We expect things would have been checked and monitored well enough that these things don’t happen
WHEN you get to a certain age, say after you’ve lived long enough to have seen some things in your life, you tend to not argue with people.
Even when you know they are wrong, you just don’t want to spend the energy to argue. You think you can drive the wrong way and steal the empty parking spot I was eyeing at the mall? I’d shrug and find another one. Some random guy on the Internet tells me laksa Johor is an elitist culinary abomination, you say? I just shut down the laptop. Someone say the earth is flat? I’d say good for you and as long as you’re not the pilot the next time I fly, I’m ok with it.
This non-confrontational attitude, I find, goes a long way to increasing mental well-being. It leaves your life with more space for the really important stuff, like enjoying food and sanity, for example. These arguments work everywhere, but for me, it worked best at home.
When the missus says I was the one who forgot to turn the lights off when I distinctly remembered otherwise, I’d say “Yes, dear I did” and move on.
This is much simpler than having to apologise, which has been happening a lot lately. A week ago, Datuk Seri Mohd Najib Razak, the guy who was found guilty and serving jail time for some hanky panky at SRC International Sdn Bhd, made a public apology.
Well, sort of.
Najib, the former prime minister (PM) who once went to see Donald Trump in Washington with an offer to rejuvenate the US economy, said he was sorry that the 1Malaysia Development Bhd “debacle happened under my watch as minister of finance and PM. However, he also said being held responsible for things he did not ‘knowingly’ enable was unfair to him.”
Though less dramatic and involving much less money, two founders of FashionValet Sdn Bhd apologised for their failure of the investments of state-owned Khazanah Nasional Bhd in their company.
FashionValet co-founders Vivy Yusof and her husband, Mohd Fadzaruddin Shah Anuar, said they took full responsibility for the failure of the investments.
“We want to state from the outset that we take full responsibility for the failure of the investment.
“As the two people who were responsible for managing the company, the buck stops with us — and the fact is that we failed our investors. “We are disappointed in ourselves and regretful that it has come to this. We are truly sorry,” they said after it was announced that Khazanah and Permodalan Nasional Bhd sold their stakes in the fashion company for RM3.1 million, a lot less than their initial investment of RM47 million.
The graft buster, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, is also looking into some dodgy transactions in FashionValet, including one in which the company bought an asset from Vivy for RM90 million.
These public apologies are well and good for manners, but they are an absolute waste of time because they do nothing for the average taxpayer who still has collectively been left with the bill.
We expect things would have been checked and monitored well enough that these things don’t happen.
However, we suspect that oversight and accountability were lacking in both cases.
I would rather have the authorities responsible been more diligent and prevent bad decisions from happening while they were happening than receiving worthless apologies later.
Even today, we could do with diligence, like what is happening with the other 5G network rollout that has been awarded to U Mobile Sdn Bhd despite its foreign ownership and being smaller than other competing bidders for the project.
Let’s bring back better safe than sorry.
ZB Othman is an editor of The Malaysian Reserve.
