{"id":2754,"date":"2010-07-02T11:22:48","date_gmt":"2010-07-02T03:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/buletinonline.net\/v7\/index.php\/2010\/07\/the-corruption-game-cannot-last-forever\/"},"modified":"2010-07-02T11:22:48","modified_gmt":"2010-07-02T03:22:48","slug":"the-corruption-game-cannot-last-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/the-corruption-game-cannot-last-forever\/","title":{"rendered":"The corruption game cannot last forever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<div class=\"ja-thumbnailwrap thumb-left\" style=\"width: 250px;\">\n<div class=\"ja-thumbnail clearfix\">\n<div class=\"thumbnail\" style=\"position: relative; z-index: 2;\"><a class=\"fancyboxgroup\" href=\"http:\/\/www.freemalaysiatoday.com\/fmt-english\/images\/stories\/2010\/05may\/28\/rasuah.jpg\" rel=\"jagroupgroup\"> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.freemalaysiatoday.com\/fmt-english\/images\/resized\/images\/stories\/2010\/05may\/28\/rasuah_250_220.jpg\" border=\"0\" style=\"float: left;\" \/> <\/a><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[ \n\/* <![CDATA[ *\/\njQuery(document).ready(function() {\nif( ! jQuery(\"a.fancyboxgroup\").fancybox({\n\t\timageScale:1,\n\t\t\t\t\t\tcenterOnScroll: 1}) ) \n\t{ document.write(''); }\n});\n\/*  *\/\n]]><\/script>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>By Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><strong>COMMENT<\/strong><\/span> The word \u201ccorruption\u201d comes from a Latin word meaning \u201cto break\u201d or \u201cto  destroy\u201d. Corruption is a cancer that steals from the poor, eats away  at governance and moral fibre, and destroys trust.<\/p>\n<p>Although corruption exists in both the private and public sector, the  corruption of the public sector is a more fundamental evil. This is  because the public sector is the enforcer and arbiter of the rules that  hold us together, the custodians of our common resources.<\/p>\n<p>Corruption is the abuse of public office for personal gain.  Corruption exacts a huge toll on our economy<\/p>\n<p>In a survey of more than 150 high ranking public officials and top  citizens from over 60 developing nations, these officials ranked  corruption as the biggest obstacle to development and growth in their  countries.<\/p>\n<p>Corruption empties out the public purse, causes massive misallocation  of resources, dampens trade and scares away investors<\/p>\n<p>The World Bank estimates that corruption can reduce a country&#8217;s  growth rate by 0.5 to 1 percentage points per year. Where there is a  lack of transparency and a weak court system, investors stay away.<\/p>\n<p>Corruption is a form of theft. But it is a form of theft that also  damages what is not stolen. This is because corruption involves the  capture of decisions involving public funds.<\/p>\n<p>Corrupt decisions mis-allocate public resources and cause tremendous  waste in the expenditure of public money. Public money is poured down  the drain when projects are selected not because of the value they  deliver to the public but because of what can be skimmed from them.<\/p>\n<p>But corruption is more than an economic cost. It is a curse that  attacks the root of the tree.<\/p>\n<p>Corruption destroys trust, which is nothing less than the glue  holding a society and its institutions together. When it becomes rampant  and is conducted with impunity, it also demoralizes even those public  servants not involved in it.<\/p>\n<p>The common people\u2019s experience with government breeds the expectation  that they need to pay before things will move. Small businesses suffer  as city hall officials come on their rounds to collect mandatory  \u201cdonations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\"><strong>Single biggest threat<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>It is time we recognise corruption as the single biggest threat to  our nation. In our economy, corruption is the root of our inability to  make the economic leap that we know we are capable of.<\/p>\n<p>There is no other reason why a country so blessed with natural  resources, a favourable climate and such immense talent should not have  done a lot better than we have.<\/p>\n<p>In our political system, corruption is the real reason why our  political parties refuse to reform. Some people say the party I belong  to has debased a once noble nationalism and a concern with the welfare  of marginalised people into a rush for the gravy train.<\/p>\n<p>They also said that the economic development we must bring our people  is reduced to nothing more than patronage, and patronage is inflated  into a right.<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, it appears that the root cause is in our political  parties. It is an open secret that tender inflation is standard  operating procedure. Within the parties and among politicians, it is  already an understood matter that party followers must be \u2018fed\u2019.  Politics is an expensive business, after all.<\/p>\n<p>Where else are we to get the funds? Thus theft of public goods is  normalised and socialised among an entire community, and what we had  planned to attain by capability is seen by some as something to be  attained through politics.<\/p>\n<p>Politicians are the villains in this piece, but they themselves are  the villains but they themselves are also trapped. The leadership is  trapped because they are beholden to political followers who demand that  they are looked after.<\/p>\n<p>They demand patronage, and turn the party\u2019s struggle for the welfare  of a community into their sense of entitlement to that patronage. So  they take their slice of the project.<\/p>\n<p>By the time they and each person down the line all the way down to  the contractor takes a lot and there is not enough left to do a decent  job, bridges collapse, highways crack, stadiums collapse, hospitals run  out of medicine, schoolchildren are cheated in their textbooks.  Corruption may look to its perpetrators like a crime without victims,  but it leaves a trail of destruction.<\/p>\n<p>No domain seems safe. Some say that the humble school canteen is the  domain of party branch chiefs. The golf course becomes a favoured way to  pass the cash over. We can place bets for RM5,000 a hole. For some  reason one party keeps losing. And there are 18 holes. Money thus  obtained is legal. It can be banked.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\"><strong>Expensive military  toys<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>We spend billions on the refurbishment of defence equipment; on  fighter jets, frigates and submarines. When a supplier lays on an  exorbitant commission to some shadowy middleman, that commission is  built into the price the government pays. That money comes from the  ordinary Malaysian.<\/p>\n<p>Military toys are very expensive. I remember from my time in the  Ministry of Finance. Even then, patrol craft cost about RM280mil each.<\/p>\n<p>We loved Exocet missiles. As minister, I had to sign each time the  military fired an Exocet missile for testing. Every time we test fired  one of them, RM2mil literally went out with a bang.<\/p>\n<p>When the UK went to war against Argentina, the UK government tried to  borrow them from us because outside of the UK we had the most of them  in the world. We must have been under some extraordinary military threat  which I did not understand.<\/p>\n<p>The list is long: procurement of food and clothing for the military,  medicine for hospitals and so on. In all these things the government has  been extraordinarily generous. And paid extraordinarily high prices.<\/p>\n<p>Government servants have to face pressure from politicians who expect  to be given these contracts because they need money for politics. This  corruption is justified because the party\u2019s struggle is sacred. The  civil servants can either join the game or be bypassed.<\/p>\n<p>For every government job big or small that goes down, someone feels  entitled to a slice of the pie, not because they can do the job, not  because they have some special talent or service to offer, but because  it is their right.<\/p>\n<p>They do not realise that what they demand is the abuse of power for  the sake of personal gain, or party gain. They elect those leaders among  themselves who are most capable of playing this game.<\/p>\n<p>So we get as our leaders people who have distinguished themselves not  by their ability to serve the public but at their long proven ability  to be party warlords, which is to say, distributors of patronage.<\/p>\n<p>And that is an euphemistic way of saying that because of corruption  the old, stupid and the criminal are elevated to positions of power  while young, talented and honest individuals are frozen out.<\/p>\n<p>Corruption destroys national wealth, erodes institutions and  undermines character. And it also destroys the process by which a  community finds its leaders.<\/p>\n<p>The consequence of this is that the majority are marginalized.  Government contracts circulate among a small group of people. Despite  all attempts at control and brainwashing, the majority soon catch up to  the game.<\/p>\n<p>This game cannot last forever. The longer it is played the more  people hate the government and the governing class. They vote against  the government, not for the opposition.<\/p>\n<p>They resent the government of the day. In 2008 we saw how the  Malaysian people feel about the abuse of power and incompetence caused  by corruption.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\"><strong>Reform political  funding<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Since party funding has become the excuse and the vehicle for  wholesale corruption, any measure we take to fight it must include the  reform of political funding.<\/p>\n<p>It is time we enact a law regulating donations to political parties.  Donations must be capped. No donor is to give more than a specified  limit, on pain of prosecution. This is to prevent special interests from  dominating parties. Such money is source of corruption.<\/p>\n<p>Let us limit political donations by law. On top of that let the  government set up a fund to provide funding to registered political  parties for their legitimate operational needs. This money can be  distributed based on objective criteria and governed by an independent  panel.<\/p>\n<p>This would close off the excuse that the parties need to raise  political funding through government contracts.<\/p>\n<p>Another idea is that we should freeze the bank accounts of people who  are being investigated for corruption. Public servants and politicians  are by law required to be able to demonstrate the sources of their  assets.<\/p>\n<p>Those with suspiciously ample asssets should have these assets frozen  until they can come up with evidence that they have accumulated them  legally.<\/p>\n<p>This may sound harsh, but only because we live in a country in which  almost no one ever gets nabbed for corruption. In China, those found  guilty are shot.<\/p>\n<p>In Malaysia we read about MACC investigating this and that but there  are no convictions. No one has been punished. We are the nation with no  consequences. The MACC finds no fault. The courts do not convict. And  our newspapers do not have the independence and vigour to follow up.<\/p>\n<p>We have an MACC with no results. It was a good idea to model our  anti-corruption agency after one of the most successful in the world,  Hong Kong\u2019s ICAC. However we have taken just bits and pieces of that  model. So really this will be no more than PR exercise unless we adopt  the model wholesale.<\/p>\n<p>We should repeal the OSA so that people can go to the MACC and the  authorities with documentary information on corrupt practice.<\/p>\n<p>As things stand, any document which might be incriminating to corrupt  public officials is stamped an Offical Secret. A whistleblower risks 7  yrs jail for being in possession of such documents.<\/p>\n<p>We need to identify rot eating through our roots as a nation. It is  corruption. We cannot expect the corrupt to embrace reform. It is time  for our citizens to stand up and call corruption by its name, and demand  reform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 By Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah COMMENT The word \u201ccorruption\u201d comes from a Latin word meaning \u201cto break\u201d or \u201cto destroy\u201d. Corruption is a cancer that steals from the poor, eats away at governance and moral fibre, and destroys trust. Although corruption exists in both the private and public sector, the corruption of the public sector [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"better_featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2754"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}