Malaysian Maverick

Mahathir Mohamad is a maverick indeed, just like the title of Barry Wein's book suggests, the book that was seized by the government reportedly to study the suitability of the books contents. The book in question is The Malaysian Maverick:Mahathir Mohamad in turbulent times. The controversial book claims that among other things, Mahathir worked with American government in allowing them to conduct training in Johore and burned billions of dollars during his tenure as Prime Minister.

My view on this is the same as the Maverick himself, release the book so that it can be made available to the public so that we, the public who worked our buts out earning money that the government conveniently tax us that the book claimed to be mismanaged, be the judge and not those officials in the Home Ministry as it's in the interest of the public too know what happened to their money. Withholding the book won't help, rather it will lead to speculation on the contents of the book by the netizens in the web as can be seen in many blog writings and social networking sites.

This speculation whether true or not can only be dispelled only by the contents of the book be made available and Mahathir himself must be made to answer those allegations, the final verdict will be decided by the public who will have the chance to hear from both sides, then and only then will the verdict by the public be fair and conclusive.

Not doing so will only do unjust for Mahthir's reputation as in Malaysia, rumours ruled the day as we can't trust the mainstream media as it's superbly bias nor that we can use our reasoning to arrive at the truth as that requires the excess to all information which in this case happens to be in the book. So making the book available for scrutiny will allow Mahathir to defend his reputation and if necessary take legal action against the author if the book is a bunch of lies written on a Pro-Western sentiments rather than undisputed facts and figures.

If proven to be accurate then an investigation should be done to find out where the billions went to and whether they're individuals that deserve to be punished because of involvement in the disappearance of billions. I'm not suggesting this for pure resentment rather the move will deter others in the future not to be involved in such scandalous projects that don't follow proper procedures or face the fury of the law.

Nonetheless no matter what the truth is, I still believe that it will not dent Mahathir's contribution towards this country from a backwater nation to a metropolitan, rather it will only serve us as a lesson on what the current lack of accountability and transparency can do to a nation, without knowing we are losing billions and helping US army whose immoral deed in the middle east means that we are a part of it's evil not to mention the risk it pose to our sovereignty as US military are known to be moles, informing to their government on possible weakness in the country they are operating in to take advantage of it to further the US interest. I'm not being anti-American here rather just spelling out the facts.

In conclusion it's high time the government adopts the policy of free information to the public as in the information age, the public must make informed decisions that requires free-flow of information so that they can reach to an informed decision on issues like politics, economics and so on. This will free us from and ignorant society that we are to an informed one that can act in accordance to their values and truth rather than simply accepting conventional wisdom disseminated by the government owned media that cannot hold water, making it tough for the people to make the correct informed decisions and necessary corrective actions as a society that is progressive is the society that embraces the truth and act accordingly no matter how painful it may be for them to do so in an effort to progress further and beyond.