Corruption, Cronyism, Nepotism

SeaDemon Says

The above title consists of the very words that are being used by the Opposition, from the days of the Barisan Alternatif through its current form, the Pakatan Harapan.

Those words remain as their battle cry to convince voters that the Barisan Nasional, in particular UMNO, is corrupted to the core.

Hence, when long before 1MDB and the RM2.6 billion story ever happened Najib Razak announced in 2012 that the BN was to have its candidates’ list for GE13 screened by the MACC, everyone treated that as a sign of the end of the world as predicted by the Mayans.

Din Merican’s take on the announcement by Najib Razak in 2012

However, the Barisan Nasional did submit its list of election candidates to the MACC recently, whereas it is the Opposition that has been resisting a similar move!

In an attempt to spin the BN’s move into something negative, left-leaning The Malaysian Incite quoted unnamed sources within UMNO lamenting the arrest of BN figures such as Latif Bandi, Isa Samad et al but failed to mention that that is the same reaction that the PKR and DAP gave when their ranks were arrested for corruption.

Well, my unnamed party insider told me even BEFORE the Haj season that the BN supreme council is happy that far lesser people have thronged the PWTC promoting themselves as GE14’s candidates ever since Najib Razak decided to submit the list to the MACC.

The Pakatan Harapan is far from being clean. Cheats and corrupted people thrive there too with the likes of Adam Rosly, the UNISEL scandal, Chegu Bard’s various reports on corrupted practices by Azmin Ali, the investigation into DAP’s corrupt practices that resulted in the death of Teoh Beng Hock, Phee Boon Poh’s abuse of position, Lim Guan Eng’s double corruption charge, just to name a few.

Let us also not forget chronic liar Rafizi Ramli who was not only found guilty of lying but also for disclosing to the public contents of documents protected under the Laws which is a breach of trust by a Parliamentarian whose job is to protect such trusts.

Recently he was exposed to have been paying himself through his own companies for services rendered to his own company in the region of RM100,000 per transaction. He also solicited funds from the public to help him pay for damages he caused the NFC by publishing lies about them.

Yet, he did not pay up as ordered by the court and chose to allow NFC to file a bankruptcy notice against him. We wonder what happened to the millions of Ringgits collected to pay NFC? Did he use the money to pay his own self?

Yet the PKR chose to protect such compulsive criminals within their ranks thinking that the voters of today have the same IQ as the ones in the 1950s, that they are stupid enough to judge. Hence the reaction by Wan Azizah when the MACC suggested for PKR’s candidates be screened by the latter.

Fan-wielding Taiji master tai-chi-ing all efforts to make PKR clean

DAP, too, reacted negatively towards the MACC’s suggestion. Pulau Pinang’s Deputy Chief Minister Ramasamy a/l Palanisamy said that the MACC cannot vet the DAP’s candidates list as the former lacks the moral authority to do so as it is reticent about those involved in the 1MDB although they have been named by the US Department of Justice (DoJ).

Ramasamy a/l Periasamy

Again this shows the stupidity of the people in the Pakatan Harapan either by defaut or by design, with the latter perhaps trying to make fools out of their supporters.

We all know that the MACC had declared that the donation received by the account of Najib Razak was not from the 1MDB and at no point was Najib Razak ever named in the DoJ case.  He was only mentioned as Malaysian Official 1 because he is not the subject under any form of investigation by the DoJ.

Furthermore, the case that is being investigated by the DoJ, made public more than a year ago, has not gained much grounds as it is based on the reports made by Datuk Botox and Matthias Chang, the office and despatch boys of U-Turn Mahathir.  If it was a solid criminal case, we would be sitting in front of the TV watching CNN while stuffing our face with popcorn.

The party that has a lot to do with corruption thus refusing the MACC’s help to clean its candidates list is the DAP, and not just the PKR.  With Phee Boon Poh, Lim Guan Eng and maybe soon others as well, both the PKR and DAP would have a very short list of candidates that it will not be enough to cover the constituencies it already holds even if all of them ran for both Parliamentary and state seats.

That is also why Lim Guan Eng desperately clings on to power and fights on all corners to have his corruption charges dismissed on technical reasons rather than answering the charges made against him, just as long as he could remain as the corrupted but jail-free Chief Minister.

But of course, in the course of trying to discredit the MACC, Pakatan Harapan would throw everything at the MACC including the kitchen sink and onions too, a tactic they have been using against all government agencies since before the 1969 general elections.  When they lose, they will automatically blame the voters and the voting system.  Then again, what else is new?

This is why the public needs to rally its support towards having cleaner candidates to run for public office.  Although there is nothing in the law that says that candidates must be vetted, the MACC is the agency that should be doing the vetting of candidates to ensure that they do not have the tendency to be corrupted.

Having said that, this is also the reason the MACC should be given more manpower and remuneration reviewed, as should the PDRM, instead of having Paul Low’s JITN to be formed as a new department, burdening the government further with an increased budget.

I do not know what is Paul Low’s agenda in wanting to interfere with the MACC and other institution of integrity but the nasty smell his move has made stinks all the way from Perdana Putra to Padang Besar.  You can read more what a blogger thinks Paul Low is doing and let you be the judge of it. Nothing dissimilar to what Lim Kit Siang is doing now.  But I will come back to that in another post later.

All I know is that for the MACC to combat corruption effectively it needs a boost in manpower and expertise, a boost in remuneration, and a pledge that it shall remain independent as a Commission.