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Sakmongkol ak 47

ariff.sabri@gmail.com

Sunday 27 December 2009

The Sky’s no limit


 

The air force came out with the statement that they kicked out the BG because he was incompetent. Therefore the BG is not our Ali.

Why are there conflicting news coming out from the government? The defence ministers appeared to be suggesting that this ex BG and 40 other people were involved in the theft. Now, the RMAF appeared to contradict their minister by saying the BG was sacked because of incompetency. Are they referring to the same BG? Could it be possible there were two generals involved? One known or be made known to minister Zahid, the other known to RMAF? The IGP says, the police are questioning a few generals.

The air force may be doing an exercise in damage control. Military debriefing, they say. There was only one BG involved. The BG may be the prime suspect. But the premature exposure may derail better investigations. The BG may take measures to cover his tracks. RMAF suddenly realizes it is too excited. They have blown open their action. The suspects got wind and they are countering.

It is impossible for a person to attain the rank of a BG to have done so through incompetence. That would suggest his superiors were more incompetent than he. Or it would also suggest that the system it has as regards career progression is compatible and suitable to allow incompetents to rise through the ranks. This would then lend credence to the expression, not only does the cream rise to the top, the scum does too.

If that is, then it calls into question, the quality of our airmen. Can they be depended upon to defend our country? If one incompetent BG is a measure of the general quality of his subordinates( the entire division which he heads), our air defence is suspect.

Then we might as well say the whole RMAF is full of morons; you join at the age of 20 and then maybe attain the rank of BG at the age of 45. That means for 25 years, RMAF couldn't detect your incompetence? If they couldn't detect this, can they interpret what's on our radar screens?

Therefore, it is highly unlikely that the BG was sacked because of incompetence. He must have committed some gross misconduct which warranted dismissal.

It is better for RMAF to shut up and not issue any more public utterances about this mater. How do we know those issuing such statements are not incompetent themselves? If you are stupid, let the stupidity stays with you. Don't make us stupid too.

Suppose, like someone said- the engines theft is only the tip of the iceberg. What does this statement mean? I am thinking that we need to lose at least 14 F-5Es to arrive at the figure. Remember we have lost RM 100 million or USD 29 million. One unit of F-5E costs USD 2.1 million.

What have we actually lost that could total up to USD29 million? Perhaps more than 20 planes each costing around USD900k like A4 Skyhawks for example? What if, for the past 10 years, this syndicate has been selling a number of engines and planes each year?

At regular intervals, you booked out a few engines for repairs somewhere. They were never returned or some people just 'booked' in the same number on paper. Not until a physical inventory check is carried out, will you become aware that physically the engines were not there. For the whole scam to work there must be close collusion between the various departments.

There must be a dummy company somewhere which acts as the exporter. This company processes the necessary export documents, gets customs clearance, does all the shipping or even air freighting arrangements.

Do we now trust, the incompetent RMAF to conduct a thorough investigation into the sordid affair? Now, by their own inadvertent admission, the FMAF is full of incompetent people. We therefore cannot afford to depend on the RMAF people for who knows, the investigation team may be led by another incompetent person- a colonel maybe, a BG perhaps. We must therefore set up an independent auditing team to investigate the full scale and extent of any larceny that is going on. This is simply an aggravated burglary.

If we have lost so many planes, then there must be an internal syndicate in the RMAF which has been consistently stealing our assets. That would make any claims by anybody that the auditing and or stock taking system within the RMAF as being 1000% solid are just brinkmanship talks.

The phrase 'tip of the iceberg' can mean, the RMAF is full of even worse morons. The incompetent BG is only the tip. That can either mean, those subordinate to him are all confirmed mental retards or those above him are even worse mental retards. If I am not mistaken, the current PAT is an air force 4 star general. Is he competent or not?

It can also mean, the RM100 million lost is miniscule compared to the actual loss/theft/corruption that occurs within the RMAF and by extension right through the defense ministry.

Now, that sets me thinking on another unrelated matter- the ex general who suffered calamity and personal loss when his residence was hit by a massive landslide had his suitcases with RM300-400K recovered- were those loose change, mein general? That was also the tip of the iceberg, no?

Let us further assume that, the real intent of the leaked information was to highlight the magnitude of the corruption and other forms of thievery that are occurring within the entire defence ministry. The plane engines were just a decoy leading us to bigger game. That bigger game is corruption within the defence ministry.

Our next question then is to ask why did the theft of the engines take place with such superciliousness and impunity and more alarmingly, taken lightly by the relevant authorities charged with overseeing these matters? The thieves and those responsible for stealing engines or bleeding the military coffers dry were doing what they did with extraordinary boldness. Strange indeed.

That would suggest many things.

  1. They had some leader powerful enough who was daring enough to thump the nose of the upper echelons in the military establishment.

Or, they were emboldened enough to carry out what they did, because everyone knows that everyone who matters in the defence ministry were responsible for even greater larceny.

13 comments:

Anonymous,  27 December 2009 at 03:19  

The simple truth is just compare our defence expenditures with our neighbor and compare our war asset and % availability to determine how effective is our defence spending. Every fighting vehicles should have life cycle cost which provides us the bench mark in determine our operational cost effectiveness.

Anonymous,  27 December 2009 at 03:42  

Datuk Sakmongkol,

You managed to slide-n-dice the situation for the government. Hope they get it.

It is a case of "monkey see monkey do". If corruption is the middle name of BN/UMNO and this culture has seeped into all government depts/agencies/ministries, such large-scale theft is no longer a surprise!

All with "corruption" as their middle name want to get rich fast. So, they become so bold and they know that they can do so with impunity.

An urgent theft as such is kept under the lid for 2 years before it becomes public knowledge recently. But, they act so swiftly with their checks against the poor Bangladeshi/foreign workers, foreign students, RPK, opposition and Anwar.

Anna

Iskandar,  27 December 2009 at 07:26  

Having served in the military myself, I must admit i was no "rising star", nonetheless, to me it was a job. something that needs to be done to ones best ability.

In the my short stint..the saying was that one of the surest ways to the top was to follow the motto of BCA..no not "Bersih , Cekap & Amanah"... but one which worked much better..ie " Bodek, Carma(cari makan) dan Ampu".

It used to give me a huge sense of revulsion when I saw this happening around me.., just one of the many reasons which prompted my early departure.

Anonymous,  27 December 2009 at 07:38  

The BG was was not incompetent but corrupted. His name is Hadi.

ashburn 27 December 2009 at 07:39  

Perhap the brand new Chief and the brand new Def Minister have not learn how to synchronise and how to cover up things yet.

Anonymous,  27 December 2009 at 08:33  

This country will go down the drain in no time. How can we continue to have so many corruption committed almost every day . We have collapsed buildings, mara buying laptops at rm24,0000 a piece, screwdrivers that cost hundreds of ringgit and the tragic part is, it is only the tip of the ice-berg. Inspite of the auditor general reports and
evidence no arrest has been made. This govnt is very selective on whom they want to nab. 1Malaysia? Who believes that Najib guy. I cannot understand how they can continue to run this country. People, please unite and fight this disease before it is too late. Maybe it is already too late.

capt ravin 27 December 2009 at 10:17  

Having served in the military myself for all most 14 years, I must admit I was no "rising star", nonetheless, to me it was a honorable job job to the beloved country.
In the my short stint..the saying was that one of the surest ways to move to the top was to follow the motto " Bodek, Carma(cari makan) dan Ampu".
Can you imagine, the commanding officer failed his first command but given the second opportunity. During his first command, he introduced that no soldiers were allowed to drink in the camp. The non muslim soldier specially the East Malaysian soldier started to drink outside and landed in a problem with another uniform body in the northern state. The same commanding was moved to another battalion become more pious muslim. FIrst gave an instruction that other than muslim shouldn't conduct their believe in government property. Immediately destroy all the worship places without any mercy.
During my young officer day, there one of my colleague requested for mortar bombardment to suspected enemy location. Actually he and his troop were sitting in that particular location. Our mortar commander efficiently identified the location and reconfirmed with ground commander before firing. In actual fact he was cheating everybody, he never moved his troop physically on the ground but only changing his location on map daily. Today I came to know he is promoted to become a Colonel and commanded a battalion. Currently the same officer at the staff college and train future commanding officer. Can your imagine what type of quality officer he will produce?
The whole armed force gone to drain many years ago by the UMNO/BN rule. THere is no single hope we rectify the damage in near future. God Bless this country

Anonymous,  27 December 2009 at 10:23  

The truth of the matter is ,its the big "C".

Anonymous,  27 December 2009 at 10:35  

Ask any of Air Force defence contractors who have had any dealings with the RMAF and they can tell you the identities of the BG and 40 officers and other ranks who were terminated.The BG was dismissed under a specific section of the Armed Forces Act (AKTA 72) which said that the YDP Agong can withdraw the commission of any officer without citing any reason.

msleepyhead,  27 December 2009 at 20:18  

This is the country where you can get away with anything. What else is new?

It starts small, purchase of screwdrivers, laptops, manuals, inkjet.

When what is haram is no longer haram and justified with trying to make ends meet. Who is to blame? Everyone.

Anonymous,  28 December 2009 at 10:58  

Dato,

There are already precedents for appointing those that are incompetent to be second-in-commands.
Surely, you don't need any reminders. Look at what happened to the efficient DPMs previously. They don't challenge the incumbents. Ask Samy Vellu as well.

Anonymous,  28 December 2009 at 13:45  

Sak,

I think the government wants to been seen to have done something. So they looked around for people who had been sacked recently and decided to loosely link them to the theft.

RMAF probably thought this was too much and decided to come out with their statement about incompetency and putting the story straight.

Essentially, no action has been taken against the culprits in the past 2 years.

Anonymous,  15 July 2010 at 22:27  

So, what else is new. MACC is going after the small fries. They will tell you of their success in catching petty thieves while the big timers are strutting around scot-free and very confident no harm will come to them. They are in collusion with UMNO guys of course. The key person that sowed the seed of corruption and incompetence is that Apanama. All in the name of protecting their bangsa and blah blah. It is still going on and is played out for all to see. You people can watch and talk but you cant touch them. Malaysia bo-leh has now entered a new and final phase, Malaysia Bo-liao(habis-lah). Sad.

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