Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) director-general Datuk Seri Zulkipli Mat Noor and former top ACA officer and “whistleblower”, Mohamad Ramli Manan’s full preparedness to appear before the Parliamentary Select Committee on Integrity (PSCI) on March 12 is most commendable.
Zulkipli told Bernama that he was ready to appear before the Parliamentary Select Committee on March 12 with detailed evidence against the serious corruption allegations made against him, declaring: “I have the confidence and courage to face the problem because I believe in God and only a person with guilt needs to be afraid.”
Ramli in his interview with the New Straits Times “vowed to tell all” to the Select Committee, declaring: “There is nothing to hide. I will be there.”
Zulkipli and Ramli should honour their public undertaking “to tell all” to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Integrity as any refusal or reluctance by anyone of them to do so will immediately be an adverse reflection on his credibility and integrity.
The Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Musa Hassan and the Attorney-General Tan Sri Gani Patil should also appear before the Select Committee to explain the reasons for the dilatory and unsatisfactory investigations into the serious corruption allegations against Zulkipli in the past ten years.
Gani had said that he had instructed the police to “speed up” investigations into the serious corruption allegations against Zulkipli, while Musa has proposed a task force comprising members from the police, ACA and the AG’s chambers to investigate into the serious corruption allegations against Zulkipli.
Musa’s proposal is quite extraordinary to say the least, raising many vexing questions, including:
- If the investigations are related to serious corruption allegations against Zulkipli in connection with his tenure as Johore Police Chief from 1996, why had such investigations taken ten long years without any outcome. Had there been any abuses of power and improper interference with the investigations in the past 10 years?
- If the investigations into the serious corruption allegations are related to Zulkipli’s tenure as ACA director-general, why is the police involved to the extent of the IGP proposing a task force comprising the Police, ACA and AG’s Chambers to conduct the probe? This raises the question which I posed yesterday — “When the ACA Director-General is accused of serious corruption charges, who and how is he investigated by the ACA when the agency is completely subordinate to him?”
- If investigations into serious corruption allegations against a top police or ACA officer must involve three departments, viz. Police, ACA and AG”s chambers, must similar multi-agency investigations be involved if the subject is a Minister, Deputy Minister, Chief Minister or Mentri Besar?
- The IGP’s proposal for a tripartite task force comprising the police, ACA and AG’s chambers to investigate into the serious corruption allegations against Zulkipli is most extraordinary as it would open the way for the AG’s chambers to be involved in criminal investigations apart from admitting lack of confidence that the police itself is capable or competent to conduct such investigation on its own. Is it proper and desirable for the AG’s chambers to set the precedent usurping or sharing police functions of criminal investigations?
The appearance of the Attorney-General and the Inspector-General of Police before the Select Committee will help throw light on these vexing questions, and I will propose at the Select Committee meeting of March 12 that a special meeting be held for both to appear before it.
The comment by the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz is most inappropriate.
Nazri said Zulkipli will not be asked to take leave of absence or even be suspended while investigations into the allegations are ongoing – and that this is provided under the General Orders (GO) governing the conduct of civil servants.
Nazri is the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of the ACA and it is most unfortunate that he seems to be totally impervious to the imperative that the ACA director-general must be placed in a special category in such circumstances — that he must not only be clean and incorrupt but must be seen and perceived to be clean and incorrupt if the ACA and the country’s anti-corruption campaign are not to be reduced into a joke and a laughing-stock.
For this reason, not only no one who is tainted by corruption allegations should be appointed to the position of ACA director-general, once serious corruption allegations of corruption are made against the ACA director-general, he should be replaced and transferred to another posting until the full outcome of the investigations.
Nazri should be making such a proposal instead of defending a most inappropriate status quo pertaining to the office of ACA director-general.