POLITICAL personalities are usually the focus of anti-corruption rallies in Malaysia.
In September 2023, a “Save Malaysia” rally was held to protest the dropping of graft charges against Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi involving Yayasan Akalbudi funds.
Two years before, in July 2021, a rally was held to demand then prime minister Tan Sri Muhyiddn Yassin’s resignation, with protestors bringing mock corpses wrapped in white cloth as a criticism of his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
A few years before, when Barisan Nasional still ran the country, the “Tangkap MO1” rally was held in August 2016 and the Bersih 5 rally in November the same year, both to protest then prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s leadership as astonishing details of funds misappropriated from 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) emerged.
Last Saturday’s student-led Himpunan Rakyat Benci Rasuah in the capital was an apparent response to decisions that have been blamed on the government – Zahid’s freedom from another set of corruption charges involving a foreign visa system, and the appointment of Sabah Governor Tun Musa Aman who had earlier been acquitted of graft charges. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who balances a coalition government of former foes, now turned allies, has repeatedly denied executive interference in the Attorney-General’s Chambers and the judiciary.
While such demonstrators are good to remind the government that citizens are vigilant, I am also waiting for the day anti-graft rallies will talk about the smaller but no less deadly cancers of corruption: the Little Napoleons in our civil service who won’t move a file until the proverbial “duit kopi” is paid, or the Puspakom officers whose alleged bribe-taking to approve vehicle inspections could result in tragic road accidents and deaths. The latter example prompted the Road Transport Department to launch inspections on Puspakom centres after the five vehicle accident that killed seven people on the North-South Expressway near Ayer Keroh on Dec 23.
We must remember that the majority of the civil service are upright and carry out their duties with integrity, but it takes a few to erode public trust. In Nov last year, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) Chief Commissioner Tan Sri Azam Baki said under half, at 43.4% or 545 individuals out of 1,257 people the agency detained from January to October last year, were civil servants.
In recent times, we read news of the MACC nabbing Customs officers who facilitate the smuggling of taxable goods, and immigration officers in the “counter-setting” case to let foreigners without correct documentation enter the country at KLIA.
This month, Customs officers were arrested for allegedly working with a vape smuggling ring that paid them bribes of up to RM6,000 a day to falsify clearance documents.
In the construction sector, MACC is to prosecute executives of a highway concessionaire and a private company’s project manager over bribes received in exchange for securing a building contract for a Klang Valley highway.
Also in the private sector are the recent arrests of bank officers and financial consultants who colluded to secure approvals for personal bank loans.
Corruption is the slow death of a nation, whether it is committed at higher or lower levels of an administration, public or private.
It has reached a level of pervasiveness that it is no longer a surprise, so much so that it is justified in coffeeshop chatter as “cari makan”, as something “everybody does”, and as a fact of life.
Once, a reporter I worked with came back aghast at the response of an Umno grassroots member who told him something along the lines of: “Pemimpin nak makan, makanlah, asalkan kita dapat sikit (It’s ok if leaders are corrupt as long as some of it flows down to us)” – when asked about the allegations involving 1MDB against Najib, who was then prime minister.
For sure, cracking down on corruption at the top is necessary to put fear in the rest of us down the food chain. The demands of Saturday’s rally for the Attorney-General’s Chambers to be removed from the purview of the Prime Minister’s Office, greater independence for MACC, and a Political Funding Act are all pertinent and necessary.
But something else is needed starting at the bottom, too.
It is not just about corruption in politics or by politicians; some of us would have a relative or friend in the construction sector who has talked about factoring in such “unitemised payments” as part of the cost of doing business.
One day, when the earnest university students who led Saturday’s Himpunan Rakyat Benci Rasuah protests hold jobs in high places and positions of power, they, too, might face the temptations of graft.
They may become the lead engineer at a construction site, and be pushed to collect grease money from subcontractors to ensure the wheels of a project turn smoothly. They might become aides to ministers, and realise how easy it is to collect “toll” from people wanting to meet their boss. They might work as consultants, and find it surprisingly easy to solicit a “fee” from a prospective vendor desperate to be recommended to a client.
Graft comes in so many insidious forms and may seem harmless on the surface especially if one chooses to rationalise it as necessary to fill the rice bowl, or to help a relative’s struggling business. What do you do then?
It’s these everyday scenarios and their harmful consequences that I wish student leaders and civil society groups would talk about and make a part of the larger conversation about corruption in Malaysia.
We are not China, where the punishment for corruption is death. But in our Asian honour-shame culture, maybe there is hope if more is done to highlight and shame every day graft. Nobody, if they are honest, likes to pay ‘duit kopi’ if they can help it. That alone shows we know it’s wrong. It’s time to stop normalising it. – January 27, 2025
Deborah Loh is an assistant news editor at Scoop
