Media Statement
by Tony Pua, DAP National Publicity Secretary and Member of Parliament for Petaling
Jaya Utara in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday, 9 July 2013
The Prime
Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has staked his premiership on 6 National Key
Result Areas (NKRA), of which “Reducing Corruption” was one of the most
important, if not the most. Over the
past four years, the Prime Minister and his team has razzled and dazzled
Malaysians and foreigners over the “efforts” and “successes” in achieving the
key performance indicators (KPIs) for the NKRA.
In 2011,
Pemandu had boasted that the initiatives taken have shown tremendous results in
eradicating the crime of corruption. The Government also pointed out that “the
effectiveness of the actions taken is being slowly felt and acknowledged by the
general public”.
Pemandu had
cited that according to the Transparency International (TI-M) Global Corruption
Barometer Survey (GCB), corruption rate in Malaysia has slightly increased from
48% in 2010 to 49% in 2011, proving the improvements. In fact, the Reducing Corruption NKRA
director Datuk Hisham Nordin told Bernama on Monday two nights ago, that the
NKRA has exceeded the target of the KPI set to fight corruption in the country.
However, in the
latest GCB report, the people's perception of the government's effectiveness in
combatting corruption has plunged significantly from 49% previously in 2011 to
a shocking low of 31%. This is a far cry
from the official objective of the NKRA to raise Malaysia’s GCB to 70% by
2015. The last time the perception of
effectiveness of the government in this area was this low was in 2009, at 28%
when the Prime Minister first launched the NKRAs with much fanfare.
According to
the survey, only a miserable 14% of respondents thought that corruption in the
last two years had decreased, 39% thought that it had increased and 47% thought
that it remained unchanged.
The survey
indicates that Malaysians are perhaps seeing through all the razzmatazz, the
song and dance and the gorgeous packaging for the NKRA after more than 3 years,
discovering that nothing much has really changed. Very little effort is placed in punishing the
corrupt among the rich, powerful and politically-connected, while every effort
is made to thwart whistleblowing and exposes by opposition politicians and
civic-minded individuals.
What rubs salt
to wound is the fact that the annual budget allocations to the Anti-Corruption
Agency (ACA) and Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) before and after
2009 respectively have increased by leaps and bounds over the past decade. In 2003 when we were best placed over the
decade in the TI Corruption Perception Index (CPI) at number 33 in the world,
the budget for ACA was RM67.7 million.
In 2008 before
Datuk Seri Abdullah Badawi handed over the reigns to Datuk Seri Najib Razak, we
were then ranked 47th in the world with a budget of RM146.7
million. In 2012, after the “massive”
MACC reforms, the “Reducing Corruption” NKRA and an increased budget of RM211.2
million, we are now ranked a lowly 56th in the world.
It would appear
that the bigger the budget and more staffing and resources given to MACC, the
more corrupt Malaysia has become.
If Datuk Seri
Najib Razak is serious about fighting and reducing corruption, then his
administration must certainly get their act together with the necessary
political will to slaughter all sacred cows. It is time to do away with the
razzmatazz and multitude of self-praise and excuses for the lack of action, to
ensure that those guilty of corruption, particularly of grand corruption are
punished accordingly. Frivolous and sorry remarks by the Prime Minister’s new
recruit, the former TI-M President, Datuk Paul Low like “political stunts had
led to numerous baseless graft complaints being filed [which] had in turn
caused the low rate of probes by MACC” isn’t helpful at all to the cause
against corruption.
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