Malaysiakini : COMMENT | Despite former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak’s conviction on all four counts of power abuse and 21 counts of money laundering related to RM2.3 billion of funds, a 15-year sentence, an over RM11 billion fine or an additional 10 years in lieu, his pardon will still take centre stage at the Umno general assembly.

That is perplexing, puzzling, and completely over the top for what was once the premier party in the country, which has withered to a state of little relevance with 26 seats in Parliament compared to 109 in 2004, a comedown which looks set to continue.

Anonymous : A State in Moral Collapse. Malaysia today is not merely failing. It is rotting in plain sight. What remains is not a functioning nation, but a shell state where corruption is institutionalised, accountability is cosmetic, and power feeds exclusively on itself. This is no longer about bad apples. The barrel is poisoned. Corruption in Malaysia is not confined to politicians. 

It has metastasised across top civil government sectors, statutory bodies, GLCs, regulators, and enforcement agencies the very institutions meant to protect the public. Files disappear. Investigations stall. Evidence leaks selectively. Arrests are theatrical. Outcomes are negotiated. The law exists, but only as an ornament. Bribery is so embedded that it no longer feels criminal rather it feels procedural. 

Contracts are not won; they are allocated. Positions are not earned; they are bestowed. Licences are not approved; they are paid for. In this ecosystem, honesty is not a virtue but it is a threat. Those who refuse to participate are neutralised. Careers are frozen. Files are reopened. Charges are manufactured. Prosecution becomes a weapon, not a safeguard. 

Meanwhile, those who loot with sufficient rank, connection, or symbolism are insulated, rehabilitated, or quietly retired with honours. At the political summit, the theft has been grotesque. 1MDB was not an anomaly. it was a stress test that the system failed spectacularly. Billions vanished, institutions buckled, and yet the ultimate lesson absorbed by the elite was not restraint, but technique: steal better, hide deeper, delay longer. 

Equally devastating are the betrayals that barely make headlines. The unilateral surrender of sovereign oil and gas fields, worth hundreds of billions of US dollars, without public mandate or transparent parliamentary scrutiny, is not policy, it is national forfeiture. Such decisions permanently cripple the country’s future while those responsible face no reckoning. 

The public is expected to accept irreversible loss as “diplomacy.” To maintain this order, race and religion are weaponised with ruthless efficiency. They are cynically deployed by badly educated yet calculating racist bigots, enabled by elites who know that a divided population is easier to deceive and control. Faith is reduced to a smokescreen for theft. Race is twisted into a perpetual emergency to silence dissent. Question corruption, and you are accused of betraying religion. 

Demand accountability, and you are branded an enemy of your race. This is not belief. This is mass manipulation. Enforcement agencies including police, regulators, watchdogs are no longer feared by the corrupt. They are feared only by the powerless. Selective enforcement has turned institutions into instruments of intimidation, while major crimes are buried under “ongoing investigations” that never end. Even sport, culture, and civic life are not spared. 

The FAM fiasco, where leadership rot reached such depths that criminal record falsification allegedly involved even a minister, stands as a grotesque symbol of the wider disease. When criminality seeps so far that truth itself must be forged, the problem is not administration. It is moral collapse. When royalty and entrenched elites are perceived as untouchable, the rule of law becomes fiction. Prosecutors hesitate. Investigators self-censor. 

Judges are pressured. Deference replaces justice. The constitution becomes conditional. At ground level, the consequences are devastating. Children grow up learning that merit is irrelevant, integrity is dangerous, and silence is survival. The capable leave. The compliant remain. The corrupt thrive. Malaysia exports its talent and imports cynicism. This is the final cost: the destruction of the social contract. 

A state that punishes truth, rewards betrayal, protects the powerful, and lectures the poor about morality has forfeited legitimacy. Malaysia’s crisis is not racial. It is not religious. It is not even ideological. It is a collapse of character across the ruling class, camouflaged by flags, sermons, uniforms, and slogans. 

Until corruption is treated as treason, until enforcement agencies are purged and rebuilt, until no minister, civil servant, general, tycoon, cleric, or royal is beyond scrutiny, this country will remain what it has become: 

A captured state, rich in resources, empty of conscience, and governed by those who fear accountability more than they love the nation. A country where truth is dangerous, lies are rewarded, and justice is selective is not merely sick. It is dying!?