{"id":9175,"date":"2014-06-18T14:54:33","date_gmt":"2014-06-18T06:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/?p=9175"},"modified":"2014-06-18T15:01:44","modified_gmt":"2014-06-18T07:01:44","slug":"government-ignores-mh370-causes-insists-on-going-shopping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/government-ignores-mh370-causes-insists-on-going-shopping\/","title":{"rendered":"Government ignores MH370 causes, insists on going shopping"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Hishammuddin-Hussein.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-9176\" src=\"http:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Hishammuddin-Hussein.jpg\" alt=\"Hishammuddin-Hussein\" width=\"308\" height=\"274\" \/><\/a>The federal government has come under fire for urging to\u00a0<span style=\"color: #000000;\">upgrade its radar system under the pretext of bettering the security of the nation. In a joint statement by\u00a0<span style=\"color: black;\">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&#8217;s request to\u00a0strengthen the nation\u2019s military assets, including radar system citing\u00a0the disappearance of MH370 as its motivation to\u00a0incur government spending. The proposal is set for the\u00a011th Malaysia Plan.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">&#8220;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&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">&#8220;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,&#8221; they said in the joint statement, adding that t<\/span>his is not the first time the MH370 crisis has been cited by the government as excuse to go \u201cshopping\u201d 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\u00a0programme under the pretext of using such technology for MH370-type crisis.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">They pointed out that in the 2013 Defence Anti-Corruption Index, Malaysia was ranked D-. The study\u00a0measures 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">&#8220;The \u201ccrisis-as-excuse shopping\u201d is a good example why Malaysia is ranked D-,&#8221;\u00a0said Tan, Sim and Lam.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Radar blip\u00a0not\u00a0useful\u00a0in MH370 crisis\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As admitted by the D<span style=\"color: #000000;\">eputy Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Bakri on March 26,\u00a0<\/span>MH370&#8217;s turn back from the South China Sea into the Malaysian Peninsular had been detected by the military via blips on\u00a0its radar screen. However, no jets were deployed\u00a0to identify whether the aircraft was hostile or not. \u00a0On March 26, Abdul Rahim had added that he &#8220;assumed&#8221; that the turn back was requested by the <span style=\"color: #000000;\">civilian air traffic controllers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Later, Defense Minister Hishammudin Hussein had explained that the RMAF did not scramble jets to identify the aircraft\u00a0was because Malaysia was not in &#8220;war time&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Though the RMAF intends to increase air safety via a radar\u00a0upgrade, the\u00a0failure to act when the current military radar had indicated the alleged MH370 turnback has caused widespread doubts in the proposed military spending. -The Rocket<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The federal government has come under fire for urging to\u00a0upgrade its radar system under the pretext of bettering the security of the nation. In a joint statement by\u00a0Julian Tan, MP for Setampin, Steven Sim, MP for Bukit Mertajam and Lam Choong Wah, Senior Fellow of REFSA, the DAP has slammed the RMAF&#8217;s request to\u00a0strengthen the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[274],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9175"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9180,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9175\/revisions\/9180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}