I was at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre attending an international convention.
“Today is Aug 22, the national day of mourning for the victims of MH17,” said my friend Arif, he was referring to the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) Flight MH17 that was shot down over Ukraine, “let’s have a minute of silence in their memory.”
We stood there in respectful silence, the occasion made more poignant by the sight of the Petronas Twin Towers that stood majestically shimmering against the dark sky.
Later at the opening ceremony of the convention the nearly 3,000 delegates too paid their respect with a moment of silence.
Over the last few months the newspapers have been inundated by the coverage of this tragedy with our politicians being featured prominently as they busied themselves around the world on this matter. The nation was in collective mourning, led by our Prime Minister who carried his grief visibly on his face.
The parliament even convened an emergency meeting to debate a motion to condemn the missile attack that brought down MAS Flight MH17.
“So to express the firm statement of the Malaysian people, I as the prime minister have decided to call for an emergency parliamentary sitting to table a motion to condemn the inhumane act,” said our prime minister.
I wonder if I am the only one who feels perhaps we overdo it a bit. Don’t get me wrong. I am not being uncaring. I even stood in silence twice. And I am also grateful that for once we are united, albeit untied in grief. Goodness knows how much we need a common ground to demonstrate our unity as Malaysians in view of the antics of some parties who seem to be bent on driving a wedge between the different communities of the country.
However, do we really need to call an emergency parliamentary session just to issue a statement of condemnation against the perpetrators of the foul deed? While at the emergency session I would have thought that they could have included in their deliberation not just on the issuance of statement of condemnation perhaps they could have also discussed a bit the other tragedy relating to MAS – the financial spiralling down of the national carrier.
If I were in the august house I would have posted the question, how is it an airline that had the monopoly of the sky for over 50 years without any challenge can fall from grace so dramatically.
I would not accept that it is due to the declining state of the airline industry because another outfit that appeared on the scene just over ten years ago, this new kid on the block has in that short time grew into the biggest and most successful air carrier in the world. The rub is that AirAsia operates in the same milieu as MAS employing pretty much the same type of personnel.
The recent second fall from grace of our national carrier is even more startling. Just about five years ago it was rescued from financial and operational disaster by a whiz kid from Sarawak. Yes, our very own Idris Jala from the Bario highlands.
He took over the helm of the ailing airline in 2005 which was then registering a huge loss. In a few short years Idris Jala turned a net loss of RM1.3 billion in 2005 to an annual profit of RM851 million, the highest in the airline’s sixty-year history. It was a record turn around.
I remember together with about 500 people sitting in rapt attention listening to him sharing his formula of the great turnaround, which he termed “The six secrets of business transformation”.
Dato’ Sri Idris Jala has since then moved on to greater thing. He is now a Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department acting as the Chief Executive Officer of the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu), to drive the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) to take the country into a “high-income nation” by 2020.
If I were in the parliament I would like to discuss how the record runaround turned into dust in barely three years when the CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya admitted that “The company is in crisis,” and announced the stunning net loss of RM2.52 billion for 2011, which is the largest annual loss in the company’s history.
I feel that when we hold the one-minute silence we should not just stand in grief for the lost souls on MH17. Of course it is right that we should pay respect to them but don’t just hang our head in grief. Rather we should also ponder on the dire potent that is hanging ominously over our national air carrier.
We should urge our political representatives, those who have voice in our highest decision body, the parliament, to spend their energy and time not just to formulate resolution of condemnation about action and event that has already passed, event and action that we really don’t have much control over. (It is just our bad luck that MH17 was shot down; it could easily be the other two aircrafts that were in the vicinity then.)
There are other urgent matters that demand their immediate attention that they should apply their collective grey matters to come up with solutions.
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