Traffic Summons Proposal Will Create More Corruption

Early this morning I received an sms from a Tokoh Negara who obviously is up and about early to catch the worms. He pointed out the following in The Star and said it would encourage more corruption. I hope this proposal will be killed. 

Here is the news : 

• Proposal to make traffic offenders pay on the spot
• Motorists and motorcyclists who commit traffic offences will have to settle their summonses on the spot or have their vehicles impounded under a proposal to the Government.
• “..there are hundreds of thousands of unpaid summonses,” said commission chair­man former chief justice Tun Zaki Azmi.
• idea was mooted by Cuepacs president Datuk Omar Osman and received unanimous support 
• Among the organisations represented were the Transport Ministry, Land Public Transport Commission, Road Transport Department, Works Ministry, and Domestic Trade, Co­­operatives and Consumerism Ministry.
• Zaki hoped that the proposal would be implemented as soon as possible with Hari Raya around the corn­er.

I think this is another disastrous proposal by yet another Government commission. 

It is as if this special commission has been set up to figure out a way of producing even more corrupt Policemen. Or devise a method by which traffic cops can join the high income bracket.

For a certainty this idea will cause more corrupt practises. Now, the corrupt Policemen will not ask you to hide the cash behind your driver's license anymore. They will take your money straight through the car window. They can even wave the cash in public for everyone to see. They will say that they are doing their job. It will become even harder for the Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission to catch the bad cops.

And if a corrupt traffic cop starts 'negotiating' with a motorist for money, now we will never know if it is corruption or the Policeman collecting an 'on-the-spot-summons'.

Folks, after almost two years on the MACC's advisory panel, I am more convinced that corruption is in our culture. And we are not alone. Other societies suffer the same culture of corruption. Tolerating corruption is also part of being corrupt. Yes you can catch the corrupt but we will never eradicate corruption unless we educate ourselves out of corruption. 

Do you want to know who is the most corrupt person in this country? It is YOU. You just have not been put in some 'tricky' situation yet.

But it is double jeopardy (and quite unthinking) to create a situation where quite lower ranking members of a Police force, which already suffers a bad reputation for corruption -  be given the power to take cash from errant motorists. This is just going to make roadside corruption more worse.

And it is impractical. Traffic summones range from RM150 to RM300. How many people carry RM150 to RM300 in their wallets all the time? I think very, very few. This means many cars belonging to traffic offenders are going to be impounded because people will not have the cash to pay. How many cars? Well Tun Zaki Azmi says 'hundreds of thousands of summonses' remain outstanding. Thats hundreds of thousands of traffic offenders.

And where will the Police impound all those hundreds of thousands of cars? Ada parking space ke? I think the Police will end up parking all those cars illegally by the roadside as well. Then are there enough tow trucks in case someone does not carry RM150 in his pocket and will not drive the car to the Police impound yard? Did the special commission think about all these silly little logictics issues?

In other countries, especially Germany, they seem to thrive on bureaucracy and red tape. They are a people who like to put everything in neat compartments so that it becomes easier to manage their affairs.  Their red tape sometimes speeds up on their delivery. And they do not have a culture of corruption, so more red tape does NOT create more corrupt practises.

But when there is a culture of tolerating corruption in a society (like ours) more red tape, more bureaucracy and more little Napoleons create even more opportunities for corruption. We must understand ourselves better. Kita mesti sedar diri dulu. We are a corrupt society. So to fight corruption we must reduce red tape, reduce bureaucracy and minimise the little Napoleon complex that so infests the system.