Malaysian lawmaker Datuk Seri Bung Mokhtar Radin isn’t just a man who is sick and tired of being patted down and fondled by airport security when he travels.
He’s also not limited to calling for international hotels who carry no-headscarf policies for front desk staff to be “taught a lesson” (hopefully in comparative religion, because we should all be more understanding of each other’s religious differences).
Datuk Bung is also a man who looks across the sea and sees inspiration from an unlikely figure, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, and his controversial drugs policy (shoot to kill?).
Speaking at the Home Ministry’s Budget 2018 allocation talks, he claimed that the National Anti-Drug Agency (AADK) had failed and was a waste of time, and resources. The Kinabatangan Barisan Nasional lawmaker is not beating around the bush.
He told listeners that the AADK had failed in carrying out its responsibilities, and that every year the number of drug addicts increased.
It almost begs the philosophical question: Is the AADK just not doing their job, or are the drugs just getting that much better? Or rather, maybe the reasons that people turn to drugs are persisting. Who knows?!
Datuk Bung then said that it was time for the Government to look for a permanent solution (which, worryingly, sounds a lot like the final solution) by taking a page out of Duterte’s tough-guy book, and “shoot drug dealers, so our country is free from them.” He added that the Philippines was now “drug-free.”
Over 14,000 have been killed in the country’s war on drugs from its commencement in March of this year, until now. It has been heavily criticized both locally and internationally.
Several politicians from the Opposition were incredulous to his claims, and stood up to ask if he was actually being serious.
He was “very serious” about not wanting “a country filled with lifeless people.”
Datuk Bung, define “lifeless” because we’ve all waited in some rather inexplicably slow-moving lines served by laconic staff in varying edifices around the country. Ahem.
