By Tunku Aziz

Datuk Seri Najib Razak does not disappoint. He is true to his values whatever they might be. He upholds his principles with messianic zeal. His principles are of indeterminate provenance, but Najib is not known to worry himself to distraction over such small matters. He has made many of us happy. It has nothing to do with his 1 Malaysia vision that he seems incapable of articulating to save his life, let alone convincing Malaysians who have decided that half a century of untruths and specious, convoluted political and social arguments should be more than enough for even the most sanguine of them.

Najib has made us happy not because in a fit of mental aberration or misplaced exuberance he has added to his fantasy world the even a more preposterous 1 World vision that flashed across his mind. I bet it was a very brief moment in time. Najib has made us deliriously happy because he has just done something blatantly cynical to confirm what we have known all along about his attitude to corruption. Najib does not disappoint.

His choice of Tan Sri Mohd Isa Samad as the BN candidate for the Bagan Pinang by-election has left absolutely no doubt in our minds about Najib’s real attitude to corruption. He, ever the pragmatic, suave man about town leader of a country already systematically mired in corruption, sees it as nothing more that a necessary evil. If you cannot fight it, join it.

His matter of fact response that “Even those convicted by the courts get another chance” must surely single him out, like a sore thumb even among the corrupt leaders of 1 Malaysia, as someone totally devoid of ethical values. It also points to a complete lack of the political will to curb corrupt practices in our country. The gap between his rhetoric and constructive action against corruption is growing ever wider under Najib. Just in case he forgets, the Kuala Lumpur-based diplomatic corps and the wider international community are watching this development with some concern. Najib does not disappoint.

Bagan Pinang is a little backwater of a community on the Negri Sembilan coast. However, the choice of a candidate that even Umno, the party that sits well with corruption and takes it in its stride, was constrained to discipline marks a low point indeed. The much detested and reviled corruption-tainted and Isa has now been declared perfectly “kosher” to represent the country’s ruling coalition. Politics is indeed the art of the possible.

Can we trust a government that is prepared to trade integrity? And for a rural state assembly seat which, the winning or losing of which, is not going to have a material effect on the political fate of BN in overall terms? I, unlike Najib, do not subscribe to the second chance dispensation because political corruption will ravage national values and systems. Are we blind to the fact that it was Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s special brand of corrupt political stewardship, now still in place unfortunately, that has stifled our potential for dynamic growth, and kept us, in spite of the resources at our disposal, at the wrong end of the global competitiveness league table?

Political corruption if not dealt with decisively will destroy our nation because the national decision-making processes will be distorted and manipulated. “State capture” by corrupt elements will be the end result. We cannot allow the country’s future to be hijacked by unprincipled politicians, by default. Fighting corruption is our individual and collective responsibility as citizens. It cannot be left to the tender mercies of the corrupt in the corridors of power.

Now that Najib has dropped all pretence of queasiness about bedding down with corruption, he could do us all a big favour and save taxpayers a lot of money by closing down the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, the National Institute of Integrity and all the other related agencies because he has made his position on corruption so clear. They are of no use to man or beast.

And while we are about it, Najib may want to propose a general amnesty for all who have been convicted of corruption as well as those who have committed corrupt acts, but lucky enough not to be caught. This is totally consistent with his belief that the corrupt deserve a second chance, an official passport to Najib’s 1 Malaysia where anything goes and the devil looks after his own. Najib does not disappoint.

Malaysians are now being treated to a display of arrogance unprecedented in the history of BN administration, and the choice of Isa, in all the circumstances, flies in the face of what little is left that is decent and honourable in our national life, worth preserving. Even by Umno’s and, by extension, Najib’s own standards, this is a very low point, and that is putting it charitably. Najib does not disappoint.

Little Bagan Pinang will without a doubt deliver the seat that Najib so devoutly yearns to have. He needs it to prop his shaky leadership. Bagan Pinang will in the end be remembered in history as the place where Umno lost its moral bearing, credibility and legitimacy to lead the Malays. Umno’s ugly nakedness in surrendering ethical values and principles to political expediency is here for all to see: it will be its undoing. Najib does not disappoint. He never does!