MALAY merchants and traders played a significant role in the early modern history of trade and commerce in this region but records on their entrepreneurship is hardly researched. Their active presence had given a great impact to the intra-Asian trade in Southeast Asia prior to European colonialism and imperialism.

Strangely, when I was much younger, once in a while, newspaper reports showed Malays involved in petty theft and the Chinese in robbing banks. Malays were petty traders and Chinese were businesspeople.

Today, the Chinese have stopped robbing banks but the Malays have improved; they use motorbikes to “ragut” and the smarter ones maraud and run rampant to steal from government-linked companies (GLCs) in the millions, if not billions.

And the number of Malay petty traders have increased multifold despite the billions spent to help Bumiputeras.

A few months ago, the prime minister announced new initiatives for hawkers and petty traders. An allocation of RM48.5 million for a micro-financing programme (shariah-compliant) and another RM25 million for the implementation of the Night Market Transformation Programme.

Much has been said about the inability to compete with the other communities. Many Malay traders failed as they did not regard trading as a lifetime vocation and failed to appreciate the small things like proper display and stall decoration. Also, the lack of business management skills and financial control. Some smarter ones, businessmen and politicians, will gang up to think of ways to siphon off money for their own interests.

Latest, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission arrested eight people suspected of graft involving projects worth RM2.3 billion belonging to a GLC.

I wonder what is in the mind of these people. Is it their birthright to do so and do they think about the future of not only Malays but all Malaysians?

News spreads fast and the world looks at Malaysia as an easy place in which to steal money from the government. And what is the government doing about it?

Every year, the auditor-general with clockwork precision will show all the weaknesses in the system. Billions missing but how many have been charged and convicted? Is there collusion and is it from top to bottom?

And now, we have a bloated cabinet… Can someone start looking at this issue and avoid people starting to assume that they are part of the problem?

Can’t you see how the country is slowly becoming a failed state?

I may have many things to say about the United States but one thing I appreciate is that it took Washington less than two months to find a former Goldman Sachs banker guilty of conspiring to violate an anti-corruption law to help loot hundreds of millions of dollars via 1Malaysia Development Bhd.

In Malaysia, the case has taken years and a convicted person can freely move around and even influence the government of the day!

Let us all be serious in making this country great, and in this holy month of Ramadhan please reflect and return to the true teachings of Islam for the good of all Malaysians.

Do we love our country or do we love the people who steal from it? What say you? – April 9, 2022.

* Saleh Mohammed reads The Malaysian Insight.