At the the recent WCEF, Najib Razak countered accusations of selling the country out by calling Dr Mahathir Mohamad a racist and a liar for switching his stance on foreign direct investment (FDI) from China during his 22-month second stint as premier.
Najib most certainly had been nursing this wound for long given his tirade on the matter being "the Forest City project was also made into political propaganda to attack me,", in reference to the all too familiar narrative used by PH that was Forest City.
While Mahathir and u-turns are all too familiar, I’d argue that we should think about the infamous Lynas project – where we saw repeated u-turns despite having him rally against the project during GE14.
Despite increased public outcry, Mahathir dismissed the concerns about Lynas – going as far to compare it to the Chernobyl disaster of 1989, stating that the dangers posed by the Lynas facilities far dwarfs than the one posed by the infamous nuclear incident.
Suddenly it seems everything is at risk when it comes to Lynas, from good relations with Australia and Japan, the billions in supposed new investments, the Bumiputera agenda – and all of this at the expense of our health.
Unfortunately, isn’t the first time that Malaysia – and Mahathir himself – has faced a problem with radioactive rare earth.
The Asia Rare Earth Sdn Bhd (ARE, a company owned by Mitsubishi Chemicals) incident in Bukit Merah, Perak during the 1980s which involved rare earth and radioactive waste is surprisingly rarely mentioned.
The aftereffects of the ARE facility are still felt today, despite over RM 300mil spent cleaning up its waste – it is estimated that Bukit Merah community will have one case of leukemia every three years as a result of radioactivity.
So why was Lynas so important for the Pakatan Harapan government? Environmental concerns notwithstanding, the Lynas plant plays a crucial role in the global rare earths supply chain – an important resource for everyday electronics such as smartphones and lightbulbs. With China possessing a near-monopoly on global rare earth processing capacity, one might assume that Mahathir is attempting to raise Malaysia’s international standing.
Japan, which is one of the world’s key importers of rare earth materials, is not only a major financial backer of Lynas (given the recent announcement that Lynas would supply Japan 7,200 tons of rare earths a year until 2038) but is also seen as being actively involved in lobbying for the corporation.
Surely it cannot be pure coincidence that Mahathir gave his unconditional support for Lynas to continue to operate in Malaysia during a recent visit to Tokyo.
But I for one think that this is not worth the 50,000 to 70,000 lives that may be affected if any environmental catastrophe occurs at the Lynas facility. Aside from serving as a chess piece in the game of global powers, what actual benefits does this facility provide the government? Will foreign governments suddenly see Malaysia as a key player in global politics – just because we are willing to let foreign countries store waste that even the most developed countries refuse to take up?
If we are really to move towards a new future, then it will perhaps require a good rethink of what has transpired – and that means ignoring the artefacts of the past that once dominated our daily lives, regardless of their last name.
After all, at this point, we are all infinitely better off without them.
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