You would think that a prime minister of a country would not
cover an accusation of corruption with ludicrous lies. For one thing, the lies
easily made transparent by fact-checking journalists would reflect back on the
statement of innocence itself. Just being accused in public should prompt
carefully thought-out lies because the failure to sustain the lies would
naturally cause people to conclude that the corruption charge is valid. The
connector here is bad character, plus the assumption that it is easy to obviate
charges of corruption. This assumption itself may indicate that the
office-holder believes that corruption is widespread—and from this belief can
come the assumption that it is easy to get away with taking money benefitting
the office-holder and spouse. The conduct of Malayia’s prime minister Razak Najib
and his wife Mansor Rosmah between 2008 and 2015 bear out my thesis.
During the seven
years, Mansor racked up $6 million in credit-card debt on purchases of
clothing, shoes and jewelry. At the time, she had no income other than her
husband’s $100,000 a year as prime-minister pay.[1]
After all this became public knowledge,
she “said she saved that money since she was small,” but that is impossible, an
organizer of an anticorruption protest said.[2]
Mansor is the only child of school-teachers and she had not had a
regular-paying job in years. Even so, Mansor wrote in her autobiography that
she had a habit of saving, and that she bought jewelry and dresses with her own
money. The prime-minister’s office commented in 2015 that Mansor’s spending is
commensurate with Razak’s inheritance from his father, a former prime minister.
Nevermind that Razak’s four brothers subsequently “denied that their father had
left a big estate.”[3] So the prime minister was lying about his inheritance and his wife was claiming
that she had saved $6 million of her own money.
The allegations are very serious, hence not easily brushed
off, at least ideally. They include the claims that 1) the prime minister
received hundreds of millions of dollars between 2009 and 2015 from 1Malaysia
Development, a state investment fund that he had set up, 2) large amounts of
which wound up in the prime minister’s personal account via intermediaries, and
3) at least $1 million of his wife’s spending were paid for by her husband
using credit cards that drew on 1MDB funds.[4]
The prime minister’s attorney general counter-claimed that the money from 1MDB
was a legal political donation from Saudi Arabia, and the prime minister had
returned most of the money.[5]
So the prime minister had not returned at least $1 million, and his wife had
not used her own savings to pay for all her purchases as she claimed.
Taking a step back, it looks like the couple encapsulated
themselves in a web of faulty lies, which in itself is audacious considering
what the couple were up against. Why would the two think that such terrible
lies would proffer the sort of defense that would put the corruption
allegations to rest? Wouldn’t the two be especially
careful in crafting a defense, given the money involved in the alleged
corruption? They must have thought that simply making statements would be
sufficient, and this in turn is based on the assumption that it is easy to get
away with corruption. This is an indictment not only on the corruption itself,
but on the couple’s character and their perception of corruption itself—as
being easy to get away with either because the enforcers are not doing a good
job or corruption is so widespread that chances are slim that even most of it
will face prosecution. Just because modern society has progressed in some ways,
such as in technology and medicine, does not mean that we have progressed
against corruption. Perhaps we do not allocate enough money to enforcement, or
corruption has been getting worse.
1. Tom Wright, First Lady Draws Scrutiny in 1MDB Affair, The Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2016.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
