CPI - a positive and heartening outcome

LETTER | Malaysia has bettered history on its CPI score. Again, under the premiership of Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

It is very heartening to see Malaysia is back to a positive perception for anti-corruption. This score basically was derived from factors such as the change of government that had not only promised to fight corruption but to focus on improving the governance and integrity in the government service delivery system. The fight against corruption has moved to another level where the public is very concerned about the menace of corruption and whistle-blow on incidents of corrupt practices. 

The MACC, the agency entrusted to enforce the law on corruption had embarked on more and more high-profile cases with many successes of culprits being brought to face charges plus the establishment of the National Centre for Governance, Integrity and Anti-Corruption (GIACC) as the policy-making entity on enhancing governance, integrity and anti-corruption. The National Anti-Corruption Plan (NACP) which was launched on Jan 29 last year has also given a positive impression on Malaysia's political will in addressing the risk of corruption. 

The 115 initiatives drawn up in the NACP show that the nation is calling a spade a spade. We are not shy to say that we are facing many problems with corruption but we have plans to overcome these problems.

Now we have a tough journey ahead in the forthcoming years. We need to work harder to continuously improve our CPI score to be among the top 10 if not the best three.

To do this we need to visit the different scores that we obtain from the different survey sources including the:

1. Bertelsmann Stiftung Transformational Index 2020 (score 53);

2. Economist Intelligence Unit Country Risk (score 55);

3. Global Insight Country Risk Rating (score 59);

4. IMD World Competitiveness Center Competitiveness Executive Opinion Survey (score 56);

5. Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Asian Intelligence (score 46);

6. The PRS Group International Country Risk Guide (score 41)

7. World Economy Forum Executive Opinion Survey (score 62)

8. World Justice Project Rule of Law Index Expert Survey (score 49); and the

9. Varieties of Democracy (score 60)

Basically we improved in most of the survey results except for the Economist Intelligence Unit Country Risk Service 2019 and the PRS Group International Country Risk Guide 2019 where we remained with the previous scores of 55 and 41 respectively. And we declined badly from a score of 66 to 62 in the World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey 2019.

We need the help of all quarters - politicians, NGOs, ministries, heads of department, enforcement agencies, business entities and so on and so forth - to ensure we do the needful to ensure excellent scores in the said surveys in the forthcoming years. We need to address the issues that contribute to a decline in the scores. At the same time, others must focus on further enhancing the scores of the other surveys.

We need to seriously consider the concerns of Transparency International - Malaysia (TI-M) and work towards overcoming the various concerns. The concerns are:

1. The Political Financing Bill must be tabled and be enacted swiftly in this year;

2. The culture of money politics must stop once and forever. The political heads of each and every party must take drastic initiatives to stop this culture;

3. The Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) bill should be passed without further delay. The politicians must support and the police force must accept the passing of the bill for their own good and to better their ruined image of being corrupt;

4. The government procurement bill too should be tabled without any further delay. The Finance Ministry has no other choice but to ensure the bill is tabled in the forthcoming parliamentary sessions, preferably this year.

5. The Whistleblower Protection Act 2010 must take its progressive course to be amended accordingly to cover a bigger spectrum of the different kinds of whistleblowing. The government must ensure the security and safety of whistleblowers.

6. All heads of department must be given KPIs to ensure good governance and to formulate internal control mechanisms to ensure a high standard of governance and integrity while eradicating all opportunities of corrupt practices. There must be clear SOPs to discourage corruption.

7. Auditor-general reports must be seriously addressed so there is no repetition of breach especially in government expenditure. The head of the department must take punitive action against not only the official who breaches the procedure but also the supervising officer for failing to prevent such breaches. The financial controllers, who are the heads of department, shall be accountable for such breaches and must also be reprimanded.

8. Ministers, chief secretaries and heads of department must push to ensure the Corruption Risk-based Organisational Anti-Corruption Plan is developed and the initiatives implemented accordingly.

9. Ministers, chief secretaries to the ministries and heads of department shall have engagements and periodic town-halls to publicise the implementation of their initiatives to prevent corruption. They shall also update the public on their governance mechanisms and the standards of integrity for their service delivery.

All initiatives in the NACP must be implemented without further delay to taste the fruits of the plan for a corrupt-free Malaysia.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.