If, for 3 reasons, YB Kit expresses lack of confidence that PM Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi Abdullah is capable of meaningful institutional reform before he ends his hapless five-year tenure as the 5th Prime Minister of Malaysia, who others in UMNO/BN does Kit have confidence, for whatever number of reasons, to be otherwise having the political will or capable of effecting meaningful institutional reforms after Abdullah has ended his tenure as the 5th PM???

If by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah’s shocking “No money, no talk” expose, he said he could not get even a second nomination to contest for Umno Presidency because he refused to respond to overtures and bribe delegates in return for their votes, why does this really say or imply of those who get the most nominations and votes from the delegates????

The BN system and culture (I dare say even our wider political culture) is structured upon political patronage.

Patronage is a system of mutual and reciprocal obligations whereby in return of loyalty, electoral and financial support to the political aspirant, the latter, when he attains the position with power, returns the favour by exercising the power vested in his position to either distribute governmental or political positions or contracts to such former persons who have helped him…..

It is a reciprocal “I scratch your back and you mine” culture and it goes hand and glove with what is commonly known as corruption.

It is not only in politics here : it is ubiquitous everywhere and anywhere, where there is politics, manifesting with different guises and appearing at different levels.

It is Ok to try to safuard against its most blatant and excessive form. A society/political system more corrupt or less corrupt than another is a matter of degree, a matter of within tolerable or exceeding to intolerable limits – not a matter whether it exists or does not exists. To want to combat and end corruption itself, in the absolute sense, is tantamount to wanting to end politics altogether…..

We all know that so far there is hardly political will to address corruption.

However this fact alone is not a good basis to pour cold water on the govt’s proposal of the Malaysian Commission on Anti-Corruption (“MCAC”).

For it is just as valid or invalid to speculate that the MCAC is the beginning of that political will.

The MCAC should rightly be judged – whether it is another show case or something more – based on its composition, workings and within built in check and balance.

Lets see when the MCAC Bill is tabled for debate in the current meeting of Parliament to replace the Anti-Corruption Act 1997. We will have a clearer picture and basis of comments then.

The PM said that the MCAC was modeled after Hong Kong’s Independent Commission on Anti-Corruption and New South Wales’ Independent Commission Against Corruption, “which are among the best anti-corruption agencies in the world”.

Now “modeled after” does not mean the same or similar : there will be inevitable differences.

To what extent MCAC is “modeled after” will also depend on the extent to which it departs from Hong Kong’s Independent Commission on Anti-Corruption and New South Wales’ Independent Commission.

So we have to look at the structure of MCAC.

However structure is one thing, the people who implement and operate it and their culture – whether they believe in integrity or hypocrisy – is another thing, and it takes both for corruption to be tackled by such an institution on a continuous basis.

In reply to Damocles, I have read and known enough of such things happening but the point is very simple: why do people, Opposition included, urge and press the government for reforms of ACA and Judiciary if before studying the details of the reforms, they are already dismissed as a show case based only on the insincerity of those in govt who respond to the call for reforms, without going into the actual merits or demerits of the reform proposals?

If one takes the view that the UMNO/BN govt can never be sincere – a view which I am not prepared to dispute or discredit – then the proper and logical thing is to ask or work towards only for only one thing and one thing only – their dismissal/resignation/displacement as a government – and desist from urging, calling or urging them to effect this and that reform because whatever reforms they institute, one is not prepared to evaluate the reforms on its merits/demerits but is going to only pre-emptively adjudge afore hand that these reforms are hypocritical and won’t work because of the character of those who propose them.

This kind of thinking is based on the asumption that becuase a person is dishonest then every act and proposal that emanates from him must in all instances be also dishonest, a proposition that does not allow the exceptional possibility of any honest act from a dishonest character ; and one that ignores the possibility that there are other conditions apart from his dishonest character that might otherwise lead to him doing an exceptional honest act.

If one holds such a view then one ought not at the same time urge and call upon someone – whom one is already convinced of being congenitally incapable of doing an honest act – to do an honest act. What for? It is a waste of time!

However I can quote another example other than the derogatory attribute “dishonesty”. Take for example authoritarian traits that previous premier exhibit. It would not be to the interest of his authoritarian rule to encourage freedom of the internet and write in the guarantee of internet freedom in the MSC Bills of Guarantee that fostered open criticisms of his regime starting with Malaysiakini and later taken on by the blogs. Yet there are other competing conditions apart from his authoritarian trait of character reflected in his rule that might otherwise lead to him doing an exceptional liberal act of liberalising internet proliferation and restraining from clamping down on freedom of the internet as guaranteed by MSC Bill of Guarantee…

Do you normally criticise or object to comments for the sake only of criticising or objecting???

It is also under the stewardship of a Chief Justice Zaki Tun Azmi whom Godfather described as having an “immoral past” that the Judiciary suspected of being tainted with executive bias since 1988 delivered an exceptional decision of Justice Syed Ahmad Helmy to release Raja Petra Kamarudin (RPK) under the Internal Security Act – which according to RPK’s lead counsel, Malik Imtiaz, this was the first time a Malaysian court has ordered the release of an ISA detainee since 1989!

Anyway the debate has strayed too far here from its original point where it started.

The suggestion that a dishonest character could well do an exceptional honest act has not been urged upon here by anyone let alone me to argue an excuse that BN should be given any allowance to stay in power to prove itself. It is only a bias mind that reads in it something that is not there.

We are merely discussing the govt’s proposal of the Malaysian Commission on Anti-Corruption (”MCAC”).

I am not stopping anyone here from his/her point of view in having misgivings about MCAC based on the suspicions of improbabilty that people in power being mostly corrupted in one way or the other would be very keen to have an effective MCAC to set trap for themselves.

I am merely suggesting that for people and Opposition like DAP that always urge and press the BN govt for reform, the least they could do when the govt comes out with the proposal like MCAC is to study the details of the MCAC’s structure and composition first and if there were a cogent reason to shoot it down, by all means do so, if based on the right reason of the weakness or loop hole of the MCAC’s structure and composition rather than the fact alone that it is proposed by the government, not known for its political will or record to address corruption.

If one were to criticise based only on the latter reason – and to conclude that nothing the BN govt ever proposes could ever be right, honest or deserving of an attempt to evaluate it based on merits/demerits of the proposal itself – then why waste time asking, urging and cajoling the BN govt all the time to effect reforms in the first place?

I had thought that this was simple enough to understand.