Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) chief commissioner Azam Baki should resign for questioning the veracity, credibility and reliability of TI’s CPI, which is accepted by all countries globally and multilateral institutions such as United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund. It is shocking that the chief anti-corruption enforcer of the country rubbishes the TI’s CPI presumably because Malaysia has been downgraded with a low ranking due to MACC’s dismal and pathetic performance in combating corruption.
Azam said today the CPI by TI does not necessarily portray the “real corruption situation” because it is merely based on perception, where not everything is related to corruption. There is something very wrong with Azam who should know that the scourge of corruption is not a fundamental flaw occurring in isolation but a complex problem interwoven within a mosaic of social, economic and political structures. Corruption is a social problem as it is an economic and political problem.
How can Azam succeed in fighting corruption if does not even understand the nature, shape and context of corruption and how it happens. Azam would do well to read the various books on corruption by the late academic Syed Hussein Alatas. Azam had cast doubt and disputed the CPI when responding to a question in Putrajaya yesterday on how Malaysia plans to improve its position on the CPI.
Azam said MACC would “accept” the rankings if it was done solely on corruption, without involving other indicators, and if it was “based on evidence”, which he did not specify. This is despite the data sources of TI being collected by institutions that include the World Bank and the World Economic Forum.
Is Azam bearing a grudge to undermine TI merely because for the 2021 CPI, Malaysia dropped five spots to rank 62 out of 180 countries, the lowest ranking in history. The CPI for this year is expected to decline further this year with many corruption charges being used as a political weapon against opposition MPs, as well as the charges against pro-government MPs withdrawn or not prosecuted even though arrests have been made.
Further Azam’s own abuse of power with unaccountable extraordinary wealth in trading and owning millions of ringgit worth of company shares has failed to set a good example as well as exposed the scandal of a law enforcer being a law-breaker. How can Malaysia’s CPI improve when MACC is seen as covering up instead of exposing corruption, especially committed by the highest levels of the country’s leadership?
If the CPI by TI is not seen as a reliable and credible yardstick, then what global standard would Azam propose as an alternative? Clearly, Azam is not fit to helm the MACC, when a new chief Commissioner that is clean, competent, independent and neutral not subject to political manipulation is needed to win the war against corruption in Malaysia.