PETALING JAYA, July 11 — The Najib administration needs only political will to save Malaysia from falling further into the corruption chasm, the DAP’s Tony Pua (picture) said today in reply to a government agency’s “radical” solutions to clean up the country.
The government’s efficiency unit, Pemandu, had admitted yesterday that Putrajaya had not done enough in the fight against the widespread corruption that is dragging down Southeast Asia’s third-largest economy and proposed “radical reforms” to arrest its slide down the Global Corruption Barometer.
“The government just needs political will to ensure open, competitive and transparent tenders for mega-privatisation contracts, public declaration of assets by ministers, giving teeth to regulatory agencies such as MACC and IPCMC and promoting check and balance within the parliamentary system,” the DAP national publicity secretary said.
“The implementation of these measures will go a long way towards redeeming the declining corruption barometer in the country,” he added in his statement.
Yesterday, Pemandu’s anti-corruption director Ravindran Devagunam was reported to have acknowledged his agency’s failure to stem graft, after a global survey released this week showed public perception towards the government’s efforts to have plunged to a new low of 31 per cent from 49 per cent in 2011.
Ravindran was also reported to have said “radical reforms” were needed and trotted out several new measures such as making aides of ministers declare their assets to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) as part of the government’s efforts to curb corruption.
Ministers were required to inform the prime minister and the MACC of their financial worth from last year.
Pua, who is also Petaling Jaya Utara MP, scoffed at “radical” proposals, telling the government official that the only suggestion capable of checking abuses was for the Auditor-General’s Performance Audit Report to be debated at every Parliament sitting instead of just once a year.
But he questioned the effectiveness of even that move to prove the government’s commitment to fight corruption when Putrajaya had so far shown it was incapable of taking stern punitive action against the culprits exposed by the Auditor-General’s reports.
Pua said the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) pact wanted the government to win the battle against graft but was sceptical of the Najib administration’s commitment due to the back-peddling from its top officials to date.
He singled out Datuk Paul Low as an example, claiming the new governance and integrity minister had reversed his stand from when he had headed Transparency International Malaysia.
“However if the above measures are the standards by which Pemandu deem as ‘radical’, then certainly Najib’s administration’s attempts to reduce corruption will fail miserably.
“Being ‘radical’ in this case, doesn’t have to be ‘out of this world’,” the federal lawmaker said.
