International Anti-Corruption Day Message by DAP Secretary-General Lim Guan Eng
Unless the BN federal government follows Penang’s footsteps by implementing 6 integrity measures, Malaysia will not only fail to prosper but the weight of the recent exposes of financial scandals will ensure that next year’s Corruption Perception Index(CPI) ranking of TI will be worse. The 6 integrity measures of fighting corruption are:
Instituting public declaration of assets of the Chief Minister and the EXCO members.
Implementing open competitive tenders.
Bar family members from involvement in government contracts.
Protect genuine whistleblowers.
Remove leaders with extravagant lifestyles.
Come clean on political donations.
Malaysians will observe International Anti-Corruption Day today with little cause for celebration as despite a slight improvement in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) ranking from 60th out of 183 countries in 2011 to 54th out of 176 in 2012, our country remains haunted by financial scandals and allegations of grand corruption involving leaders at the highest level.
Although there is a slight improvement in the overall score, it must be remembered that this survey was conducted earlier in the year, before the emergence of major high-profile scandals such as the mysterious RM 40 million donations to UMNO Sabah and recent revelations by businessman Deepak Jaikishan relating to shady land deals. Worse the extraordinary wealth of the Sarawak Chief Minister and his family exposed in the Syariah courts as worth billions of ringgit has not been fully explained and accounted for.
The public has only been informed of the full extent of the abuse of power in the previous Selangor and Penang governments. For example, land in Selangor now worth RM300 million was sold to BN component parties at RM1 per square foot (psf) while prime land in TanjungTokong next to Gurney Drive in Penang was sold at RM1 psf.
If all these exposes of scandals were factored by TI, Malaysia’s ranking under the CPI of TI would have been worse. Most worryingly, the CPI score does not reveal telling details such as the fact that 50% of respondents in the Bribe Payer’s Survey believed that they have lost business due to bribery. In this area, Malaysia ranked worst out of the 31 countries, worse than even Indonesia (47%), Pakistan (42%) and Russia (39%).
In Penang, not only are our leaders’ assets publicly declared and verified by an international accounting firm, we plan to update the asset declaration every year. Hence, there will be an updated version January. If Penang can publicly declare the assets of the Chief Minister and EXCO Members, which will be updated yearly on January next year, why can’t BN Federal Government publicly declare assets of the Prime Minister and Ministers to improve Malaysia’s rankings in Transparency International(TI).
