MALAYSIA – Since its independence from Britain in 1957, Malaysia is a country that’s received little attention in the international community. The nation, known mostly for its tourism and strong economic growth within the region, now has the eyes of the entire world watching its every move as the search for missing flight MH370 remains a mystery – eyes that have uncovered political corruption, government distrust and a lack of transparency. 

Malaysia is run by a democratic political system. In fact, the governing party, the Barisan Nasional Coalition, calls Malaysia “The Best Democracy in the World.” 

While the government is theoretically a democracy, the Barisan Nasional Coalition has been in power for 57 years. Despite losing the popular vote to the opposition, it retained the most seats in parliament after the latest elections, elections that were laced with allegations of voter fraud and gerrymandering. Transparency International also ranked Malaysia 53rd on its 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index. Because of this, Malaysian locals are now even more suspicious of their government and believe that they are being kept in the dark.

“Most Malaysians rely on on foreign press…to get more reports and news,” S. Lou, a private equity investment analyst based out of Kuala Lumpur, said. “The mainstream Malaysian media is filtered by the government and hence would not have much to report. They report what they are told to report.”

The Malaysian media is ruled and regulated by the state, with each media outlet given a license that can be revoked by the government at any time. Lou said some Malaysians get their news from Malaysiakini. com, a radical online newspaper that’s frowned upon by the government. Seremban local Michelle Cheam says her peers believe that there is much more to what the press is saying, and even more than what they even know to report.

“The government won’t disclose to the public, as it will affect the world,” she said, and she believes that the plane’s disappearance is due to a hijacking, “with a secret motive that could not be fulfilled, and therefore, the passengers were sacrificed.”

Other theories about the plane’s disappearance have included technical issues, a cockpit fire, terrorist hijacking and even the Bermuda Triangle. Pilot and former Boeing 747 engineer D.M.P., as he would like to be referred to, believes that, because it’s difficult to make an aircraft “disappear,” the most valid theory would have to be a hijacking. He said that in order for the plane to disappear, several actions would have had to take place.

The first of these would involve the plane’s transponder, which “emits altitude, speed, direction of flight and the flight number.”

“This electronic unit is easily turned on and turned off as per a simple selecting of an ON/OFF knob, just as simple as turning on or off a light in a house. When the transponder is selected to OFF position, all information ceases transmission to ground radar tracking facility of the sector handling the flight’s progress,” he said. “The flight on the ground radar control disappears. A hijacker with a modicum of training can be able to easily turn off the transponder.”

However, if only the transponder was turned off, the plane still has an Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), which “is designed as a communication device for the pilots to communicate with weather stations and the home base monitoring system and the home base monitoring facility.”

This system is not easy to dismantle and can only be powered down through a number of circuit breakers.

“That would be very hard to accomplish by a novice hijacker as per the complexity of the circuitry,” D.M.P. said. “A flight deck has hundreds of circuit breakers for many electronic and electrical systems. It would be very hard to imagine a hijacker being able to de-power ACARS.”

Because of the complexity of the situation, D.M.P. believes the plane was hijacked by the pilot who acted without the co-pilot.

“My conclusion is this: The captain waited until the plane was over the sea and until the co-pilot left the cockpit to (use) the bathroom or something, then, closed and locked the heavily armored door to the cockpit. At the high altitude, the cabin was depressurized manually by the pilot – an easy task to accomplish,” he said. “In doing so, the passengers will have exhausted the supplementary oxygen in the drop down masks and eventually use up all the oxygen to remain conscious and eventually die as they slept.”

“This could have been a hijacker perpetrating all this so far, but I think not,” he said. “Too much technical knowledge had to take place for this scenario, and during the time that tracking was able and continued, the plane tracked smooth and accurately. That would have been hard for a novice hijacker in the cockpit, at night, in the dark. To even find the cockpit lighting switches would have been a challenge.”

D.M.P. added that the aircraft’s pilot was a longtime member of Malaysia’s political opposition and had, that day, attended the prison sentencing of one of the political leaders he admired and knew personally.

That being said, D.M.P. said, “The thing I think is most absurd in theory is that no group, no person, has taken responsibility for this missing aircraft mystery.”

Singapore Airlines flight attendant Seow Shin Shin, a Malaysia native who currently resides in nearby Singapore, has seen the disappearance of MH370 from both the Malaysian side and from foreigners. Her lack of faith in the competence of the Malaysian government has only heightened after the plane went missing.

“It proved that Malaysia’s government can’t handle or manage this level situation and mostly needed assistance from neighboring countries with better equipment to try to locate the aircraft,” she said.

While the world speculates and the families mourn, this tragedy has also brought countries together in unison for the same cause.

“The upside in the wake of this incident is seeing the international community and the various government support in the search and rescue, which all I can deduce is that mankind still has an ounce of humanity in them,” Lou said. “This incident has brought to light that nations can still work together in situations like this despite their differences.”