Kit Siang’s lurch into a moral fog

Kit Siang’s lurch into a moral fog



From Terence Netto

What has come upon Lim Kit Siang that he should have said what he most recently said?

Last Sunday, the redoubtable DAP standard bearer startled admirers by saying he is prepared to work with Najib Razak for the good of the country provided Najib condemns
the 1MDB scandal and is opposed to Malaysia becoming a kleptocracy.

That would be like Anwar Ibrahim saying he is prepared to listen to Daim Zainuddin’s prescriptions for the country provided Daim brings back all the money the Pandora
Papers say he has stashed in Panama and declares he is against keeping money in offshore accounts.

What has possessed Kit Siang – he of more than a half century’s admirable steadfastness against corruption — to equivocate in this present time in the face of the horrendous
scale of corruption Najib is alleged to have committed and for which he might soon be jailed?

In explaining his lurch into moral relativism, Kit Siang said that his six decades in politics had taught him that when it comes to personalities, things are not “black and white” but
“different shades of gray.”

Here Kit Siang was channelling Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant who observed that out of the crooked timber of humanity nothing straight was ever made.

Additionally, Kit Siang suggested his equivocation was prompted by the “Malu Apa Boss” phenomenon which sees many Malaysians place Najib on a pedestal despite his involvement in the 1MDB scandal.

The “Malu Apa Boss” phenomenon is not bafflingly inexplicable in the context of recent Malaysian political history.

It can be traced to Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s 22 years as prime minister (1981-2003) when during crises in which he was impugned, he was concerned not so much with presenting
valid arguments as in engendering a subversive perspective.

The aim of this perspective was to blur the distinctions between right and wrong, valid and invalid, real and imaginary.

This obfuscation’s echoes are to be found in the opening scene of Macbeth, Shakespeare’s great play on vaulting ambition.

In that scene the bard has three witches muse: “Fair is foul and foul is fair/Hover through the fog and filthy air.”

Observers of Mahathir’s gyrations were filled with foreboding about the ultimate consequences of this inversion of values.

Decades later, this fog has led to the muddledom embodied in the “Malu Apa Boss” phenomenon.

The irony is no less grim in that its fomenter is now its harshest decrier.

If only the ironies ended there.

A decades-long critic of a half-century long saga of government corruption, whose apotheosis can be said to be 1MDB, is now prevaricating before corruption’s Goliath.

What explains Kit Siang’s sudden reversal of form and disregard for the consternation it is sure to elicit?

It is speculated that the aim of the “Malu Apa Boss” phenomenon is to mute the punishment for the saga’s prime perpetrator upon his final conviction.

Could it be that Kit Siang is seeding the ground for a similar end to ongoing matters hitting close to home?

It reminds one of the humorist who said he thought he had hit rock bottom until he heard a tapping from underneath.

On the great issues of the times, moral relativism is the way to a bottomless pit.





Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.