DAP offers to work with the BN Federal Government by uniting all Malaysians around fighting corruption
DAP offers to work with the BN federal government by uniting all Malaysians around fighting corruption instead of dividing Malaysians with hate and lies about race and religion. DAP is making this offer in the national interest following the latest survey by Transparency International (TI), which showed that Malaysians were losing faith in the government’s effort to fight graft.
Police and political parties were perceived to be the two most corrupted institutions, with police hit the corruption scale at 4.0 while political parties registered 3.8 with 5 being extremely corrupt. According to the latest March 2013 Transparency International-Malaysia's (TI-M) Global Corruption Barometer (GCB), only 31 percent of respondents thought the government had been effective in fighting corruption, down from 49 percent in 2011.
It is sad that former TI Malaysia and now Minister I the Prime Minister Department Datuk Paul Low continues to be in denial by dismissing such a poor result by stating that corruption is a global menace and not peculiar to Malaysia. Unlike other countries like China, which is making slow but significant progress where Ministers are sentenced to death for corruption, the Malaysian government continues to take an ostrich in the sand approach of “seeing no evil, hearing no evil and speaking no evil”.
Even the highest judges in Malaysia’s recommendation in the Royal Commission of Inquiry for the establishment of an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) to prevent police abuses and custodial deaths is rejected as unconstitutional by the Home Minister, a non-lawyer but with an ability to find creative and inventive excuses.
The losses from corruption in Malaysia ranged from RM27 billion yearly to nearly a one trillion ringgit over the last 10 years in the form of illicit outflow of funds as estimated by Washington-based Global Financial Integrity Report.
Corruption is so ingrained within the BN political culture that it is said that, “if corruption is not wiped out, Malaysia dies; if corruption is wiped out, BN dies”. BN must be willing to prove this wrong by making fighting corruption the central thrust of government through institutional measures and not merely playing lip service.
DAP is willing to work with BN to implement institutional changes to uphold integrity such as open competitive tenders, public declaration of assets by government leaders, full disclosure of government contracts signed with the private sector and a ban on family members of government leaders conducting business with the government.
