The ambivalence of Tun Mahathir to corruption during his 22 year administration was never in dispute. In a perverse sort of way, he was charmingly honest and did not try to pretend that he was against corrupt practices. He was a great “in the national interest man” who saw corruption not in monochrome, but in glorious Technicolor which could even be made to look extremely attractive seen through his 20/20 Vision however sordid it is in reality.

I am sure the great visionary of all that is tallest, longest and biggest did not lose any sleep over the many shady deals involving Bank Negara and the Employees Provident Fund that, but for the grace of God and the beneficence of the milch cow that is Petronas, would have rendered us insolvent and a hostage of the IMF. He made no promises to fight corruption, and we did not expect anything from him in this respect. He was, by my definition, a corrupt man.

His successor, the one term wonder, affectionately known as Pak Lah of the “work with me and not for me” fame, was made from a different mould. A perfectly decent human being, he possessed impressive religious and moral credentials. When he declared that his top priority was to take the war against corruption into enemy territory, the country rejoiced, but it was to be short lived. A lot of white washing here and there, and a little tinkering around the edges did nothing to reduce corruption. If anything, the consensus was that corruption during Pak Lah’s watch was worse than when Mahathir held sway over us.

As Pak Lah himself admitted without saying so in so many words, there were other more pressing matters requiring his attention that it was only in the twilight of his stewardship that he woke up and realised that there was a little promise he had made that he had to fulfil. So in great haste, all he managed to do, bless the poor man, was to leave behind a less than useless legacy in the shape of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission which on present showing is useful neither to man nor beast. And that is being charitable.

The first anti-corruption public relations exercise was the setting up of the National Institute of Integrity Malaysia which, while trying its best to justify its existence, has achieved next to nothing because it is seen as being unable to focus on its mission. Institutions of themselves are not as important as what their people do inside their often magnificent buildings. Malaysia’s dismal failure to curb corruption as effectively as Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan, the cleanest in this region, has everything to do with the leadership in government, the Attorney-General’s chambers, the police and the MACC.

It all comes down to people in the end. Mere institutions without people of honour and integrity to lead them do not amount to anything. Remember that saying about how you can fool some people some of the time, but not all people all of the time. It is a lesson that seems to have escaped our leadership.

With one scam after another swirling around their ankles on a daily basis, our leaders, no matter what tricks they try to come up with, have all but lost their high moral ground from which to sermonise on the evils of corruption. The country is mired in corruption and every level of the service has been touched by corruption, defined as the “abuse of entrusted power for personal gain, and official corruption in our country is escalating to enormous heights because there is no political will to begin with.

The thing to remember about the Corruption Perceptions Index is that it reflects the views of the expatriate business community, resident in our country. They are the people who are sought to respond to questionnaires about corruption in our country. And they are not blind to what is going on in their dealings with the government. True, many have no direct experience of being subjected to official extortion, but they exchange stories which are the basis of their perceptions.

There were several countries that were written off as chronically and systemically corrupt and have succeeded remarkably in breaking out of the vicious cycle of corruption. Corruption is not part of our culture and yet we have allowed it to become our way of life.

We are the product of our environment and the government has a responsibility for creating an environment that makes corruption a “high risk, low return business.” But to do that the Prime Minister must lead by example and must confront corruption in all its manifestation, no matter who commits it. A real challenge for Najib if he can find some time to drop his 1Malaysia and look at corruption in the face.

I am not at all sanguine at all about our future as a nation if, by default, we look the other way when disaster is heading straight at us. We will slide further and will have for company those countries that we used to look down upon because we were cleaner. Yes, there was a time, when Tunku Abdul Rahman was prime minister, when corruption only happened in other countries and when ministers and senior Malayan Civil Service officers lived well, well within their means.

Najib must shake off all traces of corruption within our system of governance if Malaysia is to reappear on the competitiveness radar screen of countries that foreign investors feel confident to park their money. Is Najib up to the challenge? (By TUNKU ABDUL AZIZ/MySinchew)

We have heard all these promises before. Pak Lah, the Mr Clean and Mr Nice Guy of Malaysian politics proclaimed his great mission of fighting corruption after 22 years of unprincipled and largely unaccountable governance under Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

We lapped it all up, initially at any rate, and believed every word the spin doctors spewed out about Abdullah Badawi.

It was not too difficult a job for Abdullah Badawi, or anyone else for that matter, after Mahathir, to look ethically spotless, clean and pure as the driven snow.

Badawi, with his religious credentials, gave every appearance of being the reformer that this country had been praying for. Alas, his leadership proved a total let-down for Malaysia.

What began as a journey full of hope and promise turned very quickly into a national nightmare. Abdullah, who skippered the good ship MALAYSIA, was in truth an incompetent and inept rating playing at being Admiral of the Fleet.

We discovered soon enough that he could not tell north from south and a sexton from a pair of compasses. We had to put up with his erratic command, watching with increasing anxiety as he set the ship adrift aimlessly, with no prospect of ever making landfall.

Now let me move away from naval to boxing metaphors, and I hope I am not mixing them in the process.

Abdullah had come to lead us laden with his own strange stock-in-trade. It was a mix, in no particular order, of Islam Hadhari that he himself could not explain to save his life, the memorably inane “Work with me and not for me” catchphrase, and the almost absurdly messianic anti-corruption clarion call that he had used to fool the entire nation.

I am embarrassed to admit, on reflection, that he had me fooled from Day One.

Abdullah was persuaded by close family members and advisers that he was doing a brilliant job, and this was what he wanted to hear.

He believed that he had what was needed to punch above his weight. He did not realise until too late that the Islam Hadhari as he had postulated it was no match for the reality of Umno politics with its long-established culture of money politics (for which, read grand corruption), in-fighting and back-stabbing.

Soon enough, he found himself out-pointed at every turn by his own seconds, Najib and Muhyiddin, whose protestations of eternal love and loyalty made with a straight face before the disastrous March 2008 elections seemed the height of black humour.

They pushed all the responsibility for the electoral failure to him, and with indecent haste, distanced themselves from him. They turned collective responsibility on its head. This was their interpretation.

And now, they are now leading Malaysia.

I am recalling the Abdullah years as a way of reminding ourselves not to be tempted into swallowing the “right noises” that Najib is making, hook, line and sinker.

He is apparently good at developing popular policies on the trot, and all his reform promises seem to flow so effortlessly and glibly off his silvery tongue and that worries many people who are looking more for substance rather than form.

His 1 Malaysia is a case in point. How does Najib propose to give practical effect to his excellent concept given the reality of Malaysia’s race-biased policies of racial discrimination?

Does he not see a contradiction? Is he clear in his own mind what he is talking about? For now, it remains a slogan and, without a clear vision of what 1 Malaysia is intended to be, it could well turn out to be nothing more than a grand illusion.

Does he really believe that he has what it takes to reconcile Umno’s pathological obsession with bumiputra rights on the one hand with the principles of inalienable equality for ALL Malaysians on the other?

1 Malaysia without complete equality of opportunity is nothing if not a cruel and dishonest practical joke.

So, until Najib sets out his plan for 1 Malaysia that accords with the conditions for a truly “Malaysian Malaysia” (with apologies to Lee Kuan Yew), I suggest, in a manner of speaking, we do not put the champagne on ice as it could be premature.

Published on APRIL 27, 2009 | The Malaysian Insider

There was really nothing to celebrate, certainly not the succession of Datuk Seri Najib Razak with all that huge and unsavoury media attention he is attracting internationally. Even here in Malaysia, where standards of public morality and ethics are much less vigorously applied to those in high office, there is a real feeling of queasiness and unease that Najib appears to be so cavalier about the critical need to clear his name against what he protests are unsubstantiated allegations of impropriety.

The salvation of his personal honour and integrity depends on his clearing the air, using all legal means at his disposal. Swearing on the Quran is not really the answer: it is not just a matter between him and his Maker. More to the point, he needs to respond to the concerns of society as a whole. The sooner he gets to grips with this inconvenient blight on his otherwise unblemished character, the better it will be for him and the country. Put this episode to rest. It will be good for the soul.

Wrecked and bedevilled by one scandal after another, sordid and nearly all verging on the criminal, the once arrogant standard bearer of “ketuanan Melayu” is still licking last year’s electoral battle wounds. It was a Waterloo of sorts for a party that until then had largely assumed their right to rule as one of God’s immutable laws.

The fallout was nothing if not surreal, a shambles of the first order if there ever was one. If it was a total shock for the party, then for Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the man who led the troops into battle equipped with unreliable intelligence and an obsolete schoolboy atlas, it was a personal tragedy. Ever the gentleman, he took the blame for the debacle without a murmur.

There were no tears shed for him even as a keris was plunged, and twisted for good measure, into him. Naturally, there was no “requiem” for the untimely political demise of its president, but then you would not have expected such a heart-warming gesture of decency and appreciation from a monolithic political structure bereft of common values of human decency.

Did they not do the same to the greatest ever Malaysian statesman, the man who came to be known as Bapa Malaysia? They demonised Tunku Abdul Rahman, and rewrote the history of our country’s independence in a way that blotted out his role in the fight for freedom. The Malays are rather good with their keris.

Abdullah will be remembered as the Prime Minister who had no stomach for the sort of vicious political infighting that is Umno’s hallmark. His handling of the 12th general election dealt the coup de grace to his political career. By his departure, he will also be remembered as the Prime Minister who did nothing to stop a scandal-strapped deputy from assuming the highest political position in the land. His decision to promote Najib may well have met with the approval of the Umno membership, but what about the millions of other Malaysians who, unlike their Umno friends, are fussier about the choice of the person to lead the country.

It is an act of irresponsibility to say the least, on the part of Abdullah, to foist on the nation a successor who has yet to satisfy the people of his innocence through the legal process. Pak Lah must realise that Umno is not Malaysia, and by the same token Malaysia is not Umno. It is this inability to distinguish between the party and the government that has cost Umno its attractiveness as a party of the people, and that could work against Umno come the next general election.

The speeches have all been well crafted; the sentiments expressed resonated beautifully, but the test of the pudding will always be in the eating. We have heard thousands of speeches from Umno politicians over the years, and if only a tiny fraction of those had been translated into action, Malaysia would not have remained a divided country, a country that is in danger of being torn apart not only along racial lines but also, God forbid, class lines.

There is a lot of practical wisdom in Abdullah’s farewell speech for Umno, but I am not sanguine that anything useful will come out of it as long as the same people remain in control of the party. The shake-up has been nothing more than a recycling process. I hope to goodness that I am wrong on every count, and there is hope for all of us yet.

Most of all, I pray that the Najib years, as many fear, will not bring a return of the Dark Age of Mahathirism.

Published on MARCH 27, 2009 | The Malaysian Insider

When Abdullah Badawi took over the reigns of government, I was among those invited by the media to comment on what his legacy might be. We were swept and overwhelmed by the euphoria of the moment, the dawn of a blessed new era and the end of a morally degrading and debilitating regime. Anyone after Mahathir Mohamad was a welcome change, and the country was happy to give him and the party he led the biggest ever electoral victory in the history of our country. Badawi responded by urging us, his countrymen and women to “work with me and not for me.” This catchphrase symbolising inclusiveness went down well in the beginning, but when people began to see through this as another clever spin-doctoring exercise, it went down like a ton of bricks. Badawi was suave. He could at times be glibly persuasive especially when outlining his agenda against corruption.

As president of Transparency International Malaysia, I was literally “over the moon.” I was, like millions of other Malaysians, completely taken in by all this rhetoric and mock determination to slay the dragon. Corruption, since his tenure of office, has continued to savage the integrity of this country and much else. True, he has put in place all the visible symbolic institutions associated with fighting corruption, but sadly they remain nothing more than just weak, ineffectual structures constructed on shifting sand with sub-standard materials. We do not have to look farther than the Malaysian Institute of Integrity and the recently morphed Anti-Corruption Agency to realise the futility of it all. Brick and mortar alone cannot sustain our war against national corruption. Badawi knew that but given the culture of political corruption in his United Malay National Organisation, what could the poor man have done?

My comment in 2003 to the media response on Badawi was that he would leave an important legacy if he was satisfied with one term during which time he could bring about such changes as were clearly necessary to make a difference to Malaysia in social, economic and political terms. All he had to do to come out smelling like a million roses was to do the opposite of what Mahathir did during his 22 years of ethically and morally very questionable governance. As a one term prime minister, Badawi would not have to be looking over his shoulder constantly. He did try in his usual perfunctory manner to do something, but as many of us have come to realise, it was a case of too little, too late. I hope history will not be too harsh when evaluating his premiership because he did try after all. He will certainly be remembered as a decent human being which I suppose is more than can be said of many of us.

He will be leaving behind a bloated and lumbering civil service that has been seriously politicised, abandoning any pretence at “neutrality” in discharging its duties and responsibilities, and a police force that lurches from one crisis of confidence to another with regular monotony. If press reports are to be believed, a major police brutality scandal has already surfaced, and this, in addition to other reported cases of death in custody must surely merit some serious thinking on the part of the authorities about policing in a democratic society. The manner in which police detainee A. Kugan met his death while under the care and protection of the Royal Malaysia Police has shaken public confidence in our police as never before. There are no bad policemen, only bad officers and the Inspector General of Police may wish to do the honourable thing; take responsibility and resign.

It is in situations such as this that those of us concerned with effective and ethical policing wonder why the most important of the 125 recommendations of the Royal Commission inquiring into the police service, namely an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission has yet to be set up four years on. Has the government the political will to implement this vital recommendation immediately? The police I know object to this, but it is the people, through their government, who should be wagging the tail, not the other way round. The IPCMC is intended to protect the people against unethical policing as well as to protect the police against themselves.

Published on MARCH 7, 2009 | MySinchew