MH17 a devastating blow to airline and country with blame landing on Putin

THE loss of its second plane in four months imperils Malaysia Airlines and the government that owns it.

Huib Gorter, senior vice-president of Malaysia Airlines, speaks at a press conference at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam.

THE loss of its second plane in four months not only imperils Malaysia Airlines, but also confidence in the government that owns the airline, and in Malaysia more broadly.

Gurusamy Subramaniam, whose 34-year-old son was on lost MH370, asked yesterday: “Why is there no peace of mind in our country? Tragedy after tragedy is happening to us.”

The latest tragedy also has deep ramifications for Russia’s relationships with Malaysia, and with Asia as a whole.

The perception has gathered pace within Malaysia and more broadly in Asia, since yesterday dawned with the news of the downing of MH17, that the chief culprit is Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin.

He is being viewed as the ultimate architect and arms-supplier of the Ukraine conflict — whoever’s hand hit the button that dispatched the missile.

For all its internal rivalries and jealousies, the Association of South East Asian Nations has become a family in terms of rallying around its members when they come under attack from outside.

And ASEAN has consolidated its role as the hub of Asian organisations, with the East Asia Summit as a peak body.

Russia joined the EAS in 2011, six years after Australia. And Mr Putin is due to attend the summit in Myanmar’s new capital Nyapyidaw in November, when he is also expected at the G20 summit in Brisbane and the APEC summit in Beijing.

He is now likely to face a torrid time from the Asian partners, with which Russia has recently sought to intensify its economic, political and security relations, in order to compensate for Moscow’s tensions with Europe and the US following its Ukraine foray.

In Malaysia, the disaster is providing a tough early test for the new Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai, who took on the job only last month, from Hishammuddin Hussein, who became ­Defence Minister.

Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim — who won more votes than the government at last year’s election, but is now on bail appealing against a five-year sodomy conviction — condemned “this act of terrorism” and called for “the perpetrators of this mass murder” to be brought to justice.

He called on the airline, Malaysian Airlines System, and the government “to do their utmost in handling the disaster” — following widespread criticism of the management of MH370.

Prime Minister Najib Razak spoke soon after the news emerged, to his counterpart in The Netherlands, and to the presidents of Ukraine and the US.

He said: “This is a tragic day in what has already been a tragic year for Malaysia.”

The crew of 15 are among 43 Malaysians who died on MH17 — among them Tambi Jiee, a Shell employee, who was returning home with his wife and four children for good, from a three-year posting in Kazakhstan.

The airline has booked rooms at the Putrajaya Marriot Hotel in Kuala Lumpur for families of those on the plane, and has offered counselling.

The airline, 69 per cent owned by the government’s strategic investment fund Khazanah, is South-East Asia’s fourth-largest airline by market value.

The airline said that its “usual flight route was earlier declared safe by the International Civil Aviation Organisation”.

It has lost $1.4 billion over the past three years and the new disaster will test the government’s willingness and capacity to keep subsidising the national carrier, partly due to intense competition with low-cost carriers, even before the disappearance of MH370. It has a negative operating cashflow, not generating enough cash to meet its daily operating costs.

The airline will now face an even more severe battle to sell seats without further price cuts and thus deeper losses.

There is speculation of a sale to a Middle Eastern airline.

Members of the MH370 ­Relatives Committee in China said that people there “couldn’t stop crying” as they watched TV news of the latest tragedy, bringing back their own pain.