Ali Baba And The Filthy Rich Thieves

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“A just city should favour justice and the just, hate tyranny and injustice, and give them both their just deserts.”
- Al-Farabi (870-950 C.E)
The RM100 handout helps, but Malaysians will continue to struggle with their finances given the rising costs of goods, services and taxes.
Harder still is keeping up with the corruption cases in our courts and the daily chorus of arrests and investigations by the MACC, making us wonder whether our B40 is the end product of corruption after all.
But for those who persevere, they will be justly rewarded, jalabiyas and all, with a journey on a flying carpet to Old Baghdad in the time of Ali Baba circa 900 CE of the Abbasid Caliphate.
It’s where opulence, religiosity and scholarship co-existed in happy harmony with thievery, corruption and abuse of power until the rider became heavier than the horse, causing the Caliphate to totter under its own weight.
And there is no better way to feel the pulse of Old Baghdad, famed for her libraries and eateries, cafes and teahouses and palatial mansions and medieval bath houses, than by hanging out with her brilliant poets and listening to the stories from the “The Thousand and One Nights” (Alf Laylah wa-Laylah) as told by storytellers, hakawati, to eager crowds in the street corners and coffee shops.
But unlike the beautiful Scheherazade who saved her neck by framing stories each night in the same way our politicians frame the constitution in broad daylight, the hakawati of Old Baghdad, took their audience on a journey through history and legend.
They did so while artfully slipping in the latest happenings and intrigues of the Caliphate whose spies had grown old and weary from denying them to kingdom come.
In between telling these rich and amusing tales of traders, barbers, fisherfolk, servants, camel drivers, farmers, unsatisfied wives and donkeys, the hakawati also slyly complained of judges being removed by the governors of provinces midway through a trial, of corruption and bribery in high places, of stupid injunctions and blatant injustices, of slave girls and seduction and of magic and misconduct.
‘Latest news’
And just like in the coffee houses of Old Baghdad, our warongs, gerais and kedai kopi too are filled these days with Malaysians sipping their cuppa, gossiping about scandals and malfeasance of a similar nature, of which we too have a rich and endless supply.
These are shared and swapped among our circle of friends on Facebook and WhatsApp until they come back to us as the “latest news”.
It happened to me last week. I shared with friends the “latest news” that the High Court in Kuala Lumpur had ordered the former CEO of Sime Darby and four other senior executives to cough up RM350 million for making wrongful payments to consultants of the “Qatar Petroleum” project.
Filed in 2010, the trial is a moral lesson on the dangers of turning teamwork into collusion, like so often these days.
Days later, this same story came back to me together with an item about the nation’s coffers, also called Khazanah in Old Baghdad, being shortchanged by a whopping RM900 million in export duties.
Surely someone had painted a rosy picture of scrap metal and e-waste by calling it by any other name. How can all this heavy metal not be seen or heard for years and years? Didn’t it even ring a bell?
The ongoing investigations called “Ops Metal” by the MACC are assisted by Bank Negara, the Royal Malaysian Customs Department, and the Inland Revenue Board. Trust me, it’s not a waste of time.
But I would have preferred they call it “Ops Lampu”, to remind us of Ali Baba’s magic lamp. And to also establish the link between rubbing the lamp and greasing the palms of various officials to enable this mighty con job.
‘Corruption industry’
But like all storytellers, I needed a break. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, news of corruption and hot cash in the construction of data centres came in.
The margins must be fatter than the voluminous genie that comes out of a magic lamp in a cloud of smoke - they literally had money to burn. Millions of ringgit of cold, hard cash. One of the better stories in our “Seribu Dan Satu Malam”.
This “latest news” convinced me that corruption in our country is a booming industry with growth prospects in the double digits. Targets are being met year after year, and the margins, healthy and sustainable as well.
“Re-investment” is at an all-time high, and some serious R&D has kept this industry well ahead of our politicians and civil servants, forcing them to play second fiddle in looting the nation.
This begs the question: When will the government admit what the average citizen has known for a long time, that our single largest and most dynamic industry is the “corruption industry”, accounting for as much as 30 percent of the economy?
This includes millions of ringgit of cash and jewellery stashed away in houses, condos, padded Ali Baba contracts and preferential policies without paying any tax at all.
While trying to get my head adjusted to all this rot in a mere week, the auditor-general released the National Audit. It sent me into a tailspin. Pening! And when I found my head, I thought I was in Old Baghdad again.
Tenders worth millions were given out without following proper procedures in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Hospital.
‘Corruption Studies’
This brings us nicely to a story I was told by a very good friend in my student days over coffee in a rundown restaurant in Pudu sometime in the 1970s.
He is as good a storyteller as the cunning hakawatis of Old Baghdad who took particular delight in recounting the old classic, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”.
So grab a seat and hear what my friend said a long time ago:
“If you want a tertiary education in ‘Corruption Studies’, start with a diploma here in Malaysia; for your bachelor’s degree, proceed to Thailand.
“And if you are still thirsting for more knowledge about the hows and whys of corruption, do your masters in the Philippines, and for the really long con, do your doctorate in Indonesia.”
How time flies. Fifty years. Now you can do it all here in Malaysia, from diploma to a doctorate in “Corruption Studies”.
Don't ask me why many of our politicians insist on being addressed as “Doctor”. Ask them yourself.
But as former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad keeps reminding us, we must have trust in the abilities of our own people. And our own Ali Babas and our own filthy rich thieves. - Mkini
MURALE PILLAI is a former GLC employee. He runs a logistics company.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.

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