MANY may have forgotten a speech by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim final Might, by which he referred to as for extra frequent dialogues between folks of various faiths to construct bridges throughout cultures and religions.
Final November, Anwar spoke on the significance of ethical empowerment and the way the values shared by two religions – Islam and Confucianism – can information us in direction of extra moral paths.
The massive lesson we are able to be taught from Confucius is that relationships within the household needs to be a mannequin for bigger circles of relationship. From Islam, we be taught that we have to organise ourselves right into a unified citizenry to form a brand new period of worldwide moral governance.
Anwar’s remarks are well timed as Malaysia has sunk right into a deep ethical disaster, and everybody wants to understand that if this disaster stays unresolved, it can cripple our nation. It’s the disaster of dishonesty.
Johan Jaafar, a famend journalist, had written two years in the past: “Some consider integrity, the very basis of honesty and consistency of character, is quick evaporating. We have now modified as a nation, sadly not for the higher. Dishonesty is a virus that’s endangering the way forward for the nation.”
Think about the implications if each member of a household is dishonest: spouses are dishonest with one another, and as dad and mom they’re dishonest with their kids. In flip, kids are dishonest with their dad and mom and siblings. The household will break up. That is Malaysia’s destiny if we fail to eradicate the net of dishonesty earlier than it enwraps us all in its coils like a million-tentacled monster.
The dearth of trustworthy duty infects the private and non-private sectors in addition to their hybrid entities – the government-linked firms (GLC) and government-linked funding firms (GLIC).
Allow us to begin by analyzing the seen indicators of dishonesty inside the public sector. Virtually all of our cities have one frequent characteristic: unrepaired potholes and highway depressions. It might take months for native councils to behave, and when contractors are employed, they continuously use substandard supplies.
However why is it dishonest for civil servants to be sluggish in addressing these points? Officers are paid to be productive, and to not slack. Delays value cash, and the price is unmeasured as a result of automobile restore bills are borne by automobile homeowners.
Many highway customers have suffered automobile injury, bodily accidents, and a few have even misplaced their lives resulting from long-unrepaired potholes and highway iron covers that sit decrease than the highway floor. Little effort is made to boost these iron covers, which sink over time resulting from cracks within the surrounding concrete or when the highway is resurfaced.
Stroll via most of our cities and see the poor upkeep that characterises many public buildings, infrastructure and facilities. The maintenance of drains is especially appalling.
Litter on public streets and sidewalks typically stays uncollected for weeks and months, but
cleansing service contractors are routinely paid their month-to-month charges. Isn’t this blatant dishonesty?
Recently, it has been revealed that the C-suites of some GLC and GLIC routinely take pleasure in absolutely paid luxurious abroad holidays no matter whether or not their firms outperform or underperform. Are these professional job rewards?
Allow us to flip to the personal sector. In all places you look, the monster of dishonesty is prowling. Our cities are dotted with Folks’s Housing Tasks, but many residents fail to pay the low upkeep charges, regardless of having Astro and proudly owning automobiles.
We have now not but addressed fraud and tax evasion, however now we should flip to one of the insidious types of dishonesty, second solely to political corruption: scams. All our lives are being touched by scams. When you’ve got not been a sufferer, and have no idea anybody who has, it merely means your flip has not come.
In 2022, RM804 million was misplaced to scammers, and the determine surged to RM1.34 billion final 12 months, based on the Communications and Digital Ministry. In 2023, a complete of 33,235 rip-off circumstances had been reported to the Nationwide Rip-off Response Centre. The federal government believes the precise
losses could also be increased, as many circumstances had been reported on to the police.
Victims have fallen prey to telecommunication scams, monetary fraud, love scams, e-commerce scams, pretend loans and bogus investments. Many have misplaced their life financial savings. Complaints about funding scams shot up by over 300% between 2019 and 2023, the Securities Fee revealed final week. Practically RM1 billion has been misplaced to funding scammers thus far this 12 months.
The infamous rip-off, lengthy often known as the “macao rip-off”, could also be extra precisely described because the “jail rip-off” as a result of the tactic used is to frighten victims into believing they’ve dedicated against the law and shall be detained in jail.
Final 12 months’s victims included many individuals of their 40s, 50s and 60s, and one particular person in his 20s. Amongst them had been academics and lecturers, managers, analysts, medical doctors, farmers, engineers, pensioners and civil servants.
The usual tactic entails a junior scammer posing as an official from a authorities ministry, such because the tax division, courier firm, transport firm, financial institution, submit workplace, insurance coverage firm or comparable. You might be knowledgeable that your title has appeared in a suspicious doc.
When you specific concern, two senior scammers will take over, pretending to be a police sergeant and an inspector. They declare {that a} crime has been dedicated in your title and a warrant to your arrest has been issued, with detention pending investigation. The “good man” sergeant provides you a manner out – the standard one, in fact: transferring massive sums of cash to a number of financial institution accounts.
A tragedy occurred on the finish of final 12 months when a 95-year-old retired civil servant, who had been scammed out of RM18,000, turned deeply distressed. His well being quickly deteriorated and he handed away.
The scammers are a multiethnic power of locals. We all know this as a result of they can converse any language that their victims are most comfy with. Backing up the scammers are massive networks of collaborators with jobs that grant them entry to databases, and who promote private particulars, together with cellphone numbers. Round 73% of cell phone numbers utilized by roughly 20 million folks in Malaysia have been leaked or offered to scammers.
One other community of collaborators are checking account holders who hire or promote their accounts to scammers. These accounts then turn out to be mule accounts to which rip-off victims are requested to switch their cash. Three months in the past, the federal Industrial Crime Investigation Division disclosed that it had recognized over 208,000 mule accounts linked to on-line scams and industrial crime actions.
These two networks can’t exist until these in increased positions let it occur. Negligence is a type of dishonesty as a result of superior officers are paid to stay vigilant.
The underlying purpose for the unfold of dishonesty is the erosion of the nation’s cooperative spirit. Honesty and cooperation are intently intertwined; honesty fosters belief, which is important for efficient cooperation. Belief indicators reliability, encouraging others to cooperate, understanding they’re coping with fellow residents who worth truthfulness.
Within the early life of civilisation, faith and politics had been the dual foundational pillars of society. State religions developed public rituals to make sure that the honesty and cooperative behaviour that after certain members of small hunter-gatherer tribes collectively as one household would persist, regardless of the massive, unrelated populations attribute of city societies.
Nevertheless, these identical rituals are carried out in the present day as mere necessities for acquiring a passport to heaven within the afterlife. All our religions at the moment are mired in ritualistic reveals of loyalty to God and conformity to set practices.
Though there are 9 distinguished religions in Malaysia – Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Jainism and the Bahai Religion – they’ve did not mould a united entrance to uphold cooperative behaviour.
Many religions have exploited the nation’s multifaith range to develop their membership in step with supremacist leanings, competing with different religions as an alternative of bonding as one style to supply excessive requirements of honesty and cooperative behaviour for all residents. Such rivalry undermines belief.
One frequent incidence demonstrates this self-centredness. We’re used to labelling the folks of different religions as “unbelievers” or “non-believers” regardless of each citizen professing to uphold the primary precept of the Rukunegara – Perception in God. They need to be referred to as associates.
By sustaining their conventional conservatism as an alternative of forging a united entrance, our religions have created an ethical vacuum that enables the net of dishonesty to unfold over society. Ample sociohistorical proof factors to the conclusion that with out belief and cooperation, a nation will perish.
The author champions interfaith concord. Feedback: [email protected]
