Throw away the AG report

There is no point in the Auditor-General coming out with his report every year when those consistently bleeding the nation's coffers are let off the hook every time

COMMENT

Year in year out, the Auditor-General’s Report tells us a story. It tells a true story on how billions in taxpayers money go down the drain through corruption and wastage.

Year in and year out, a lot of oppositions MPs and NGOs would demand for the government to take action against those responsible for the mess.

Year in and year out, the law enforcement agencies such as the MACC would make bold announcements that they would get to the bottom of the matter.

And year in year out, none responsible are hauled up to the court of law despite the initial tough rhetoric by the enforcement agencies.

And the same vicious cycle repeats itself again and again.

Now, the government is mulling releasing the audit report thrice a year. But the simple question here is, what the hell for?

We can even release the audit report weekly but if no action is taken against those responsible for bleeding the nation’s coffers, it will be status quo till the end of time, or until Malaysia goes bust.

And Malaysians, while they may not be so forgiving on issues like race and religion, seems to be very forgiving on this matter. Yes, a little noise in the beginning and but it would water down after a few months.

So with such apathy and lack of enforcement, do we really expect anything to change? Worse, we still seem to be voting in the same government every five years.

No one to blame but ourselves

And where is PAS Youth with all this happening? Instead of frothing at mouth and holding demonstrations when foreign artistes come to perform here, they should come out demonising wastage and corruption, which in fact, is the real cause of decadence in a society.

From what it seems, many of us do not realise how much damage corruption is doing to the country. A lot of us do not realise that Malaysia does not have deep pockets to sustain the economy.

Our ballooning budget deficit and mounting debts are going to hit us like a ton of bricks soon.

Simple logic. If an economic giant such as the US itself is trembling under its trillion dollar debt post the 2008 global economic meltdown, do we think a middle income economy such as ours can withstand the next economic crisis?

Back to the audit report, the more we allow errant officers to run scot free, they would continue to bleed the nation’s coffers as they are aware that the long arms of the law would not reach them.

And with less money, the government would eventually tax us for all that we have and also impose subsidy cuts on essential items such as fuel and food.

Maybe the recent subsidy cut on fuel would trigger some thoughts on it.

The doom and gloom prophecies are already in place. If no one takes action to stop all this, the economy would suffer and we would have no one else to blame but ourselves for it.

And at that time, no amount of BR1M or any other financial aid would help us from the economic ruin we caused on ourselves.

G Vinod is a FMT team member.