DAP veteran leader Lim Kit Siang today said those responsible for fighting graft should quit over their failures after Malaysia slipped further in Transparency International’s corruption perception index (CPI) ranking.

The country’s CPI ranking fell from 55th to 62nd out of 180 countries.

Lim said the resignations of minister Paul Low, MACC chief commissioner Dzulkifli Ahmad and the 20-odd members of the Anti-Corruption Advisory Board, Special Committee on Corruption, Complaints Committee, Operations Review Panel, and Corruption Consultation and Prevention Panel would restore public confidence in MACC’s credibility in the fight against graft.

He also singled out Low, who is Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, and Dzulkifli for their responses to the drop in ranking.

Low had attributed the high profile activities of the MACC in 2017 to the downgrade while Dzulkifli said he was shocked by the plunge in ranking and that MACC would create its own corruption index.

“What balderdash! That is the only proper reaction to the ridiculous claim by Low that the string of high-profile arrests last year is the likely cause for the drop in ranking.

“That is contradictory to what TI Malaysia president Akhbar Satar said. He said if not because of MACC’s aggressiveness in conducting investigations and making arrests, the ranking would have gone lower than 62nd place,” Kit Siang told a press conference today.

He said since Low took up the job, Malaysia’s CPI ranking has fallen 12 places from 50th (2014) to 62nd last year. Low was formerly TI Malaysia president before joining the federal government.

“What possible excuse can Low conjure to hang on to his ministerial post on integrity? It appears that the longer he continues, the more corrupt Malaysia becomes.

“What has happened to the boasts of ranking Malaysia as the top 30 least corruption nations by 2020 when the target is getting further and further?” Lim asked.

Lim also said he was stumped that Dzulkifli was shocked by the fall in ranking.

“Dzulkifli seems to think that Malaysians and the international community are so gullible that they can be misled by MACC’s ‘shock and awe’ arrest campaign and charges under his tenure to believe that the agency is empowered to combat graft regardless of rank or station.

“MACC’s campaign obediently avoided the sharks of corruption, but is tasked with the special agenda to tar and stain Pakatan Harapan leaders,” he said.

He added that MACC’s own CPI would have no credibility except among Umno and Barisan Nasional members.

Kit Siang also said before MACC was set up in 2009, Malaysia had ranked better in TI’s CPI, making 23rd under Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s administration, and 39th under Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Malaysia’s ranking only fell to 50th place under the Najib administration.

‘Alternative facts’

Earlier, Lim also slammed Najib’s statement during a live interview that he ate quinoa instead of rice, setting himself apart from ordinary Malaysians as only the “super top 2%” could afford to eat the imported and expensive protein-based food.

He said Najib waxed lyrical about eating quinoa instead of addressing Malaysia’s integrity crisis.

The Gelang Patah MP also said Najib was giving people a rosy alternative picture of the economy when ordinary Malaysians found it difficult to cope with the rising cost of living.

He said Najib should heed the views recently expressed by Mydin hypermarket boss Ameer Ali Mydin, who had spoken about the price hikes affecting consumer goods.

“The country may be seeing rosy gross domestic product (GDP) growth but consumers don’t seem to have enough money to spend on groceries.

 “It is in one sense a direct challenge about the official statistics and indirectly challenges the prime minister’s upbeat statements,” he told a press conference today.

Lim said the Mydin managing director made a very important point that deserved closer scrutiny, pointing to the discrepancy between retail sales figures and private consumption estimates as a GDP component.

He said the two should be moving in tandem, and it was hardly possible for private consumption to be growing while retail sales declined.

He noted that the low retail sales growth might be explained by stagnant wages and household incomes, and high household debts.

“It will appear that we have a case of ‘alternative facts’ or to put it even more starkly, it could be a case of ‘fake news’ to make everyone feel good,” Kit Siang said.

“The implication of this inconsistency is serious. It raises questions about the veracity of the aggregate GDP estimates if we take into account that private consumption is the single largest GDP component.

“To put it simply, the GDP appears to be over-estimated, and the higher growth rate that the prime minister is crowing about is really nothing more than alternative facts,” he said.

It was reported that Malaysia is expecting an average 5.2% GDP growth in 2018. – February 23, 2018.