During the Chinese New Year, the media first reported that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) had arrested a political secretary to a Cabinet Minister and raided his apartment in Teluk Air Tawar in Butterworth, seizing cash in bundles of RM5, RM10, RM50 and RM100 notes totaling about RM2 million. Also seized were a 4WD vehicle and a BMW car.

This was followed by a one-paragraph statement from the Prime Minister’s Department on the resignation of Hasbie Satar, the political secretary to the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop.

Malaysians can put the pieces together to fathom what is happening.

For me, I am reminded of two recent reports.

The first was the report last Monday where Nor Mohamed announced that the government has set aside RM15 billion for the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) programme under the 10th Malaysia Plan to help businessmen.

Nor Mohamed, who is in charge of the Economic Planning Unit, said the government would provide financial aid and other forms of assistance to any major business deemed viable so as to spur the economy and provide job opportunities for locals.

How much would be lost or “leaked” from this RM15 billion Private Finance Initiative under the 10th Malaysia Plan – whether through corruption, abuse of power or other improper means?

There have been cases of government “leakages” going up as high as 90 per cent of the stated amount, but even at the very moderate and minimum rate of 10 per cent “leakage”, we are looking at a loss of RM1.9 billion from the PFI initiative under the Tenth Malaysia Plan.

Secondly, I am also reminded of the government admission in the 1Malaysia Government Transformation Programme (GTP) Roadmap that according to the PEMUDAH estimate, corruption could cost Malaysia as much as RM10 billion a year, or 1-2% of GDP.

However, this is generally regarded as a gross under-estimate. Second Finance Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah has publicly estimated that corruption cost the government some RM28 billion a year.

I will propose at next month’s Parliamentary meeting that Parliament should set a principle KPI (key performance index) for MACC – to reduce the annual RM28 billion government loss from corruption by at least 10 per cent, i.e. RM2.8 billion, which should be evidenced by enough “big fish” arrests for corruption to the value of this amount.

I hope Barisan Nasional MPs will join Pakatan Rakyat MPs in the next parliamentary meeting to establish such a KPI for the MACC to demonstrate that Parliament is in the forefront in the war against corruption.

Just before Chinese New Year, MACC announced that it had cleared eight political personalities whom it had investigated of graft.

One was DAP Tronoh Assemblyman V. Sivakumar, the ousted Perak State Assembly Speaker, who was investigated by MACC for abusing his Speaker’s powers during the Perak political crisis arising from the illegal, unconstitutional and undemocratic coup de’tat orchestrated by none other than Datuk Seri Najib Razak in February last year when he was Deputy Prime Minister.

MACC had clearly abused its powers in harassing and intimidating Sivakumar by investigating him for corruption in the illegal and undemocratic power grab in Perak last year and MACC should penalize the officials responsible and publicly apologise for this blatant abuse of power.

Pakatan Rakyat MPs will pursue this issue in the next meeting of Parliament if such an apology from MACC for its blatant abuse of power against Sivakumar by acting as the Umno/BN catspaw is not forthcoming.

[Speech at the Perak Pakatan Rakyat Chinese New Year Open House at Kwang Tung Association Taiping on Tuesday 16th February 2010 at 12.30 pm]