COMMENT I woke up yesterday to news that South Korean’s prime minister had offered to resign following perceived poor handling of the MV Sewol disaster on April 16.

Even though the South Korean prime ministership is mostly a ceremonial position (albeit the first in the line of succession should something befall the president), this is still a massive move, the likes of which are completely alien to us here in Malaysia.

Thus far, the only similar result either Google or my memory has been able to turn up has been Chua Soi Lek’s resignation over his infamous video. Not a single case involving a politician resigning over failure in his or her official capacity comes to mind. Hooray for us.

A friend of mine wisely remarked that maybe despite starting off in similar places, there is now such a economic gap between South Korea and Malaysia.

This resignation rightfully gives rise to comparisons to our own handling of the MH370 disaster.

This entire affair has understandably been an extremely emotionally charged one. Some have clung very vociferously to the belief that there are things we shouldn’t say, or ways that we shouldn’t say them. Criticism towards the authorities has been labelled as insensitivity or a lack of unity.

Hopefully, enough time has passed now that we are able to apply a more objective lens. I have not followed the issue very closely, but the thoughts in this article are mostly focused on what has happened in the first 24 hours after we lost contact with MH370.  

A Reuters article with similar concerns published April 11 reports: “Malaysia’s opposition coalition has demanded a parliamentary inquiry into what happened on the ground in those first few hours. Government officials have said any formal inquiry should not begin until the flight’s black box recorders are found.”

As has been oft repeated, it took two years the find the black box from Air France Flight 447. Does that mean we must silence all our questions until then?

I think not. It cannot be unreasonable to ask questions that have nothing to do with why or how the flight when missing, and everything to do with whether our response to the disaster measures up.

The crucial first hours

The first question that bothered me the most concerns the very first few hours after contact was lost with MH 370.

I know little to nothing about standard operating procedures with regards to what happens when an aircraft is lost, but I suspect that waiting some six hours between last contact and announcing that a flight has gone missing must surely be too much.

At least two parties would have realised that something was amiss - civil air control responsible for tracking the flight, and the military radar that picked up an unidentified flying object around 2.15am, north of Penang.

What went through the minds of the individuals who were manning these consoles and their superiors, as they were faced with this situation?

In both the civil and military cases, somewhere along the chain of command between the individual sitting at the radar, through their superiors, all the way up to the final decision-makers, someone must have maintained for about four to six hours that the wiser thing to do was not to tell anyone yet.

Again, for all we (don’t) know, faced with something strange and problematic, anyone along that same chain of command could have been asking themselves: “Hey, is this worth waking up the boss?” Who knows if they answered in the positive or the negative?

We do not ask these questions as part of a witch-hunt informed by bad faith, or with the intention to besmirch anyone, blindly accuse and so on. The details have never been discussed, so we are left to grope blindly in the dark. If there was negligence, I think Malaysians, and the world at large, deserve to know.

Just because this has been extremely emotional, with many people doing their level best to help, does not mean we should fail to hold to account those who need to be held to account.

The major question is: Why did it take six hours to tell the world, and what was done (or not done) in those six hours?

I’m not sure which is sadder: that incompetence, inefficiency and bureaucracy could have severely delayed our response; or that it that was in fact the case, the ‘tidak apa’ attitude would probably come as no surprise to most Malaysians.

Important lessons

I think this question should be a burning one because logic suggests that those first few hours could have made all the difference in the world.

In exploring why this is so, it is important - not least in the hope of refining our response to any such disasters in the future - to employ a thought exercise from behind a veil of ignorance; that is to say: what actually caused MH370 to go missing is not entirely relevant in evaluating our response to the knowledge that an aircraft had gone missing.

The worst-case scenario in case of a missing aircraft is that it has crashed. If lucky, there will be survivors. In most cases, if there are survivors, the speed at which rescuers are able to reach them is extremely key - especially at sea.

Survival at sea (or on land in the wake of a crash) is extremely difficult, and the difference of a few hours can likely be the difference between life and death.

Exposed at sea, the odds of death by drowning, hypothermia, injury, and a host of other factors presumably increase by the minute. Those who survive that thereafter face the risk of dehydration and starvation.

Given all these risks, spending those six hours basically just hoping that the plane would turn up miraculously and save everyone a whole lot of trouble would be painfully unacceptable.

It is not fair to say that that is what happened, but without a full investigation, how is the public to know that is not what happened?

Part II tomorrow: Will we learn our lessons from MH370?

NATHANIEL TAN tweets @NatAsasi . This is the first of a two-part article.