By Patrick Lee
Free Malaysia Today

KUALA LUMPUR: DAP has blasted the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) for its poor show in stamping out corruption.

Commenting on MACC’s investigations into 11 people for ‘owning excessive’ wealth, an irate Lim Kit Siang (Ipoh Timur MP) said: “An independent, efficient and professional anti-corruption agency would be able to investigate hundreds if not thousands of these cases of disproportionate sources of income immediately.

“Many of these people have lifestyles, houses and cars that would not have come from their official incomes.”

Lim was responding to Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Nazri Abdul Aziz statement that 11 people (political and civil servants) were being investigated by the MACC for having excessive assets, and only two ‘accusations’ had been made between 2009 and 2010.

Declining to elaborate on the two, Nazri said charges had been slapped on those involved in high-profile cases, such as the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ).

Defensive Pemandu

Lim also attacked the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) for whitewashing the drop in Corruption Perception Index (CPI) rankings.

Pemandu had described the drop in CPI score from 4.5 to 4.4 as a ‘slight reduction’, adding that Malaysia had improved in three other scores – the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook, Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) Asian Intelligence Newsletter, and the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Competitiveness Report.

It noted that in comparison to the CPI, these scores had increased to 6.3, 4.6 and 4.6 in 2010 respectively.

Director of Communications of Pemandu’s Government Transformation Programme (GTP), Alexander Iskandar Liew, had further explained that the average of the four scores (including the CPI) had shown that Malaysia had done better in 2010, compared to 2009.

But Lim today rubbished Pemandu’s statement, calling it a ‘whitewashing of the low CPI score.’

Showing a chart drafted by Transparency International, Lim said that the CPI’s score was made out of 13 different indexes.

He said in Malaysia’s case, nine indexes (or reports) are used to calculate its CPI rankings, including the three stated previously.

“Why is there such a selective tabling of reports? Pemandu has no professional integrity in coming up with such a statement. This is a failure of a key NKRA (National Key Result Area) in fighting corruption,” he said.

Adding to Lim’s views, former Transparency International of Malaysia president Ramon Navaratnam said that the CPI was a composite index, and that Pemandu was ‘comparing apples to oranges’.

“Competitiveness doesn’t measure to integrity,” he said in regards to the three scores used by Pemandu.

Navaratnam said that Pemandu was being defensive when confronted with the low CPI score. He advised the government think-tank to recognize international opinion in order to combat corruption.

“We have to take the bull by the horns, and ask what we can do about it (combat corruption),” he said.