The federal government has come under fire for urging to upgrade its radar system under the pretext of bettering the security of the nation. In a joint statement by Julian Tan, MP for Setampin, Steven Sim, MP for Bukit Mertajam and Lam Choong Wah, Senior Fellow of REFSA, the DAP has slammed the RMAF’s request to strengthen the nation’s military assets, including radar system citing the disappearance of MH370 as its motivation to incur government spending. The proposal is set for the 11th Malaysia Plan.
“We have pointed out that until now there is no post-mortem report, no parliamentary select committee to investigate the crisis and assess the issues within, no white paper on this important global crisis affecting our country, and, recently, even parliamentary question on important ground responses posted by Steven Sim was rejected”
“In short, there is no clear understanding of the matter [MH370] and yet, the government has decided that buying new, expensive military equipments is the way to address this crisis,” they said in the joint statement, adding that this is not the first time the MH370 crisis has been cited by the government as excuse to go “shopping” for new big military equipments. In April, both Julian Tan and Steven Sim had criticised the National Space Agency (ANGKASA) for trying to revive the failed RAZAKSAT programme under the pretext of using such technology for MH370-type crisis.
They pointed out that in the 2013 Defence Anti-Corruption Index, Malaysia was ranked D-. The study measures the degree of corruption risk and vulnerability in government defence establishments, and places Malaysia in the same D- band as notoriously corrupt nations such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Rwanda, Khazakstan and China.
“The “crisis-as-excuse shopping” is a good example why Malaysia is ranked D-,” said Tan, Sim and Lam.
Radar blip not useful in MH370 crisis
As admitted by the Deputy Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Bakri on March 26, MH370’s turn back from the South China Sea into the Malaysian Peninsular had been detected by the military via blips on its radar screen. However, no jets were deployed to identify whether the aircraft was hostile or not. On March 26, Abdul Rahim had added that he “assumed” that the turn back was requested by the civilian air traffic controllers.
Later, Defense Minister Hishammudin Hussein had explained that the RMAF did not scramble jets to identify the aircraft was because Malaysia was not in “war time”.
Though the RMAF intends to increase air safety via a radar upgrade, the failure to act when the current military radar had indicated the alleged MH370 turnback has caused widespread doubts in the proposed military spending. -The Rocket
