THE lackadaisical attitude of Malaysians, especially among the Muslims, towards corruption will be detrimental to the country, warned Defence Minister Mohamad Sabu.

Mohamad noted many have started to accept corruption as a normal practice.

“Are we not embarrassed when we compare ourselves with New Zealand, where there are more sheep than people and yet they have attained ‘first world’ status because they have fought off corruption?

“There are even religious departments here who have been involved in corruption,” he said at a post-election forum in Universiti Malaya today.

He said he was disappointed with Muslims who spoke about having Islamic values but yet condoned corruption.

The Kota Raja MP also blamed the previous Barisan Nasional government for this plight.

Mohamad, also the Amanah president, said the issue of corruption was not allowed to be debated at public universities by academicians, forcing any grievances to be expressed through demonstrations.

“Five years before this change of government, corruption has been commonplace and the practices are already acceptable to those in the university or outside the university.

“Rich politicians gorged themselves with their new found wealth. We now know the consequences of allowing corruption which is widespread, and ultimately, we will all suffer.

“Imagine if we do not monitor the import of cigarettes into Port Klang, we will lose RM9 billion a year there. That’s just cigarettes.

“Then 1MDB, we had to pay the debt we did not have to before, that’s RM7 billion. The sum of these two is already RM16 billion.

“Imagine if RM16 billion given to Universiti Malaya, wouldn’t it be great? But why isn’t UM noisy when government loses money to corruption? That’s just two examples.

“If we were to add all levels of corruption, how many billions have we lost? This is what causes our country to be poor,” he said. – October 12, 2018.