Power (getting and maintaining it) is mostly the main raison de etre (reason for existence and being) of politics whilst public service the excuse and justification. Of course there are politicians like Kit of integrity and service but they are exceptions – may be only 10% – which the rest of the 90% corrupt or corruptible politicians make to look bad by a broad tarnish!

The reason why MACC and fight against corruption is not a viable proposition and cannot work in local context is because, firstly, our mindset/culture is feudal (buttressed further by subsidies ideology of socio-economic re-engineering) jiving very perfectly with the system of “clientelism” and, secondly, an absence of an alternative legitimate and legal way (other than clandestine political corruption) here (like lobbying) to raise political funds to feed that election machinery with a ravenous appetite to feed on money. Obama might have won the presidential election but don’ t forget Obama was able to raise US$6.1 million campaign funds, nearly three times as much as McCain’s US$2.2 million].

The Americans having a longer history of over 300 years are more experienced : they legitimise and legalize a large part of what would have otherwise constituted money politics/political corruption by a complex system of do’s and don’ts – permissable and prohibited – political fund raising via lobbying. They have elevated political corruption to a state of art even higher than the Privatisation/Piratisation GamePlan of our previous administration!

By legalising a large part of political corruption as Ok via permissable lobbying, they could concentrate on punishing only cases of personal corruption, taking pride in being less corrupt than societies like us which mix up political corruption and personal corruption as if in a Rojak (as given in hypothethical illustration above), thereby making the situation ostensibly worse!

After 8th March 08 general election debacle (for BN) one smart Alec, an UMNO politician whose name I can’t remember now, actually proposed UMNO/BN to follow the American system of political fund raising via lobbying – as an alternative to money politics!

Unless we could camouflage and manage political corruption like the Americans by institutionalising the do’ s and don’ts of how to raise political funds – this mixing up of political corruption and personal corruption will only exacerbate the overall problem of corruption.

It goes without saying that MACC and the battle against corruption will then be limited to catching“ ikan bilis” and a non-starter as far as the bigger “ikan Yu” is concerned!

Furthermore it will not only taint the present BN ruling elites but also the next batch from Pakatan Rakyat once they get to power!

In fact it has already begun. Political Corruption is not just offering gratification in terms of money but also promise of positions, posts and influence.

It is naive to expect that Pakatan Rakyat could successfully procure crossovers and defections without implicating political corruption!

What is argued here is not that corruption is acceptable but that it is a difficult thing to fight against because the temptation to gain an unfair advantage over others is so much a part of natural human nature….

It may disappoint the idealists but there is no assurance that when the corrupt politicians of the present regime have been removed from office and even punished for it, it necessarily implies that the new class of politicians from the Opposition displacing them will ( generally ) be any less susceptible to t he blandishment of power and this social/political cancer….

While there are a number of individual politicians who seek public/political office to do good or seek to do the right thing for public and country, the problem is, we cannot make out from the veneer of their rhetoric whether they are many as a class or just an exceptional few, though my sense is that they are the latter (ie exceptional).

However even if there were many ethical politicians – which I doubt – if the “normal and customary” practices of political campaigning and raising funds involve corruption in the sense as referred in my earlier postings as “clientelism”, and if politicians (whether from BN or PR) believes “everybody’s doing it, and if I don’t do it, I may lose,” then most of these politicians will eventually suspend their ethical codes and succumb to the corruption of “clientelism”! Put another way, politicians otherwise aspiring to be ethical are “converted” by a corrupting political process/system and for the sake of winning and perpetuating public / political office forced to do unto others as they are being done to them. For which reason, the political process/system corrupts politicians as much if not more than the converse situation of politicians corrupting the political process/system!

Corruption assumes many difference guises and forms but the grandest of it all is political corruption in which politics and corruption converge, meet and interact, as they inevitably will, when our traditionally feudal political culture of blind obedience to leaders and political authority (ala Hang Tuah style since Malacca Sultanate) is foisted (by our colonial masters) a political system based on majority votes canvassed from aggressive political/electoral campaigning and an economic system based on capitalism entolling the virtues of individual profit and money ( ala Adam Smith’s fashion)! Naturally where there is strong political and economic competition, the arbiter is which contender could marshal and raise most moneys to win by leveraging influence and political power to secure unfair gain over markets and the country’s natural resources at the expense of tax payers.

Unless there were institutional changes to regulate the way moneys are raised for political campaigning, corruption, especially political corruption fuelling personal corruption will continue unabated in our politics/society as a scourge, MACC or no MACC, no difference, whether BN’s running the country or Pakatan Rakyat’s, notwithstanding!