MALAYSIA has slid to a score of 48 in the Corruption Perception Index. We have been on the downtrend for the last two years. This is not surprising as the government has stalled many reform initiative and we are returning to the 1MDB era where corruption is the norm. Law enforcement institutions in this country are themselves involved in all sorts of corrupt practices.

I won’t call this a wake-up call because we have already had many wake-up calls since the time of 1MDB. Today we are suffering the consequences of corruption in the form of bad quality of services and products, depreciation of the ringgit, poor healthcare infrastructure, poor education – the list goes on. 

So where do we go from here? We surely don’t need to go back to the drawing board for a new plan. We already have the national anti-corruption plan (NACP) that was launched back in 2019. Three years down the road, the implementation of the NACP has been a complete failure. What we need to do is to implement the NACP fully and truthfully. The question is, does the government have the political will to carry out the reforms recommended in the NACP?

The NACP covers a wide range of reforms and strategies, including:

1. Political financing and governance. There is a need to govern where and how political parties raise funding, introduce a law for asset declaration and prohibit members of the administration
or any highly influential persons from issuing supporting letters for projects or applications;

2. Separation of powers between the attorney-general’s office and the public prosecutor. There is a conflict of interest when the AG, who is a legal adviser to the government, also prosecutes. We have seen how charges were withdrawn or initiated in some high-profile cases;

3. Reform government procurement. Introduce mechanisms to prevent information leakages, compel disclosure of conflict of interest and more importantly, introduce legislation governing
public procurement;

4. Police accountability – the plan is to transform the Enforcement Agency Integrity Commission into the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission to address integrity issues and curb police misconduct. However, the government has made a drastic U-turn and tabled instead a watered-down and ineffective IPCC bill. This is clearly a political move; and

5. Independence of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and appointment of the chief commissioner. Empowering the agency in terms of autonomy over the appointment of the chief commissioner, budget allocations, oversight committee, and the establishment of a service commission and manpower.

The NACP also covers areas of corporate governance, legal and judicial reforms, governance of government-linked companies and appointments, and law enforcement reform.

In a nutshell, the NACP is a comprehensive document that aims to cover every possible situation with regard to corruption and good governance. But why is its implementation stalled? We don’t hear the prime minister talking about the NACP. We don’t hear even our MPs talking about the NACP. 

It is practically certain that many reading this article today will not have heard of the NACP.

It is time we hold our MPs and the government accountable for the failure to implement the NACP. Ask your MP to raise the NACP implementation strategy in Parliament. We need to make sure the NACP is fully implemented if we want to address the huge problem of corruption we are facing today.

We already have a plan. We must see it through. – January 26, 2022.

* K. Sudhagaran Stanley reads The Malaysian Insight.

* 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.