‘Changing govt won’t solve corruption’

Political analyst Chandra Muzaffar says that Pakatan is no less corrupt than BN.

PETALING JAYA: Regime change in itself will not solve graft woes in Malaysia as the opposition pact itself has a track record of corruption, said Dr Chandra Muzaffar, chairman of Yayasan 1Malaysia.

He said that while Pakatan’s main line of attack in approaching the general election was to condemn BN as “totally corrupt”, the opposition coalition itself was dogged by allegations of “shady contracts, zoning irregularities and questionable land deals” in the four states it lead.

Chandra also pointed to the opposition pact’s leader and final choice for prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, a man whom Chandra said had questionable ethics throughout his time in both BN and Pakatan.

“How can Pakatan Rakyat project itself as a champion of probity when it is led by a Machleon ( a Machiavellion Chameleon) with such a tarnished record on issues of ethics?” the political commentator said in an article titled “Pakatan: Combating corruption?” .

The article was published in the Yayasan 1Malaysia website.

“When he was in power – an overly ambitious Cabinet Minister – he was allegedly involved in money politics and cronyism on a massive scale.”

Chandra quoted author Ian Stewart from the book The Mahathir Legacy A Nation Divided, A Region at Risk (Allen & Unwin, 2003), who wrote :

“While Anwar’s followers – as witnessed by myself and other journalists – were handing out packets of money to acquire the support of Umno division leaders in his 1993 campaign against Ghafar Baba, Anwar himself was winning over influential people in the party by promising positions in the administration he would form when he took over from Dr Mahathir.”

Chandra also debunked claims that Anwar had repented after his incarceration from 1998 to 2004, by pointing to the latters’ recent actions since reentering politics.

“If [he has truly changed], how does one explain his Sept 16 saga in 2008 which was a blatant attempt to topple a legitimately elected government through the backdoor, employing allegedly unethical tactics?

“And what about the electoral fraud within his party, PKR, in 2010 or his approach to the recent defections of two Barisan Nasional leaders in Sabah to his side?” asked the founding member and former deputy president on PKR.

Chandra stressed that this showed Anwar and Pakatan could not lay claim to the moral high ground in the battle against corruption.

“Voters should understand this. They should evaluate them for what they are and not be mesmerized by their words,” stressed Chandra.

‘Regime change just a change of political actors’

He also pointed out the fallacy in believing that regime change alone would eradicate corruption, citing as examples India and Japan, which had tried to solve graft through this method and failed.

“In India, the Indian National Congress was ousted through the ballot-box in the seventies on an anti-corruption, anti-authoritarianism wave; the people soon discovered afterwards that the successor government was incapable of curbing the scourge.

“Similarly, in Japan, the people have come to realise that getting rid of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and replacing it with some other party has not helped to minimize the prevalence of graft which is embedded to a large extent in the incestuous relationship between business and legislative politics.”

Chandra said the reason why regime change per se in most cases did not solve corruption was because it primarily revolved around changing political actors.

“Political actors are focused upon power. And power, as the ancient adage goes, corrupts,” he said.

“Even in our country we have seen this happening with the opposition parties which are now in power in four states. Vociferous opponents of corruption for the longest time, these parties are now forced to grapple with allegations of shady contracts, zoning irregularities and questionable land deals.”

But Chandra conceded that more could also be done by the BN-lead government in combating graft.

“Apart from effective enforcement that metes out stern punishment to the wrongdoer regardless of his status, we should also address some of the underlying causes of corruption, such as the widening gap between the “have-a-lot” and the “have-a-little”…”

He said the gap between the two classes resulted in feelings of relative deprivation, which in turn prompted people to justify their corrupt acts.

“To make it worse, elite opulence which has become more pronounced in our society in recent years also feeds into this vice.”

But he noted that since 2004, Malaysia had established 14 special anti-corruption courts, enacted the Whistleblower Act, signed the Corporate Integrity Pledges and Integrity Pacts, and accepted the publication of open tenders through the media.

“It is because of these sustained efforts that Michael Hershman, one of the founders of Transparency International, observed in an article in the Huffington Post (June 22 2012) that Malaysia has a “comprehensive anti-corruption system”…

“Whatever new measures are adopted to combat corruption, Malaysians should not be duped into believing that changing the government of the day is THE solution,” Chandra stressed.