There has been a sudden flurry of Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) activities — with the ACA Director-General Datuk Ahmad Said Hamdan courageously declaring: “We do not discriminate. Small fry or big fish, we will go after them if they are corrupt”.
This was on the same day that the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi visited the ACA and after a “brief meeting” with its top management and state directors, publicly praised the ACA for a job well done, with the following summing-up by Ahmad: “He (the Prime Minister) said he thought we were doing a good job, he is happy, and wants us to continue doing our best.”
There has been a sudden flurry of ACA activities in the past few days — but is this evidence of new ACA independence to root out corruption or just intensified PR (Public Relations) and replay of the high-profile pre-election anti-corruption action four years ago which fizzled into nothing?
In a week’s time, Abdullah will be completing his fourth year as the fifth Prime Minister of Malaysia.
The high hopes which Abdullah had raised among Malaysians to initiate government reforms and wipe out corruption are still fresh in the minds of the people.
When Abdullah became Prime Minister, the country was told that 18 high-profile personalities — the ikan yu (sharks) – would be arrested and prosecuted but four years later, not a single high-profile personality had been brought to justice, while most of the 18 “ikan yu” have escaped and are swimming merrily in the South China Sea.
If it is true that Abdullah had given the ACA “a pat on the back for a job well done”, then what was it that Abdullah was happy about the track record of the ACA in the past four years to wipe out corruption?
Is it because the National Integrity Plan launched by Abdullah in May 2004 had been such a failure, as its five-year objective to improve Malaysia’s ranking of Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index (CPI) from No. 37 in 2003 to at least No. 30 next year had suffered even worse reverses, plunging to even worse rankings than during the previous administration of Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad — i.e. No. 44 in 2006 and No. 43 in 2007?