“Don’t shoot MACC from behind” is one newspaper headline today, quoting the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) Chief Commissioner Datuk Seri Abu Kassim yesterday when urging politicians from all parties not to “shoot the MACC from behind”, saying that this would only make it even more difficult to fight corruption.

He said: “The MACC is the army to fight corruption. If you shoot us from behind, who could our society ask for help against corruption.”

Abu Kassim is grossly mistaken. Pakatan Rakyat politicians do not shoot MACC from behind but from the front, for its obvious failings and ineffectiveness in the war against corruption, allowing the MACC to defend itself. There is no reason for PR political leaders to hide their criticisms of MACC.

Only UMNO/Barisan Nasional politicians have the resources, means and even the motivation to shoot MACC from behind, to ensure that the MACC, which is already a complaint and subservient creature of the political leaders in power, will become even more compliant and subservient to the other lower-ranking leaders in the ruling coalition.

Secondly, four years after the elevation of the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) to MACC with increased powers, funding and staffing, Malaysians are not convinced that the MACC is “the army to fight corruption”.

MACC has still blood on its hands, with the death of DAP aide Teoh Beng Hock and customs officer Ahmad Sarbaini Mohamad on its premises still to be unsatisfactorily accounted for. Clearly, only a change of government in Putrajaya in the 13GE followed by the establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry can get to the bottom of the mysterious deaths of Teoh Beng Hock and Ahmad Sarbaini on the MACC premises. Read the rest of this entry »