It is a crazy long story in four lines:

1. New government in Malaysia, signals a new dawn, a departure from earlier ways of untruths, fear and intimidation, and raises hopes of a new order.

2. New Transport Minister Loke, with little prompting, makes ‘solving’ MH370 a priority, warming the hearts of affected families, long used to screaming, kicking, battering heads against an indifferent wall merely to be heard.

3. Minister Loke, after a cabinet meeting announces that Ocean Infinity has till May 29th to find the plane, that there will be no further extensions.

4. A final report will be released within two months if nothing is found in the few days of search activity that remains.

That is Minister Loke solving MH370 for you; offering closure to families and the public, when it is more like simply closing the case file, not resolving the case because someone got tired or felt the whole exercise was futile, leaving a hole in the pocket, or a dead-end had been reached. Like many interactive stories after a fashion today, he is cryptic, and leaves the reader to figure out the reasons for closing the case as may fit his or her disposition / stance and to speculate how things might turn out over time.

The story was predictable up to a point where Ocean Infinity, the company presently searching for MH370 in the Southern Indian Ocean on a ‘no find, no fee’ basis was told that there was going to be no contract extension after the present one ends. But he went further to suggest that will be no more search and that after more than four years of a futile search, it was time for closure. The word ‘closure’ may mean little more than a bureaucratic flourish of a pen to the Minister, release of a report and consigning files to the archives, but to affected families of missing passengers, it is a deeply emotive subject, caught as they are between hope and hopelessness, between formally and solemnly saying goodbye to a loved one and not knowing how to let go in the absence of anything definitive about where MH370 is and why it got there.
I have to say, I was gobsmacked by the pace and turn of events, barely able to contain my deep sense of betrayal. It is barely possible to conceal anger at a decision taken without the courtesy of a meeting and consultation with affected families.

The haste is unexplained and appears influenced by briefings from officials who I suspect have alternated between being keen to close the search file and feeling pushed by public opinion to keep going. I wonder whether in prioritising investigations into the long list of scandals and wrongdoings by the previous government, MH370 doesn’t figure high-up enough and has been given short shrift, and under these circumstances whether the open-ended search for MH370 constitutes a drain on resources and a drag on the Government’s attention that must be arrested?

If this is what it has come to, I feel that this Government has flattered to deceive. If the recent utterances of the Minister are the last on the subject, it will have shown itself as being no different from a typical Opposition that has sympathies and a sense of solidarity with the aggrieved, but has no appetite for remedy when it has the power to do so.

I wish the Minister had taken more time to dig deep, acquaint himself with what has gone on with the search and investigation, and the extent of inter-government cooperation or lack of it, and with the institutional arrangements that facilitated it. Will it work with the French judiciary to seek release of the flaperon? How does it view the lack of concerted efforts along and off the African coast to search for debris during 2016 and 2017?

I wish he had studied the ICAO deliberations into MH370’s disappearance and Malaysia’s response available in ICAO documents. It is widely understood that mistakes were made in the initial hours and days that followed after MH370 became silent and invisible on 8th March 2014. With the benefit of all that is now known, how does the new Government view all this?

Leaks are an inevitable consequence of deliberate non-disclosure, and conspiracies abound where no fact-backed meaningful dialogue takes place. It was our fond hope that the new dispensation will review the issues of transparency that has dogged the previous government, assess and order release of all information related to ground ops., ATC, radar, etc. for independent experts to have a view. It is more than four years since MH370’s last flight, and secrecy – military or otherwise – can’t any longer be reason to hold back information. A new Government with a forensic eye and a new broom could throw light on possible cover-ups, falsification and wilful destruction of records, if any.

The Minster may have been well-served if he was better informed about the numerous MH370 cases in Malaysia and elsewhere, and Malaysia’s aggressive and utterly adversarial stance, the disavowing of any responsibility for the plane’s disappearance, and the hurdles it has placed repeatedly in discovery and disclosure. Will the government review the patently illegal Act that created Malaysia Airlines Berhad (MAB) and amend it? Will this Government adopt a different approach that is compassionate, generous, and fair to towards the families or will it seek to wear down claimants in tandem with the insurance companies?

Will the Government be open to negotiate future ‘no find, no fee’ offers or other more innovative deals ? Is it open to mobilise funding for future search from more countries rather than point to its financial difficulties / limitations and cry away from actually ‘solving’ MH370?
In essence, what is needed is for the Government to articulate its considered position. Is it committed to the search for the truth? Is it committed to the search and investigation – whatever it takes – since there is a larger issue of aviation safety at stake? Is there a shift in perspective?

If fresh inspiration is needed, the dogged MH17 investigation is at hand. That investigation doesn’t seem like it is winding down, even after four years. In the MH17 case, there is the fact of a plane shot down, a known debris field, and likely suspects. And yet…
A lingering thought is about the Annexe 13 Investigation team and its remit. Does it exist at the pleasure of the flag state, Malaysia? Is it for the Government of Malaysia to decide when a report is due or needs to be deferred? Has the time come to question the opacity of the Annexe 13 Investigation itself? In protecting its independence (and seeking to be impervious to undue / unfair influence), has it settled for obscurity?

Listen to Grace Nathan of Voice370 here.

Image from Hindustan Times. 

This article originally appeared on my Facebook page.