In the past 22 years, New Zealand had topped the world 12 times, given the second ranking four times, and had never been ranked below the fourth place in the annual Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index (CPI)nfor the world – covering 180 countries in the latest index.

In contrast, Malaysia’s ranking had deteriorated over the years, ranging from No. 23 out of 41 countries in 1995 to the 62nd out of 180 countries in the latest TI CPI 2017 ranking

In the past two decades, other countries like Indonesia and China have improved by leaps and bounds in their anti-corruption efforts.

But we ended up in the past few years as a global kleptocracy, a lowly and disgraceful position which neither Indonesia nor China ever descended to!

Is Malaysia incapable of becoming a world top-class nation in anti-corruption like New Zealand and to achieve the objective of transforming Malaysia from a global kleptocracy into a leading nation of integrity to be in the top one-fifth bracket of 35 countries in Transparency International’s (TI) annual Corruption Perception Index (CPI)?

Are Malaysians inherently more corrupt than the New Zealanders, Danish, Norwegians, Swiss, Finns, Singaporeans, Swedes, Luxembourgers, Dutch and the Britishers who occupy the first ten spots in the TI CPI 2017?

I do not think so. What Malaysia needs is a clean-up of the system and culture of corruption and kleptocracy.

I shudder to think of would have happened if in the 14th General Election on May 9, 2018, Datuk Seri Najib Razak and the Barisan Nasional had continued as the Prime Minister and Malaysian Government.

From the information uncovered since May 9, 2018, and the monstrous corruption and crimes in the Najib era which are surfacing, Malaysia would have slipped irresistibly towards a failed state and global kleptocracy – pushing Malaysia close to the century ranking in the TI CPI.

Today, Malaysia’s record of public integrity have been marred not only by the international 1MDB corruption and money-laundering scandal, and other mini-1MDB like corruption scandals in government and public institutions like Felda, Tabung Haji and MARA.

Recently, there was uncovered by sheer accident another aspect of grand corruption in Malaysia, when an unfortunate death from a helicopter crash revealed that an UMNO leader had left a humongous estate of RM2.1 billion, which is the subject of estate litigation of his relatives.

This cannot be an isolated incident. How many UMNO leaders have enormous and unaccounted wealth secretly stashed away unknown to the public, or they would qualify to be among the richest Malays and Malaysians if their secret hoarding of massive wealth had been known.

UMNO is holding its General Assembly in the next two days, with a lot of talk of UMNO reform to become a relevant party to win back support of the Malays and Malaysians.

I have my grave doubts that UMNO can turn back from the culture of corruption, which seemed to have been bud-grafted to the UMNO DNA in the past decade.

For a start to demonstrate that UMNO is capable of a clean-up of the culture and DNA of corruption, UMNO leaders who have assets worth over RM100 million should immediatelybdeclare themselves publicly, explain the sources of their assets, as a sign that UMNO is capable of reforming itself to fight corruption in Malaysia.

(Speech by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang at the talk organised by Malaysian Association Wellington in Wellington on Friday 28 Sep 2018 at 5 pm)