INFORMATION FALLACY

 Recently, I had stumbled on a blog administered by Member of Parliament Petaling Jaya Utara, Tony Pua (DAP). As I was browsing his blog, I found an article entitled Call for Parliamentary Select Committee on Defence. Being in the industry for more than 15 years, the article incited my interest, as there are many fallacies in its argument. The article quoted Transparency International (TI) score on Malaysia’s defense expenditure well below the failure mark. Director of the International Defence and Security Program for TI in United Kingdom, Mark Pyman was quoted in the article saying, “Malaysia ranked far below other countries (for this), where the budget lacked details and no audits were undertaken of the secret programs.”

Many of us including defence contractor in Malaysia are not familiar with the intricacies of arms deal. I don’t blame them because the kingdom of arms deal revolves around a shadow world. This is the reason why many people like Tony Pua would take Mark Pyman’s comment to be true even if its misleading. They need to know that defense business conducted by countries like US, UK, France, Germany and many others are done in what the industry term as “Grey Market.” This means that the deals are conducted through legal channels but undertaken covertly often utilized by government to have an unlawful impact on foreign policy. This system is in place to obscure information on defense activities made by these governments often to fund illegal activities.

With secrecy de rigueur there are very few arms transaction that are entirely above board. For example, in 2009, UK Ministry of Defense had censored information to conceal an official report from exposing profligacy in defense procurement. Lets look at Canada, the purchase of the new F-35 jets with the cost of USD18 billion without an open competition from aircraft maker. This procurement when done will be Canada’s largest defense procurement in history. Where is the transparency in that deal? Booz Allen Hamilton headquartered in McLean, Virginia was awarded contracts worth more than USD3 billion by the Pentagon and 26% of them with no open bidding process. Where is the transparency in that deal? What about the fact that within a year George W. Bush assuming the presidency, over thirty arms industries executives, consultants and lobbyist occupied senior position in his administration. Half a dozen of those senior executives are from Lockheed Martin and they were given crucial position in his administration. As a result of that, the company was awarded by Pentagon the biggest Military contract in US history.

Therefore, “The budget lacked details and no audits were undertaken of the secret programs,” echoes the overall tone of any report that attempts to scrutinize arms transactions. These countries have a defense budget larger than the total budget of Malaysia and much larger interest in foreign policy of the world. The only way to pursue their policy goal is by keeping their defence transaction in the “Grey Market” area. I don’t see how these countries would be any better than Malaysia when it comes to being transparent in their defense expenditure. Ronald Reagan once said, “Trust but verify.” My advice to all of you is to do the same especially on matters regarding defense related issues.