Anwar must be tough on plugging leakages

 

After days of fervid anticipation, Malaysia now has a new prime minister and one who has earned the credibility to lead.

Now, it is time for the hard work to begin and for all fair-minded Malaysians to wish him the best.

Anwar Ibrahim, who has waited 24 years to secure the job, faces a mammoth task.

In his maiden press conference as prime minister, he highlighted three focus areas of his administration – cultivating good governance, fighting corruption, and building a Malaysia for all Malaysians.

These are not lofty goals. They are underpinned by an acute diagnosis of our institutions' challenges today. They need urgent repair.

Weak governance engenders weak institutions that are susceptible to corruption and rent-seeking. It is a vicious cycle.

These behaviours, when institutionalised, create administrative systems prone to bureaucratic corruption which then, unfairly discriminate against different segments of a multicultural Malaysia.

The cure to this is good, effective, and strong governance.

The first item on the prime minister’s agenda should be to plug the massive leakages of financial resources from the government’s coffers.

Start with a firm undertaking to ensure that all government contracts are tendered in a competitive market, and none shall be awarded by anyone in power based on political favours or patronage.

Civil service must act

And there should be zero tolerance for breaking this rule. A just and clean administrative system is what we all want as Malaysians.

It requires political capital to moot. The civil service is more than capable of putting in place such a system, but implementing it will take time as this form of rent-seeking is currently baked into the system.

In fact, even a 50 percent reduction in the first five years will save the country billions of ringgit.

So, now that the nation has the opportunity to change, it must be taken. A very hard line must be taken to protect taxpayers’ funds.

A new report published by The Global Institute for Tomorrow (GIFT) titled “Now Everyone Prospers (NEP): The Best of Both Worlds” - dives into the root causes of this mismanagement, which has to date, been a major barrier to the nation’s development.

One can get the full report here. - Mkini

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CHANDRAN NAIR is the founder and CEO of Global Institute for Tomorrow and the author of “Dismantling Global White Privilege: Equity for a Post-Western World”.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.