“Would it have been better to have a completely new head for the MACC to spearhead the transformation of the MACC to become another IACC”? Would Malaysians be able to see the stark difference between the new MACC and the old ACA in its first two weeks of operation?” – YB Kit.

The answer is no. This is because according to the provisions of the MACC Act passed by BN majority, the present director-general of ACA Datuk Ahmad Said Hamdan will by this position take over as the first chief commissioner of IACC. This is the requirement of the MACC Act.

This is called “system integration” between the ACA and the newly inaugurated IACC under the MACC Act.

The question whether the new IACC led by the ACA chief would grow teeth to bite the big sharks and not just fishing for ‘ikan bilis’ amongst syndicates inked to issuance of foreign workers’ permits, MyKad counterfeiting and smuggling of timber and diesel and the 82 money politics cases of which reports have been lodged, will have take a bit more time to evaluate – including Hamdan’s fitness for this new powerful post.

Question is who prosecutes the Prosecutor for the crime of prosecutorial abuse.

There are at least 4 disparate (not neccessarily connected) features relating to this MACC that are interesting to note.

Feature 1. The question of who is Watcher over those who enforce the law ie the Guardians themselves? It depends. If an ACA agent alleged to have accepted bribe, who investigates? MACC of course. But if MACC does not? Then the police could and if investigations show a case, then Public Prosecutor could inititate prosecution. So there is a “limited” Watcher over the Guardian where Guardian is (say) an ACA officer.

In the converse situation, supposing the official complained against is a deputy public prosecutor (DPP) facing acomplaint of prosecutorial misconduct of not prosecting a case by reason of gratification received from that accused. Supposing MACC investigates DPP and finds that there is basis to charge him. But supposing aslo esprit de corp is strong and another DPP/AG office refuses to give consent for prosecution of their own. What can be done? Nothing because section 58 says that only Public Prosecutor can initiate prosecution. Ultimate decision lies with office of AG, he being member of govt is, subject to good faith – whatever that means – immune under section 72 of the MACC for any action taken or not taken pursuant to MACC. So there is not even “limited” Watcher over the Guardian where the latter is from the Public Prosecutor’s office.

Feature 2 : MACC is not retrospective in application : ie it could be applied to commissions of corrupt act before MACC Act. Interference of Judiciary is by all counts under MACC defination of corrupt acts. Royal Commission over Lingam Clip implicates certain high profile players whose recent attempt/application to reverse Royal Commission’s findings in the High Court was turned down. Question : will MACC investigate these principal players as first act of 2009 to evince teeth????

Feature 3 : while we concentrate on coverage of MACC over corrupt acts of politicians and public officials, we tend to forget that corruption under MACC covers the entire private sector and business community. You promise a kick back to any director, executive and manager for a contract or a job or for business or any bank offiocer for a loan, both you as giver and the identified persons as “agents” of the principal companies are caught within MACC! Gratification under MACC includes any “financial benefit, reward or similar advantage advantage” any “valuable consideration” and “ any other service or favour of any description”. Would this to our business community include entertainment whether providing meals or paid service of sex workers?

Feature 4 : If MACC were strictly enforced throughout the land, there would not be enough ACA officers, DPPs, courts or jails to accommodate the demand. :)

Error – “MACC is not retrospective in application”. It should be “MACC does not bar retrospective application”. Sorry.

Commenter, Onlooker Politics rightly pointed out, Ahmad Said’s appointment is automatic by legislative fiat of MACC Act. When MACC supersedes the existing Anti Corruption Agency on 1st Jan, one just doesn’t terminate services of the ACA director general: he carries on as MACC Commissioner..but whether he gets to keep his job longer depends on whether he has requisite qualifications and qualities, the scope of which for a MACC Commissioner is wider than that of the director general of previous anti corruption agency simply because the scope and functions of MACC and the public expectations are wider and larger than that of the anti corruption agency .

A Commissioner’s basic trait ought to be first and foremost courage and integrity. He must be prepared to execute his duties without fear or favour against big sharks or ikan bilis alike. He needs to be prepared to resign if political pressure impedes his discharge of duties.

He needs to know the law relating to his field of work. He certainly need to know the MAC Act, in and out. That goes without saying. A law qualification will help. It is however only the beginning. He needs to have administrative competence to manage what is going to be a large MACC bureaucracy comprising besides the main investigative body, the Anti Corruption Advisory Board, Special committee on Corruption and Complaints Committee as well and how all these sub-bodies between themselves to maximise desired results. So an MBA and actual administrative experience and talent in leading well a large organisation will further help.

This job requires him to interface with media (local & inmternational), the relevant stake holders like Civil society, NGOs and the Bar Council etc, attend seminars and conferences, both local and international, to project a public face of the country’s willingness to learn and upgrade new and effective methods to fight its own defacto culture of patronage and corruption. It is not easy to change mindset whether of the political masters controlling one’s appointment – or the public mindset that it is part of one’s work to change by education and programs launched by the MACC.

Ultimately your performance will be adjudged by an objective benchmark – the ranking of Malaysia in Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index (CPI) for 2009, 2010 an d so on, and if it declines further and not improve, it simply suggests in public eyes that you’re not performing and should ship out. Better get the retirement nest ready. :)

Having regard to the reason for and objective of the MACC – from government’s standpoint, of trying the address public’s antipathy against the BN for failing to curb corruption leading to the disastrous March 8th GE results – the MACC Commissioner must win public confidence and the PR game.

If one proceeds on the assumption that the political leadership is not really sincere to have an independent MACC Commissioner to hit itself on the same foot, then the Commissioner should at least have qualities of a good actor and pretender to be able to project a public image of having such qualities earlier mentioned.

It is not an easy job : if you do it well, you are likely to be sacked by the political masters.

If you appease the political masters, public criticisms of your lack of independence and guts will render your role unhelpful to the political masters, so one has to be replaced as well.

To keep it you have to pretend and convince public that you’re really doing the job well, without really doing it. That’s a really tall order. Not many drawn from the public service (as the MACC Act mandates) would have all these qualities for the hot and high profile job.