Last night, Muhamad Sabu made yet another incendiary remark while speaking at a political rally outside Parti Keadilan Rakyat’s (PKR) N51 Balingian by-election campaign headquarters in Mukah. In the face of what has already been an arduous task of finding the missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 that has seemingly flown onto the Indian Ocean, he belittled the authorities and their continuing investigation by bringing this matter up to gain political points.
He sarcastically brought up our Defence Ministry’s purchase of two Scorpene submarines a while ago by stating that not only the prices of those submarines were overly marked-up, but the submarines proved to be useless in the search of MH370 as our authorities ended up having to use Singapore’s submarine instead.
There are two issues with this statement. Firstly, he mentioned that other countries can purchase four submarines with the price tag of RM7 billion as opposed to Malaysia’s two. When the submarines were bought back in 2002, the price tag also included maintenance service for six years, missiles, and the manufacturer’s (DCNS) support and test equipment. The submarines themselves cost RM2.43 billion each, or 970 million euros each. Given the lower exchange rate between the ringgit and Euro over the years and minus all the other costs including missiles, training and maintenance, of course the price of the same submarines would be cheaper.
Second, our Royal Malaysian Navy chief Laksamana Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Jaafar has iterated time and time again to the media that these submarines are not used in MH370 search and rescue operations because its sonar is not designed to conduct sea bed searches. In fact, there are better options including sonars fitted onto hydrographic vessels, submarine rescue vessels, specialised rescue vessels and mine hunters. One such vessels is Singapore’s MV Swift Rescue that were used for the search operations. If compared side by side, our submarines and theirs are completely different and are used for completely different purposes.
His stand on the matter is very worrying, as he is clearly using a national tragedy as nothing more than a tool for political leverage. In a time when all Malaysians should unite in the face of what experts all over the world have said to be an unprecedented tragedy in aviation history, hearing him speak trivially over the matter is not only opportunistic in nature, but also shows just how low Pakatan Rakyat is willing to stoop in order to win this by-election.
This writer sincerely believes that at the time where we, as a nation are unfairly put under international scrutiny, political affiliations should take a back seat to a show of solidarity. Clearly this Pakatan leader thinks otherwise, and that he and his party would rather join our detractors in turning our government as an easy scapegoat.
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