Mistake or deliberate wrongdoing?

“WHY mishandling of a nation’s flag is such a sensitive issue.”

This was the kicker to a column I wrote published on Aug 23, 2017. It was my take on Malaysia’s error in printing the Indonesian flag upside down in the official souvenir booklet of the opening ceremony of the 29th SEA Games that year in our country.

It was of course an awfully embarrassing mistake, for which Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin had to apologise to his Indonesian counterpart, Imam Nahrawi. Then Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Anifah Aman also issued a statement of apology on behalf of the Malaysian government.

The explanation given was that a “technical error” caused the misprint. The situation blew over when the Indonesian government graciously accepted the apology even though Imam had described the mistake as “deeply hurtful fatal negligence”.

I went on to delve into the issue of why mistakes made over the national flag of any country, whether by misprint or mistreatment – like hanging it upside down – were always considered a big deal. It’s simply because national symbols like the flag are hugely important in representing the sovereignty of a nation.

Khairy acknowledged as much when he said, “there’s no denying that it’s a big error, which has affected the image and reputation of the Indonesian Republic because the flag is a symbol of a country’s national pride.”

Over the past few weeks, we have had controversy after controversy regarding our own flag. The first was the Education Ministry’s sudden announcement in March to make it mandatory for all school children to wear badges depicting the Jalur Gemilang on their school uniforms.

Public reaction was mixed and leaning towards perplexity because the reason for the decision didn’t seem to really make sense: Make the kids wear the pin to instil unity and patriotism. That’s it? Ho hum.

Apart from some questions raised over who got the job of supplying the metal badges to the ministry to allocate two pins per student, the issue has seemingly subsided.

Then came the truly unfortunate snafu on April 15 by Sin Chew Daily. The Chinese language newspaper naturally wanted to give front-page coverage to President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Malaysia. Their page one ran with an image of the two countries’ flags, but unfortunately, the Jalur Gemilang was missing its iconic crescent in the blue canton.

The fallout was swift and harsh with calls for severe action against Sin Chew.

My immediate reaction was one of pity and concern for the editors. According to reports, the police had recorded statements from 54 individuals and the company, despite profuse public apologies, had suspended the chief editor and deputy chief-sub editor.

Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Razarudin Husain was reported as saying: “Initial investigations found that one of the reasons given by the newspaper was a technical error in publishing the illustration.” Sounds familiar?

As a former newspaper editor who was hauled up by Home Ministry top officials on occasions to explain why certain elements deemed as transgressions touching on issues considered sensitive or inappropriate were published in the newspaper, I have an inkling of what these journalists are going through.

My run-ins were more than a decade ago. The mistakes were regrettable and the authorities did come down hard on us, but looking back, they were quite fair. We had to issue apologies, promise never to repeat them, but no one was suspended.

But this is the bane of newspapers – inadvertent mistakes. There is a term used to describe products that are sold quickly and frequently at relatively low cost. They are called FMCG, which stands for Fast-Moving Consumer Goods. Popular examples are packaged food, beverages and personal care items.

Few would consider a newspaper an FMCG, but it is probably the fastest moving product ever because the contents in a newspaper have to change every single day, even staples like cartoon strips, crossword puzzles, TV listings, advertisements and of course the news. Everything has to be put together within a 24-hour cycle, sometimes even less.

You can imagine the stress and pressure to check every single item that goes into print, and while there are protocols and processes to ensure accuracy and compliance, human error can strike at any time. Even a misspelled word can lead to trouble, like if the word “public” was missing a particular letter.

And once printed, it cannot be recalled, unlike other FMCGs. Corrections can only be made to the online version. This is the constant terror editors have to work under.

That’s why I often shake my head in disbelief and sorrow at how the public can be so easily riled up by certain people, often politicians with their own devious and malicious agenda, to believe that a Malaysian business entity would risk jeopardising the livelihoods of many by doing something so obviously foolish and ridiculous.

But we see it happening over and over in recent years, be it the Timah whiskey incident, the KK Mart sock debacle and now the Sin Chew blunder.

I fully empathise with what its reporter Lok Sai Mun wrote as an op-ed on April 19. Lok openly admitted that the error revealed a lack of professionalism in their checks. But Lok also expressed shock over accusations that the incomplete flag image was done deliberately with ulterior motives, and that the newspaper was loyal to foreign powers and had turned its back on Malaysia.

One cannot discount that the nastiness was heavily coloured by racial tones and prejudices; it is the same old sad refrain questioning Malaysian Chinese’s loyalty and patriotism for the nation.

That’s why I confess that I was almost gleeful when a hater who tried to provoke racial discord got egg all over their mug instead. This poster claimed a video showed pupils in a Chinese primary school in Perak had changed the lyrics of the Negaraku to Chinese. Boy, it was so satisfying to see the poster humiliated when Perak folks revealed the children were actually singing the Perak state anthem with the proper Bahasa lyrics.

It just so happened that their state song sounds exactly like the national anthem. Because of the video’s muffled audio quality, the hater assumed the unfamiliar lyrics must be Chinese.

Similarly, the Education Ministry’s own flag bungle couldn’t have happened at a better time. On Thursday, It had to issue an apology after publishing an AI-generated image of a classroom with the Malaysian flag in the background with one crescent moon, two stars contained in a blue field that took up the top half space with eight red and white stripes on the lower half.

This image was in the ministry’s Analysis Report of the Malaysian Certificate of Education (SPM) Examination Results 2024.

The apology statement went on to say, “This negligence is unacceptable because the Jalur Gemilang is a symbol of the greatness and sovereignty of the country.”

So now the top ministry guns are investigating, but netizens are mischievously asking whether the minister herself or her top officials would be suspended for such unacceptable and not trivial negligence. As they have pointed out, what is good for the goose, is good for the gander.

And all the haters who went after Sin Chew have gone silent. Perhaps they now understand what is meant by an “honest mistake”, meaning a mistake that was made without any malicious intent or deliberate wrongdoing; a mistake that anyone might make due to a lapse in judgment or attention.

Perhaps they will now agree that to err is human, to forgive is divine, no matter what your race or religion is.

The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.