The on-going sparks in relation to Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob’s Facebook posting about boycotting Chinese businesses has certainly put BN in a tight spot.

While the minister has made attempts to redress this, the efforts are also alleged to fall short of expectations.

Let us for a moment, for discussion purposes, leave the racial and political implications and intentions aside. We need to get to the root of the problem if we are ever to make the best out of an otherwise unwarranted debate in the public sphere.

The battle that we Malaysians should all be fighting is one of making ethics our way of life in business. An ethical disposition needs no laws; it needs no pressure from government.

If Malaysians can be saluted for having a prevalent ethical hallmark in our business dealings, the nation and its people can walk tall. The benefits will cascade across the length and breadth of the country as ethics do not discriminate along racial and political margins.

The real problem that we should be tackling is firstly how and what we must do proactively to enable the business community to operate with high ethical standards which will be witnessed in the way we price our goods in good times and bad.

The second challenge is to aggressively explore how we can ensure that the young are inculcated with such principled and ethical values so that when they enter the real world of business, eventually, they have a reliable and unwavering grounding in best practices.

We need to be talking about bringing back the culture of fair pricing that we were known for in the early post-Merdeka days. Senior citizens will certainly vouch for this.

It therefore seeks a mindset shift and collaborative approach to resolve the root causes that we often fail to tackle and end up with racially slanted arguments.

First, successful business communities, associations, organisations and individuals must give priority to actively promote ethics in the public sphere. Here, the media can and must play a pivotal role.

Rather then focus on the ugly stories, we must champion testimonies of how ethics are transforming healthy business engagements and pursuits.

Here the government must learn to play a more active and widely acceptable facilitator role. Working with professional bodies and supporting such initiatives without getting tempted to ride on political mileage is a premise that cannot be compromised.

The argument of whether monopolies are ethical or not and likewise why private enterprises and certain communities are made scapegoats cannot provide effective currency for transformation. It can only add fuel to not resolving the root problems.

We must also recognise that educating the young while they are in school and tertiary institutions cannot be given a lip service effort by the government; it cannot even be a by-the-way teaching unless we want to see it all end up as wasted public funds.

We need a political will

The teaching of ethics must be as important as language, mathematics and science. Anything less will yield the same pathetic results as our failed civics education.

In short we need a political will. We need to re-draw the landscape of this nation’s progress in ethic-centric business.

That can only happen if the government leaves politics out and the business community works with a respectful collaboration.

A highly ethical society needs no laws; a society that is woven out of principle-centred business values needs no enforcement or watchdog.

The fact that we never fail to boast about our multi-religious populations and given the ever-growing number of mosques, temples and churches that crowd out landscape, ethics should be a breeze for Malaysians.

Another strategic vantage is to rid our society of corruption. The enthusiasm and commitment must be utopian. To skirt behind the argument that there are no governments that are free of corruption or that there are no businesses that are not guilty, is to side with the devil.

Let us rise above hurt feelings; let us seal our loose lips; let us get to the root. Let tomorrow be a day when we all agree and see ethics as a vital and cardinal preoccupation in businesses and in schools.

Will BN have what it takes to lead the way and make a positive difference?