KUALA LUMPUR, June 4 — An opposition lawmaker today said nothing less than a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) must be set up to probe a recent expose on corrupt Malaysian border officials, amid ongoing exhumation of the bodies of suspected human trafficking victims from mass graves found in Malaysia’s northern state of Perlis.

PKR’s Alor Setar MP Gooi Hsiao Leung said it was “appalling” that Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s immediate reaction to the findings by the police’s Special Branch intelligence arm was to pass the buck on policing Malaysia’s borders to the army.

“Any self respecting Home Minister in charge of national security and law enforcement affairs, would have expressed absolute disgust and horror, calling for departmental heads to roll following the Special Branch report that the various enforcement agencies have for years, failed to act on their own intelligence reports on corruption,” Gooi said in a statement.

Gooi said it is “totally unacceptable” for Zahid to merely pass on the responsibilities of securing Malaysia’s borders to the armed forces when the alleged corruption uncovered by the Special Branch is rooted in security agencies under the Home Ministry’s watch.

“Instead, our Home Minister must now immediately launch a deep and thorough probe into the Special Branch findings, hauling up police officers, from every rank and file up to the IGP himself to explain and account for the total breakdown in law enforcement at Malaysia’s border,” he said, referring to the inspector-general of police.

Gooi added that he will raise an emergency motion in Parliament to debate the issue when the Dewan Rakyat reconvenes its second meeting of the year on Monday after a week-long break.

The police’s Special Branch was cited in a report by Local English daily the News Straits Times yesterday as claiming that 80 per cent of Malaysian law enforcement officers manning the country’s borders were engaged in corruption, with some purportedly also in on the smuggling syndicates’ payroll instead of merely taking bribes.

Zahid was quoted in the same report as saying that he will seek Cabinet approval to get the army to take over all security operations along Malaysia’s borders while pledging that efforts will be made to put an end to “institutionalised corruption, where these law enforcement officers know the syndicate members well”.

Local law enforcement officers have been suspected for alleged involvement in human trafficking activities in northern Malaysia and southern Thailand, some were subsequently arrested.

The recent discovery in Padang Besar, Perlis of nearly 140 mass graves and nearly 30 suspected people smuggling camps came after repeated denials of their existence by government officials.