The Home Minister, Zahid Hamidi, has the habit of threatening the citizens who demand accountability, accuracy, efficiency and transparency. Instead of listening to their concerns, Zahid, like the perennial bully, responds with emotional blackmail, and his characteristic acts of intimidation.

The rakyat demand answers. We won’t settle for more excuses. The answers we seek, range from the botched-up ‘search and rescue (SAR) mission’ for the missing Orang Asli children, to the rank incompetence of some agencies which are investigating the 1MDB scandal.

Time and time again, tragedies have shown that this government refuses to learn from its mistakes. It wants to save face - its own. It tends to brush problems under the carpet. Its leaders hate probing questions and scrutiny.

Seven weeks ago, on Aug 23, seven Orang Asli children, whose ages ranged from seven to 11 years, disappeared from their boarding school, at Pos Tohoi, about 50km from Gua Musang, Kelantan

The first few minutes are the most critical when a child goes missing. Vital clues may be left. Witnesses may have seen, or heard, something. The information needs to be assessed, before people forget or before the trail runs cold. The younger the child, the more vulnerable he is.

Their disappearance was not noticed for several hours. Sunday is a normal school day, in Kelantan. Why had the teachers not noticed their absence, after break, or at lunchtime?

Last month, when the children were still missing after several days, we demanded to know what had been done to look for them.

Today, it transpired that searchers had descended on the Orang Asli village to look for the children.

Their explanation? The authorities assumed that the children trekked 41km back to their villages, without food, or water. The authorities allegedly claimed that the parents were “hiding the children”.

Why would any parent subject Malaysians to this mental torture? Why would these parents waste taxpayers’ money with this pretence?

Worse still, the parents had lodged a report with the National Human Rights Commission (Suhakam), alleging that the police only organised a search five days after the children’s disappearance.

Ironically, Zahid claimed that the government had taken the disappearance of the Orang Asli children seriously. Two of the children were eventually found, malnourished and close to death, just a few hundred metres from their school.

Does Zahid seriously believe that seven very young children could navigate the tortuous roads, dense undergrowth, parasites, mudslides, flooded paths and avoid timber lorries on narrow logging trails?

Corporal punishment freely administered?

More serious is the allegation that three girls, who were the older sisters of some of the missing children, had been ‘beaten with a stick’ for swimming without permission.

Is corporal punishment freely administered in this school?

Why was there a break in the fence, through which children could slip, to escape the school grounds?

Why do children receive only three full days of lessons per week, at this school?

What else has the school got to hide?

What is the point of moving the hostel, before the current problems have been resolved?

The people who say that Najib Abdul Razak should order an investigation into the missing Orang Asli children are wasting their time.

Najib has got more urgent matters on his mind, like criticising the yellow shirts, and his debt of gratitude to the red shirts. Moreover, his tiresome habit of uttering the meaningless phrase, “I will leave no stone unturned” is just that - a load of tripe. He said it to Teoh Beng Hock’s family and to the families of the passengers on MH370. Inevitably, nothing happened!

Our authorities have a knack of giving the same confused excuses whenever things go wrong. When MH370 disappeared, in the early hours of March 8, 2014, the then-deputy defence minister, Abdul Rahim Bakri ( photo ), told Parliament: “The turnback was detected in our radar, only we thought the turnback was done by MAS, an aircraft that was not hostile or a friendly aircraft, so we thought maybe it’s an order from control tower.” (sic)

As always, assumptions were used to justify the lack of action, and apathy, of the government.

Never assume. By popular consensus, those who assume make an ass of you and me.

MARIAM MOKHTAR is a defender of the truth, the admiral-general of the Green Bean Army and president of the Perak Liberation Organisation (PLO).