MARCH 7 ― Recent developments in the country tend to give people an impression that the country remains very much stagnant has never picked up some lessons from past mistakes.
First and foremost our anti-corruption initiatives. MACC recently launched the “Ops Licin 2,” arresting 35 enforcers and five members of the public suspected of offering protection services for fuel smuggling activities to neighboring Thailand. Such high-profile arrests tend to elicit an impression that the MACC personnel are indeed doing their jobs. But the thing is,such operations could hardly do anything to stem the rampant corruption.
Last September, the anti-corruption agency busted a massive smuggling racket involving local government officials. 40 suspects were detained, 28 of whom Customs officials. The following month, “Ops Belot” was launched against senior government officials condoning acts of prostitution and illegal betting syndicates. 23 senior officials were charged. Later, the MACC rounded up 24 civil servants suspected of collecting “protection money” from pirated CD syndicates in Penang.
Going further, the MACC prosecuted corrupt officials suspected of misappropriating RM108 billion in tax funds in 2011. Some 62 Customs officials were arrested nationwide to assist investigation under the Ops 3B targeting the Customs Dept, their assets and bank deposits totaling RM602 million frozen. The operation was nevertheless put to an abrupt halt soon afterward.
Will such high-profile operations produce the scare effects at all? We all know the answer. If they were really that effective, the country should have made significant progress in the international corruption perception index ranking. Corruption news is still heard on a regular basis. even years ago, Bernas was said to have imported white rice worth in excess of RM60 million from Thailand without an import permit, and more recently we were told the cheap ST15 per cent grade rice was made expensive.
The MACC should focus its resources and manpower on one particular agency and weed out corrupt individuals there before moving on to the next organization. Structural corruption must be uprooted at all cost.
Such malpractices are evident in almost all other enforcement units. For instance, the police launched an operation in response to frequent shootings involving secret societies in 2013, but during the past one week, we have read several shooting incidents across the nation, showing that the police have apparently overlooked the root cause of crime.
The Semenyih river in Selangor was polluted on two occasions within three weeks, causing the filtration plant to stop operating and posing health hazards to hundreds of thousands of households in the vicinity. If we have been consistent with our enforcement, there is no way the same river can get polluted over and again within such a short span of time.
If tough laws could reduce the incidence of crime, then we won't see so many drug traffickers in the country and if the attitude of our enforcement personnel continues to be sluggish or expand the power of the MACC, there is no way we can achieve our goals.
Our officials should have drawn a lesson from the MH370 incident whereby passengers carrying fakes passports were allowed to board the doomed flight, and the inaction of surveillance unit detecting the flight on its radar. Unfortunately they have not.
The recent 1MDB debt issue has become a focal point of the local media. The prime minister has instructed the Auditor-General to audit the accounts of 1MDB. We cannot draw any conclusion before the probe results are released. but we are quite sure there is something very wrong with its management.
Wholly owned by the Treasury, 1MDB has been tasked with the mission of carrying out strategic projects to ensure the country's sustainable development and because of that, the company holds some of the most valuable plots of land and assets around. Such a loaded company naturally becomes the target of many, and consequently we must put in place very stringent supervisory mechanism. However, according to new reports, the government has never appointed any representative from the finance ministry to sit at its board.
In addition, 1MDB has expanded way too fast, and its debts fast building up.
Having gone through the PKFZ and NFC scandals, I wonder why the government has not stepped up supervision and management.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.
