PAKATAN Harapan needs a new agenda for bribery and corruption, or ABC, for good governance administration of rule of law. Good governance cannot happen within a culture engulfed in bribery and corruption.

What is bribery then? Cambridge Dictionary defines it as the crime of giving someone money or something else of value, often illegally, to persuade that person to do something you want.

Unfortunately, such definitions only view this agenda from the perspective of the service provider.

But why so, why this close one eye to a queue jumper at the post office or supermarket?

Why is such an action not also get viewed as a different kind of “corruption of our values of civility or civil conduct? Why is the corrupter not fully respected in the fight against bribery and corruption? Can’t he or she say “no” to corruption? For instance, I have never given even RM5 for a traffic offence since I began driving more than 40 years ago. Anti-bribery is a conviction.

Have not police or JPJ officers not tried to seek a bribe for different kinds of minor abuses of laws? Are there not some ways of hinting it? I had never heard of anyone actually requesting a bribe; until very recently!

Therefore, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s statement that “the public service is seeking a return to an era of crony corruption and bribery is suddenly fully comprehensible by me.

OHMSI is a civil society group, which started about the same time PM Abdullah Ahmad Badawi set up IIM. IIM was prided as the first of its kind in the world. Then, what happened? In less than a decade, the IIM has slowly but surely become almost a non-entity. Why? Funding is always only an excuse!

While rakyat Malaysia has changed the former corrupt regime; the ABC has not yet been fully anchored in political will with of a real and serious agenda. What I heard recently has shocked and even frightened me.

The macro-economic argument is that unless we make ABC a principled agenda of the PH government, which is owned, driven, and masterminded by all the PH strategy think-tanks, such political will remains only a dream.

Agenda bribery and corruption must become a personal commitment of every Malaysian citizen towards denying any personal gain or privilege which is not need-based. That is a common value I observed in the US, i.e. that those who apply for scholarships mostly have genuine needs.

For one poor example, for about two decades while I was in public service, I saw children of my PTD colleagues applying for and being admitted into Mara Junior Colleges with full scholarships. Why so?

The fact is Mara’s original agenda was for the poor Malays and other Bumiputeras from the country-side. Would not that be abuse or corruption too? No bribery, per se, was involved but obviously there is a displacement or dislocation of the original agenda, and the new beneficiaries were not designed for such benefits and privileges? 

Therefore, I was delighted to read a statement by the minister of finance that one of the core priorities of PH is needs-based development for all Malaysians, regardless of ethnicity and religious heritage. We are all Malaysians now!

Can we therefore agree, as we are in the fasting month, that bribery is taking anything which we do not deserve, or seeking privileges not meant for us? Corruption is also a culture where we ignore the needs of the less fortunate and take those benefits and priorities meant for them for ourselves. – May 26, 2019.

* KJ John worked in public service for 32 years, retired, and started a civil group for which he is chairman of the board. He writes to inform and educate, arguing for integration with integrity in Malaysia. He believes such a transformation has to start with the mind before it sinks into the heart!

* 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.