Weapons of mass destruction

What has weapons of mass destruction to do with Malaysia? Unimaginable. But regulations have arrived ashore under the guise of Strategic Trade. The title gives me the impression that it is about making trade strategic, about facilitating trade. But no, it's not about enhancing trade but it is about regulating against any export, transhipment or transit of weapons of mass destruction or any item which has the capability of being used as an ingredient for weapons of mass destruction. Is it unusual? No, actually. Singapore uses the same title. Yet I wonder why. Why not call it what it is. Why not Weapons of Mass Destruction Act? Why is the title important? Well I guess every word in the legislation counts when one deals with a piece of legislation that contains death penalty as an offence with pecuniary penalty sums of Thirty Million Ringgit. If there is ever any ambiguity in the application of the legislation, at least one can look to the title to gauge the pith and substance of the legislation.

Is it a necessary legislation? Anything that fosters greater peace for humanity must be good, I think.

Well I would like to say more but I can't. The schedule on the list of items covered by the legislation has not been tabled. So we'll have to wait and see. Maybe we can look at the more developed jurisdictions which already have this legislation and study their list. Yes, we can do that. In fact it is very helpful to do that.

What would be more helpful is if we have a draft list and every industry can study it and highlight their industry difficulties. If we were to apply the EU or UN list all at once, the industries concerned are far and wide. Do we have the system in place to cope with it? Will it hinder trade? Can we afford to have it hinder trade. Should we stagger the implementation such that we begin with the most prevalent industries so that we have a narrower list and one where we can have a more confident implementation on. After all if the objective of the legislation is a good one, everyone should have a common objective. And that common objective would be to see to the success of the functioning of the machinery behind the legislation as well as the industries involved. Whilst resources is being committed by the government to build its capability, how much additional cost does it take, if the private sector is also brought up to speed with the same capability at the same time. As much as the government is required to build its capability, so should the private sector and this would be a good example of 1Malaysia with the public and private sectors working as one and building capability together to make the implementation of the legislation a successful one.

If this piece of legislation is a glimpse of the future in Malaysia being part of the complex machinery of international trade and relations, where legislations such as this are fundamentally modelled and driven by international organisations, Malaysia will clearly be dragged, whether one likes it or not, to the international level of compliance. Does this mean Malaysia has to take a quantum leap without the benefit of taking baby steps to play catch up? Does Malaysia have the luxury of taking the approach that the public sector builds capability first and that capability is then filtered down to the private sector? Is there time to do that? Filtered and watered down? With the information age we are now in, would it not be better that the public and private sector strive together to tackle and meet the international requirements of compliance. If Malaysia already suffers brain drain, do we have enough brains even when we put all the brains together? There is no time to split hairs. We only have each other to race to meet the global challenge of staying competitive...(or is it, to remain solvent?).