Friday November 20, 2009
Disturbing spiral downward in corruption index
MALAYSIA went down to the 56th position out of 180 countries surveyed in Transparency International’s 2009 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) from its 47th position in 2008.
The sharp fall is indeed disturbing, especially now since we are moving towards a high-income country and about to launch our new economic model.
Even more depressing is the fact that on a scale of 10 points, our CPI score fell from 5.1 points last year to 4.5 this year.
Among the Asean countries, Singapore was ranked third with 9.2 points, while Brunei was 39th with 5.5 points.
Malaysia’s only consolation is that it was ranked ahead of other Asean countries such as Thailand (84th, 3.4 points), Indonesia (111th, 2.8 points), Vietnam (120th, 2.7 points), the Philippines (139th, 2.4 points), Cambodia (158th, 2.0 points), Laos (158th, 2.0 points) and Myanmar (178th, 1.4 points),
Despite the setting up of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and the Integrity Institute of Malaysia, we still performed dismally. Some soul-searching has to be done by the Government to ascertain the reason for this low ranking.
Perhaps the reason for our poor ranking can be attributed to the lackadaisical attitude we adopted to some high-profile cases involving corrupt practices and abuse of power.
Another reason could be the yearly recurrence of wastage, blatant fraud and dishonesty as underlined in the Auditor-General’s Report every year.
Malaysia needs to work hard at improving its ranking, failing which the country will be perceived in a negative light by the international business community, and this would be detrimental to the inflow of foreign direct investments into the country.
Corruption involves two parties – a giver and a taker. However, most of the time, only one party is prosecuted. Perhaps it is time to amend the law to prosecute both parties.
Hopefully, when the Whistleblowers’ Act is passed and implemented, it will reduce the level of corruption and consequently improve our ranking.
JAMES GONZALES,
Kuala Lumpur.
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