Associated Press, Chris Brummit, 17 March 2014
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| Malaysia's acting Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein looks on a map of a search corridor during a press conference at a hotel near the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, in Sepang, Malaysia, Monday, March 17, 2014. Twenty-six countries are involved in the massive international search for the Malaysia Airlines jetliner that disappeared on March 8 with 239 people aboard. They include not just military assets on land, at sea and in the air, but also investigators and the specific support and assistance requested by Malaysia, such as radar and satellite information. (AP Photo/ Vincent Thian) |
The
mysterious disappearance of a Boeing 777 with 239 people aboard would test any
government, but Malaysia's is particularly strained because its elite are
accustomed to getting an easy ride. Decades in power and a pliant media have
cushioned them from scrutiny.
Its civilian
and military leaders have struggled to provide answers from Day One of the
crisis, when it took several hours to even declare the plane missing. They said
early on that the plane may have doubled back, but took days to say it was
military radar that suggested that and days more to confirm it.
In response
to criticism, government officials have repeatedly said they must wait to
confirm information before they can release it. But that has not prevented them
from making mistakes.
On Monday,
the defense minister said police visited the homes of the jet's two pilots soon
after the March 8 disappearance, contradicting the country's police chief, who
had said officers did not go there until a week later. The minister also raised
doubts about earlier reports from Malaysian officials that a key data
communications system had been turned off before the cockpit spoke to
air-traffic controllers - a detail that has increased speculation that the
pilots were responsible.
China,
where most of the passengers are from, has been especially dismayed that it
took a week for Malaysia to come up with details on the plane's possible
location. The official Xinhua News Agency said the delay "smacks of either
dereliction of duty or reluctance to share information."
Passengers'
relatives, holed up in hotels in Kuala Lumpur and Beijing and desperate for
word, have picked up on rumors and false leads in the media before the
government has, adding to their anguish.
Asked on
Monday by a foreign reporter about the criticism, Malaysian Defense Minister
Hishammuddin Hussein said it was baseless. "I have got a lot of feedback
saying we have been very responsible in our actions," said Hishammuddin,
the main face of the government's response to the crisis. "It's very irresponsible
of you to say that."
The
disappearance of the jet touches on issues that officials normally wouldn't
discuss publicly. The incident now appears certain to be a security failure at
some level of the government, and has raised questions about the national
airline and the defense readiness of the air force, which was unable to quickly
spot a jetliner in Malaysian airspace and off its flight path. The possibility
of Islamist militant involvement is also highly sensitive in the multiethnic
country.
"In
Malaysian political culture, they are not used to answering questions straight
and honestly," said Bridget Welsh, a political scientist from the
Singapore Management University. "They are used to 'government knows best
for government,' and have been very slow in realizing this is not a Malaysia
crisis - this has global effects."
Malaysia
has enjoyed rapid economic growth since it gained independence from Britain
more than half a century ago. Although nominally a democracy, the same ruling
coalition has been in power for more than five decades, helped by
gerrymandering and affirmative action policies that have won the support of the
ethnic Malay majority.
But in
recent years the government's grip on power has weakened; the ruling coalition
didn't win the popular vote for the first time in elections last year, though
it managed to hold on to power. The plane disappeared the morning after a court
convicted opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim of sodomy, a verdict widely seen as
politically motivated. It has since emerged that the pilot was a supporter of
Anwar, though that has not been widely reported in government media.
Greg
Barton, a Southeast Asia expert at Australia's Monash University, said the
country has a tradition of distrusting the West, a "third worldism"
political philosophy that was a legacy of the pugnacious rule of former
Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir.
"There
is a natural instinct not to ask for too much Western help," he said.
"It's made it hard for the government to move quickly."
Malaysian
officials have said they are working with foreign experts and countries,
including the sharing of sensitive radar and satellite data.
Apart from
online news portals, the print and television media in Malaysia are unabashedly
pro-government.
"Stop
bashing SAR (search and rescue) efforts, says Swede FB user," read the
headline in the mass circulation New Straits Times, which went on to quote at
length from the Facebook page of the anonymous Swede defending the government.
"Can
you imagine the burden they (the government) carry on their shoulders and how
much precaution they have to take before announcing anything?" the Swede
was quoted as posting on his account. "No. Because you are not in their
shoes."
The
government said soon after the jet disappeared that there were indications it
might have turned back from its last known position over the South China Sea
after it stopped communicating with the ground, but didn't fully explain why.
It took a week for it to confirm that military radar data had confirmed the
plane had flown over the country and then north toward the Indian Ocean.
"There
is a bit of haziness there," said Ibrahim Suffian, the head of the Merdeka
Center, a Malaysian political research institute.
Like
several others, Ibrahim said he thought the government's media management had
improved in recent days, perhaps because they had contracted a crisis
management company to advise them.
The fact
that the air force didn't apparently spot or react to the jet flying across its
airspace has brought the military unusual scrutiny. Some aviation analysts have
said authorities were slow in tracing the plane, in shifting the search area
from the South China Sea, and in investigating the pilots' background.
Suspicion has fallen on the pilots, although Malaysian officials have said they
are looking into everyone aboard the flight.
"I
think they were a bit tardy in getting onto it," said aviation expert Tom
Ballantyne. "It may be the pilot was very experienced, he was obviously
highly respected, perhaps they thought it was out of the question (that he
might be involved.) Certainly, his home and that of the co-pilot should have
been part of the initial investigation."
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