Corruption just as ‘haram’ as pork and alcohol

 

Many Malaysians want us to have an independent anti-corruption body. They see this as a critical step to stem corruption. This is something that seems to have worked well in many countries.

Hong Kong is one. It used to be a hotbed of corruption, but now has banished most of it. It is one of the cleanest territories in the region, albeit expensive as hell.

There is a country down south, which I shall not name, that has had similar success. It is also expensive as hell. Is there a relationship between the lack of corruption and being expensive as hell?

Yes, there is. It is expensive to us because their standards of living are so much higher, likely because their corruption is low. And it is also expensive because our ringgit has dropped precipitously, partly due to our own runaway corruption.

Years ago, I dealt with a corruption case in that particular country. A big business boss there had accepted a few middling luxury watches as “gifts” in return for some favours. He was arrested and served prison time.

Some of us wise and weary Malaysians laughed at the unlucky man, who accepted his “gifts” in a hotel car park. In Malaysia, such “gifts” would have been cash in suitcases, plus the car the “gifts” came in, plus the car park the car was in and likely the hotel that owned the car park, too!

I doubt anti-corruption education in schools, as proposed recently, will work.

Instead, we must make sure everyone truly understands what public corruption is. It is anything done by a public servant which is not in the absolute best interest of the rakyat. Therefore, it is corruption even if it is just giving the office kueh and teh tarik contract to your cousin without following procedures.

Ads by Kiosked

Everybody must know that every ringgit not spent in the rakyat’s best interest, whether through misuse or outright theft, means some rakyat somewhere will suffer, and that eventually, all rakyat will suffer.

A RM50 million district hospital built for RM100 million means another district somewhere else will not get a hospital, which means its residents will have poorer health, and some will die unnecessarily.

Similarly, a RM10 million school built for RM20 million will deprive another district of a school, resulting in higher illiteracy, unemployment and sociopathic behaviours, such as dealing drugs or becoming politicians.

There’s no such thing as government money, only rakyat money, whether coming directly from the rakyat’s pockets – taxes, duties, fees, fines etc – or from our common ownership of national wealth – petroleum, minerals, sovereign funds, and GLC dividends (if any!)

The way to make people care about the rakyat’s money is to turn them into taxpayers. This means the economic metric that really matters is not equity distribution, but the number of taxpayers and the amount they pay.

There is clear inverse correlation between the number of taxpayers in a country and its level of corruption – more of one means less of the other. Most public servants pay very little or no taxes anyway, so how do we bribe them?

Ads by Kiosked

What else can we do? Well, all places of worship must conduct regular sermons reminding people of hellfire (or being reborn as a cockroach) as punishment for corruption.

All religious authorities, especially those funded by the rakyat, must clearly condemn corruption, citing chapters and verses and traditions to show how heinous corruption and breach of public trust is.

If you corruptly take a million ringgit, that million, plus all profits that came from it, must be returned before you can repent. We must then factor in the time value of that money and the value of lives destroyed or lost because of the corrupt act as additional compensatory and punitive damages.

This is all provided you were not already planning to repent when you stole the money. Such premeditated repentance will not be accepted by God, because how sincere can repentance be if you already planned ahead for it?

The money you took from your corrupt activities is not halal. If you are a Muslim, you might as well eat pork and drink alcohol, and feed these to your parents and children too, because they are likewise not halal.

Muslims must be careful of politicians offering them pork and alcohol. Equally bad, and perhaps more likely, they must be wary of those offering money that is not halal. I am pretty sure, even non-Muslims, for whom pork and alcohol may be OK, will not tolerate corruption.

Corruption, unfortunately, has become endemic and deeply entrenched in our daily life. Even a religious political party has deplored the bribing of others, but not the accepting of bribes. How much worse can it get?

Many Malaysians contribute towards the public coffers, but take very little from it. Their anger against public corruption is understandable. But if more people contribute to it, then they will care more about it, and about reducing leakage through corruption.

Let us strive to be a society low on corruption but high in our standards of living, and let our neighbours complain about how expensive we are instead. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.