Minister needs to acknowledge corruption is rampant in Malaysia – Kuching MP

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 28 – Federal Law Minister Wan Junaidi needs to acknowledge that corruption is a real issue in the country, says Kuching Member of Parliament Kelvin Yii Lee Wuen.

The minister’s recent statement that Malaysia did poorly in the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) ranking due to perceptions that corruption was rampant in the country because of the crackdown on corruption cases by enforcement agencies such as the police and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) is an excuse that people would not buy, Yii said.

Instead of acknowledging and identifying the core problem and fixing the rampant problem of corruption in the country, the Minister has continued to find excuses, he said.

Earlier this week, Transparency International Malaysia (TI-M) announced the reduced performance of Malaysia, which dropped to the 62nd spot among 180 countries in TI’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index 2021 (CPI 2021). It was ranked 57th in 2020.

“When Pakatan Harapan was in power, the government went on a crackdown on corruption at the highest levels. This caught international headlines and even got even more widespread publicity. If we base it on the logic of the Minister, our CPI should have dropped drastically, but instead we have seen the results where it did not worsen our corruption perception index(CPI), but actually improved drastically.

‘PH also put forth many reforms and anti-corruption practices including initial reforms to GLCs and reduce significantly political appointments at highest level of positions. All these were reversed when the Sheraton Move happened and we are now back in the dark days as corruption continues to ravage our country.”

Yii also called for a transparent investigation into the case of MACC chief commissioner Azam Baki, whose share trading account has a huge number of shares in two public listed companies, saying this would restore the public’s confidence in the institution that is suppose to safeguard against corruption.

He also urged for a stop to investigations being carried out against opposition elected representatives and activists who had demanded Azam Baki to resign.

A hard stand against corruption must be taken otherwise Malaysia will be left behind other countries in the region, he added.

–WE