A FEW days ago, the chief of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission expressed his shock over Malaysia’s slide in the Corruption Perception Index.

Soon after, presumably after overcoming his initial shock, he then mooted the idea of having our own index. This met with understandable scorn from Malaysians. After all, this is not the first time we have come up with our own benchmarks or ratings, and then going to town patting our backs for own achievements that no one else really cares about. We even have our own book of records to put them all in.

A few Malaysian universities have been found to have donated funds to dubious international ‘award’ bodies usually to win medals and accolades from these bodies down the road. Our leaders are known to have returned ‘prestigious’ awards days after newspapers report about it, claiming those awards as indications of how the world recognises the efforts of our leadership.

Our obsession with awards appears to have trickled down to individuals with bogus university degrees and certifications. We like giving them out too, sometimes to dictators from foreign countries.

That we would want to come out tops at our own invented game, with our own rules, is therefore not as surprising as it should be.

Having said that, a few things should be understood about the CPI. First of all, it measures perception, not corruption itself. Meaning, how corrupt do people think we are, rather than how corrupt we actually are.

The input for the CPI is based on surveys and expert opinion. Second, it also takes into account factors like freedom of the press (in highlighting corruption), ease of doing business, campaigns by the government to combat corruption and government policy that may not directly impact corruption.

Thirdly, it only takes into account public and not private corruption, meaning huge corruption scandals like the one involving Volkswagen or Samsung would not be taken into account.

So while it is accepted to be an indicator of how serious a country is in combating corruption, it should be read with other reports, some also published by Transparency International, to get a complete picture of how well or badly a country is doing.

This year, Malaysia scored 47 – 2 points lower than last, with a drop of 7 places to number 62, sharing that spot with Cuba. We averaged only slightly better than the regional (Asia Pacific) score of 44.

So what went wrong? Could it be the parameters set and the fact it is not suited to our local scenario? Or are the 13 bodies whose reports are sampled to come up with the CPI not credible? We do, however, use some of their other favourable reports, however, like the World Bank’s indication of Malaysia’s progress.

In 2014, Malaysia lent credibility to the same Index, by expressing happiness at our achievement of attaining 50 points and moving up the ladder, while setting a target to hit top 30 within a few years, which seems harder done than said.

If we really felt it was not a good indicator, perhaps something should have been said at that point, not three years and as many consecutive drops after.

Bangladesh’s own TI chapter, for example, rejected the CPI results for that same year (2014), when it placed Bangladesh higher than they thought it deserved. However, that is something that we rarely do – reject praise in any form.

Indonesia, while placed lower than us, managed to steadily improve its ratings for the past five years. Perhaps instead of arguing suitability of methodologies, we could send our MACC top guns to KPK to find out what they are doing right, or consistently.

The reality is, cherry picking out positive reports when they suit us and rejecting negative ones when they don’t, has been perfected into an art by erstwhile Malaysian political practitioners. – February 27, 2018.

* Emmanuel Joseph firmly believes that Klang is the best place on Earth, and that motivated people can do far more good than any leader with motive.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.