PAKATAN Harapan is repeating past mistakes by allowing political appointees to sit on the boards of government-linked companies (GLCs), said political economist Prof Dr Edmund Terence Gomez.

The Universiti Malaya lecturer said when Putrajaya released the National Anti-Corruption Plan (NACP), there was hope they were going to deal with the structural problems of where power is concentrated and deconstruct these power structures with an open transparent system.

“But it’s not there. One example, is that the NACP stated politicians can be directors of GLCs. 

“As shown in the Scorpene and Yayasan Wilayah Persekutuan cases, when you put politicians in charge of GLCs the conflict of interest leads to wide scale corruption,” said Gomez at the Centre to Combat Corruption & Cronyism’s (C4) forum on conflict of interest today.

He said the new government is repeating what the previous administration had done because it leads to political financing. 

“These institutions (GLCs) can become their bases of power to use to control the political system,” said Gomez.

Petronas chief integrity officer Rohaizad Yaakob, who also spoke at the forum, said Malaysia has sufficient laws to deal with corruption but lacked proper reporting systems or people of integrity. 

“We can have all the good systems in place but if we don’t have a good person enforcing it, we will have problems of conflict of interest,” said Rohaizad, who was transferred from the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) in 2015.

Together with another MACC director Bahri Mohamad Zin, Rohaizad was reassigned to the Prime Minister’s Department during the height of the 1Malaysia Development Bhd investigations.

Bahri was asked to go because of his criticisms of the police investigation into MACC officers, while Rohaizad was said to be “soft” when dealing with opposition leaders.

Their transfers were subsequently revoked after the intervention of then MACC deputy chief Mohd Shukri Abdull.

“Corruption happens because we don’t have people of integrity in the right places,” said Rohaizad. 

“I have no issues with political appointees in GLCs, but there must be clear terms of reference for them and a proper reporting system.”

Rohaizad said even without the use of political appointees, those appointed i.e. businessman, can still be problematic if they are close to the political parties.

“It’s a problem if you have a good system and don’t have the right people. Similarly, you will also have a problem if you have the right people but don’t have a good reporting system,” he added.

Using Petronas as an example, Rohaizad said the oil and gas company viewed non-compliance seriously.

“When there was a issue with the integrity of a company, Petronas terminated the company’s contract and  blacklisted all the shareholders from dealing with Petronas,” he said.

Also at the forum were Election Commission chairman Azhar Harun and Deloitte Malaysia partner Cheryl Khor. – February 21, 2019.