded leadership that displays an utmost unwillingness to bridge the political divide. Instead, this administration is persistently engaging in wanton and shameless acts in seeking to undermine the Opposition state governments, with total disregard for the welfare and the will of the rakyat who voted them in.

Just as those who spoke up against slavery were accused of treason and sedition before slavery was finally abolished in 1833 throughout the British Empire, this administration is manufacturing charges of sedition against Opposition members when all they did was loosening the shackles of the rakyat and speaking up for the will of the rakyat.

The constant trumpeting that Malaysia will be a high-income country by year 2020, that is, a country with a Gross National Income per capita of US$12,196 is akin to the peddling of snake oil by charlatans in the wild, wild West. 

The only marked difference is that this time around, the salesmen are adorned in tailored suits and expensive neckties. According to a study conducted by the Human Resources Ministry in 2009 on the National Employment Return, 33.8 percent of the 1.3 million workers covered in the study earned less than RM700 per month. 

This places them below the poverty line of RM720 per month. Furthermore, a study by the World Bank revealed that the wage trend in Malaysia has gown only 2.6 percent annually over the last 10 years. 

Hallucinating from its own perceived grandeur, this administration is also trying to explain away, oblivious to the obvious truth, the 81 percent drastic decline in FDI, from US$7.32 billion (2008) to US$1.38 billion (2009). 

During the same period, about a quarter million of Malaysians have left its shores en masse, triggering an exodus of human capital of colossal proportion. With no concrete economic reforms in place to date, it ill behooves this administration to censure John Malott, the former US ambassador to Malaysia, for stating the inconvenient truth that this administration is guilty of thriving on fomenting ethnic conflicts, above much needed economic reforms. 

An independent judiciary and credible law enforcement agencies are crucial in attracting FDIs or any form of investments. Can we expect the same in Malaysia? The answer is a resounding negative. 

Once an institution has tainted itself in exchange for political favours and other personal rewards, it is beyond redemption. As Gandhi aptly said, “There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.”

To have an array of foreign diplomats sitting in at the present Sodomy II trial is already an indictment by the international community that the Malaysian judiciary cannot be trusted to carry out natural justice. 

The elegant silence of the authorities over US$291 billion (2000 to 2008) in illicit capital flight bears testimony to the erosion of integrity within our Malaysian law enforcement agencies. One shudders to contemplate what the future holds for this country when the judiciary and the law enforcement agencies are the weakest links in our legal system, and yet are the most protected. A government can only lead effectively by example. If a government becomes the lawbreaker, it invites anarchy and breeds contempt for the law. 

While Indonesia may rank lower than Malaysia in the Transparency International Corruption Index, recent efforts to eradicate corruption by the Indonesian government has won the country accolades and recognition internationally. 

Recently, the Norwegian government provided Indonesia with a grant of US$1 billion to fight global warming. Although the Malaysian prime minister had offered to cut greenhouse gases drastically at the climate change summit in Copenhagen in December 2009, till today no grant has been forthcoming from any donor country. It speaks volume when the leaderships of developed countries don't trust you with their money. 

With this administration, tax-payers should ask themselves seriously whether they are getting their value for money. The real challenges confronting Malaysia is not just the middle-income trap or high commodity prices, but a government that has lost credibility at home and abroad. 

As with the likes of Mubarak and Gaddafi, this administration continues to be deluded by its own perceived invincibility while driving this country further into oblivion and possible bankruptcy. 

The only cure for a government with an acute narcissistic personality disorder is rejection though the ballot box. And so it shall.

India's mood darkens as corruption undermines nation's self-confidence
 Just a few months ago, India was preening itself in the global spotlight. World leaders were queuing up to visit, and President Obama famously declared that the country was not simply emerging: It had "emerged."
Yet the elation the nation felt then was short-lived. With India's pride buffeted on a daily basis by tales of collusion between politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen and reports of billions of dollars lost to flagrant corruption, the mood among the nation's middle class is distinctly crestfallen.
India is experiencing what some people are calling "a reality check," or what business tycoon-turned-independent member of Parliament Rajeev Chandrasekhar sees as a "psychological crisis of confidence."





"In a sense, we had gotten caught up with the rhetoric and hype about our imminent superpower-dom," the 46-year-old former telecom entrepreneur said in an interview in his office in the heart of New Delhi. "People stopped looking at the system, which still needs a lot of work."
The fundamentals of the Indian success story have not changed: the tremendous power of the country's entrepreneurship unleashed by economic liberalization two decades ago, the rapid growth and spending power of its 300 million-strong middle class, the demographic dividend of its burgeoning young population. And although inflation has risen and foreign direct investment has fallen, India's economy, which emerged almost unscathed from the global financial crisis, is still expected to grow by 9 percent this year.
For years, that success had fed what many business leaders, economists and social commentators now acknowledge was a sense of complacency, a feeling that economic growth and the pursuit of wealth would solve the nation's problems and deliver a bright new future. Today, there is a realization that it is not enough for the government to get out of the way of the private sector and that it actually needs to govern, to deliver services instead of merely lining its pockets.
The idea that India was on an automatic path to becoming a developed capitalist economy was "delusional," said 36-year-old best-selling author Chetan Bhagat. "It doesn't just happen. It needs systemic changes, structural changes, cultural changes," he said. "And the biggest roadblock is corruption."cons of industry humbled
Doubts about a bright future for India started to set in during the run-up to last summer's Commonwealth Games, with stories of blatant corruption and stunning incompetence shaming the nation.




But when India's comptroller and auditor general reported in November, just a few days after Obama's visit, that mobile phone operators had been undercharged nearly $40 billion for allocations of 2G frequency bands in 2008, and leaked telephone conversations suggested the existence of an unsavory nexus among politicians, business and the media, the national mood really soured.
The billionaire leaders of industry had been the gods of the new India, people such as Anil Ambani, the head of mobile carrier Reliance Communications, who was voted MTV's youth icon in 2003, and the septuagenarian Ratan Tata, often seen as the embodiment of business with a social conscience.
In the past few months, those icons have been publicly humbled. In February, Ambani was hauled up to the Central Bureau of Investigation for questioning over the 2G scam, while Tata has been to court in an attempt to block release of the taped telephone conversations, which featured him, along with his lobbyist Nira Radia and other top industrialists, politicians and journalists." 'Have all my gods got feet of clay?' That is the question every Indian is asking," said marketing and branding guru Suhel Seth. "For the first time, you have a crestfallen India that doesn't have an inspirational icon to look up to."In a February survey of urban middle-class Indians by the Times of India newspaper, 83 percent said corruption was at an all-time high, two-thirds said the government was not serious about tackling it, and 96 percent said it had tainted the government's image.
"The mood of the nation is now downbeat," said Madhurima Bhatia of Synovate, which conducted the survey.
The crisis of confidence is sharpened, political analysts say, by a leadership vacuum, with the elderly figure of Manmohan Singh standing apparently helplessly at the helm of a government in denial about the scale of the problems.Singh talks of the corruption scandals as "aberrations" and accuses the news media of sapping India's self-confidence and spoiling its image abroad. It is an argument that seems to only make many Indians angrier.Singh himself has been forced to agree to appear before a parliamentary panel investigating the mobile spectrum scam. His telecom minister is in jail, and he acknowledged "an error of judgment" when the Supreme Court struck down his appointee to run the country's anti-corruption watchdog because he was facing charges of graft.
Indians see a turning point Sulajja Firodia Motwani, managing director of the Kinetic Motor Co. and co-chair of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry's Young Leaders Forum, said corruption had a "deeply corrosive impact" on young Indians, who were starting to feel it was limiting their opportunities to succeed."Young India wants to run ahead. We want to make a huge new superpower," she said. "On the one hand, there is much enthusiasm on the growth prospects. On the other hand, corruption in our country has reached such an unprecedented scale, it has become all-pervasive, and that certainly is a dampener for youth."At the end of January, about 30,000 people, most from the traditionally apathetic ranks of the young and the middle class, marched in New Delhi against corruption, mobilized largely by a campaign on Facebook. There was no comparison to the protests that have convulsed the Middle East, and no one is expecting revolution in India. But there is a widespread feeling that the country is at an inflection point, that crisis can be turned into an opportunity, but that India needs to dramatically improve the quality of its governance if it is to fulfill its vast potential."Young India has said enough is enough," Motwani said. "We want a new India."