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Corruption as a badge of honour

THE COUNTRY IS RUINED IF corruption is left unchecked. This is accepted by both the government and opposition. It is a good rallying cry for both to highlight the dangers of it. What is the reality? The opposition rails against it, but can do little or nothing about it. The government admits it is a problem, but is unprepared to take the harsh measures that must to begin the clean up. The litany of the high and mighty carted off to prison to serve their sentences for corruption is too horrific for the privileged who take to it as ducks to water. The laws are there to impress the world, not to correct or contain it. The will to address it as rigorously as it must if Malaysia is not to descend the depths of corrupt societies is just not there.

For it is corruption that oils the machinery of government and business. When it is so widely practiced, from the high and mighty to those at the bottom of the corruption ladder, any attempt to crack down is fraught with political disasters waiting to happen. Every now and then, more frequently these days, the newspapers are awash with reports of corruption, but no one takes any serious notice of it. The newspapers report it for that they hopes sells newspapers. The cabinet ministers see it as proof that Malaysia is transparent, whatever that means. And as quickly there is no more talk about it. It has vanished into thin air.

If one were to take the front page headlines of Malaysian newspapers in the past year, one would find that billions of ringgit has vanished into thin air, the cabinent ministers and others promise, to use the current buzz, "to leave no stone unturned", opposition parties and public interest groups rush in to state the obvious, and as quickly the matter disappears into thin air. A year later, no action has been taken, the numerous instances of corruption is forgotten, no one has been charged, and it is time for another year of corruption to be mentioned and forgotten.

The newspapers concentrate, when it suits them, on petty corruption and write about it for weeks. It is one way of lulling the people that something is done about it. The corruption reported is at the level the people begins to relate to. And applaud them all the way. I had an email the other day to which I did not reply - I do not to anyone who believes in criticism behind a smokescreen - in which he accused me of criticising the cronies of the establishment for the damage they are responsive for in the Malaysian body politic. Look at the good works the likes of Tan Sri Vincent Tan and T. Ananda Krishnan do: the number of child-care centres, the occasional scholarships they give, their concern for the underdog. This writer's focus is on the lollies he gets, not the widespread damage the crony giver causes the country. When the government takes an interest in rooting out corruption, as in the Ampang Jaya muncipal council recently, the problem for it all is at whose feet corruption cannot be seen to fester, in the case the mentri besar of Selangor and a state executive councillor.

There are powerful forces in the background, in politics and business, who do not corruption to be aired and investigated in the press. Corruption fuels politics in this country. A former UMNO MP I know once told me, in an off guarded moment, that he went every month to the offices of a prominent business man to be given RM7,000 a month. When I asked him why, he said he could not survive on the RM5,000 parliamentary allowance. When I reminded him if he were to rise higher, his independence or commitment to the people is fiction since he would be for all time a bought politician, he shrugged his shoulders, and said "everyone does it". This very act of going to the tycoon's offices ever month for his pittance cost him his dignity and made him rely on what is not his: he could not from then on be an effective MP. Multiply that by a hundred times, tens of thousands if you include the civil servants, and you see the scale of the problem, and why it cannot be reversed.

The government would not know where to begin. Corruption has eaten into the Malaysian soul that it is caught in an intractible dilemma: it is now as difficult to contain it as it is to let it continue. The government in one sense encourages it. When it could open every major purchase to open tender in conditions of probity, it prefers to hand it to a RM2 company to oversea purchases or contracts worth billions. Why? Whoever gets the contract must distribute part of the largesse to those who made the decision. What is worse is that in the end for all the money spent a shoddy or unusuable building or substandard products.

What happened to the building of fast patrol boats, the contract for which was, as is the norm, given to a crony? He messed it up. Even the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, acknowledges it. What has happened to him? Nothing. He hopes for another huge contract which he can turn into a corrupt scam. After failing to implement a RM1.2 billion computerisation of Malaysian hospitals, the crony, a class mate of a Mahathir son, is promptly given a contract worth several hundred millions of ringgit to build computer labs in schools. It is a collosal failure. The man has disappeared to South Africa, after allegedly instructing to his staff to get the story off the newspapers and public attention "no matter who and how much has to be paid". It is a matter of record that the media is not interested in it any more.

The cancer of corruption spreads relentlessly. The half-hearted attempts to contain it only makes it spread the faster. The government dare not act for fear of being tarred for what it is guilty of. If there is a crackdown in corruption one-tenth as severe as in Singapore, the government could well be thrown out. It it without doubt the most important problem this weak-kneed government has to face. But the corruption is so widespread that it is a political issue with every Malaysian who has had to deal with authority. The government encourages it by its action and inaction, not by its words. Corruption in Malaysia, anecdotally, is bad as it is in many of a failing state. With no will to turn the clock back. Until it does, corruption in Malaysia is a badge of honour to be worn with pride. One has only to visit the houses of those in power and the obviously corrupt for proof. It is near a point where it could only be reversed by a revolution.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my