Malaysians are quite weary of the annual season of farce of the Audit-General’s Report exposing year-in and year-out corruption, criminal breach of trust and mismanagement of public funds followed by the chorus of responses from the Public Accounts Committee, the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) and even from the Prime Minister and the relevant Ministers of investigations and remedial action not only to deal with the errant culprits but to ensure that there could be no more recurrence of such betrayal of public trust — all to taper off into public amnesia after a few days of media banner headlines until the ritual is repeated in the following year.

Last Tuesday (11th September 2007), the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said at the Cabinet meeting the previous week (5th September), he had directed all ministers concerned to explain to the Cabinet why their ministries have been accused of mismanaging funds and other irregularities. He said “each and every matter raised must be explained in detail”.

Three questions immediately come to mind, viz:

• Firstly, why did Abdullah delay for more than two months before raising the subject in the Cabinet when he had first received the 2006 Auditor-General’s Report at the end of June? Even the ACA director-general Datuk Ahmad Said Hamdan had publicly admitted that the ACA had received copies of the 2006 Auditor-General’s Report “sometime ago” and that the ACA had begun investigations into the Auditor-General’s 2006 Report “long before it was tabled in Parliament” on September 7;
• Secondly, will Ministers be required to explain to the Cabinet on Wednesday why their ministries have been accused of mismanaging funds and other irregularities, with each and every matter raised by the Auditor-General to be explained in detail? Will the Prime Minister report to the nation at the end of Wednesday’s meeting of the Ministers who have given satisfactory explanations and those who have failed to do so, and what he proposes to do with the latter? Or there is no real intention whatsoever to hold a Cabinet inquest into the corruption and mismanagement of public funds into the various ministries as exposed in the 2006 Auditor-Gneeral Report?
• Thirdly, why are the Ministers only required to explain to the Cabinet and not to Parliament and the nation?

As all Ministers owe a higher duty to Parliament and the nation to comply with the principles of accountability, probity and integrity, the Cabinet on Wednesday should direct all Ministers whose past or present ministries had been implicated in the 2006 Auditor-General’s Report for mismanagement of funds to appear before the Public Accounts Committee to assume full responsibility and end all the annual “bellyaching” about taking action by various authorities but without any concrete follow-up results.

It is only when the Cabinet is prepared to make such a decision requiring all Ministers to appear before the PAC to explain why their ministries, whether past or present, had been accused of mismanaging funds and other irregularities, with each and every matter raised explained in detail, that Malaysians can believe that the Prime Minister and his Cabinet Ministers are serious about accountability, transparency, financial probity and Mnisterial responsibility.

Otherwise, nothing has changed whatsoever in the past four years of the Abdullah premiership and what we are seeing is another annual season of farce and bellyaching about accountability after the Auditor-General’s Report, but which means absolutely nothing.