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Believe it or not – Malaysia’s improved anti-corruption performance

May 14, 2008 21:28 PM

Malaysia’s Anti-Corruption Performance Has Improved – Abdullah

KUALA LUMPUR, May 14 (Bernama) — Malaysia’s fight against corruption has shown a marked improvement and it is placed among countries which had succeeded in tackling the menace, said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

He said the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) by Transparency International last year showed that Malaysia had done better than 76 percent of the 179 countries listed in the report.

“There was a 73.1 per cent improvement from 2006 while from 1995 it was 43.9,” he said in reply to a question by Lim Kit Siang (DAP-Ipoh Timur).

Lim had urged the government to form a royal commission to find reasons for Malaysia’s drop in the CPI ranking from 23 in 1995 to 44 and 43 respectively in 2006 and 2007. Continue reading “Believe it or not – Malaysia’s improved anti-corruption performance”

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Sabah on fire in Parliament (2)

The problem of illegal immigrants in Sabah today is even worse than more than a decade ago when the resolution of the long-standing problem of illegal immigrants in Sabah was proclaimed as one of the pillars of Sabah Baru 13 years ago.

In the seventies, there were 100,000 to 200,000 illegal immigrants, which have mushroomed to some one million to 1.5 million at present, to the extent that there are Sabahans who warned that they have been outnumbered as to become strangers in their own country.

At the time when Umno leaders were promising a Sabah Baru to resolve the problem of illegal immigrants in the state, they were actively involved in the racket known as Project I/C to legalise the status of illegal immigrants by issuing them false identity cards to become phantom voters determining the political destiny of Sabah.

The political turmoils in Sabah, which Umno and Barisan Nasional leaders have refused to acknowledge, must be admitted and corrected or they will undermine the international competitiveness both of Sabah and Malaysia.

What I speak represents the cries of the ordinary people of Sabah. Let it be fully heeded.

I said the above in Parliament last year during the debate on the 2007 Supplementary Estimates on 16th April 2007.

It was a voice in the wilderness and ignored by the Barisan Nasional Government.

More than a year later, as a direct result of the March 8 “political tsunami” in Peninsular Malaysia, it has become a full-throated demand in Parliament by Sabah Members of Parliament (DAP and Barisan Nasional) as part of the larger thrust to end the discrimination, marginalization and victimization of the people of Sabah from the mainstream of Malaysian national development. Continue reading “Sabah on fire in Parliament (2)”