WHEN an interim research report on anti-corruption initiatives in Malaysia was launched three months ago, it was met with criticism from well-known academics for overlooking the political link to corrupt practices in the country.
One academic expressed regret that the report focused only on legislation and institutions without addressing the root cause of corruption, which he said was the abuse of political power.
But one of the report’s authors has pointed out that their work was meant to study anti-corruption initiatives and not delve into the processes leading to corruption.
Anis Yusal Yusoff, a Principal Research Fellow at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), described the report as the first historical compilation of Malaysia’s fight against corruption and covered initiatives undertaken by the government, private sector and civil society.
“With history at least the misconception that nothing is being done in this country can be corrected,” he told fz.com in a recent interview.
His research stretches back to when Britain introduced the Prevention of Corruption Ordinance in 1950 to replace previous laws related to corruption in the Federated Malay states, the state of Johor and the Straits Settlements.
But the report’s most important chapter, Anis said, was that which evaluated the effectiveness of previous anti-corruption initiatives.
“It’s an important chapter for moving forward in our efforts to combat corruption,” he stated. “And it’s a chapter that the critics appear to have completely bypassed.”
Ironically, that chapter did in fact state that Malaysia’s anti-corruption frameworks – while elaborate and comprehensive – were ineffective because they did not address corruption’s root causes.
“Simply importing and imitating best practices from other countries without understanding the root causes and the context in which they operate will likely end in failure,” Anis said.
In the report, he noted that those root causes in Malaysia are the politicisation of bureaucracy as well as ethnic politics in politics and public policy.
Anis, who sits on the Consultation and Corruption Prevention Panel of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), identified another flaw as the overlap of initiatives between government departments.
He pointed out that each prime minister had a tendency to establish new reforms, and new agencies to implement and coordinate those reforms.
An example was MACC setting up an Anti-Corruption Secretariat in 17 universities, only to have the Malaysian Institute of Integrity (IIM) introducing the Students Integrity Partner in seven of those universities.
“One said it was promoting integrity, the other said it was fighting corruption,” Anis said. “Why couldn’t they just work together or approach different universities?”
While he has naturally proposed further graft-fighting measures in his report, he personally believes in simpler, more basic solutions, like those suggested by a high-ranking police officer from Pakistan, Shah Nazir Alam.
Nazir was invited to study further methods of tackling corruption in Malaya in 1957 and nine of his 16 recommendations focused on the role of schools and teachers in educating children on ethics and values.
“Nazir spoke of honour shops in schools,” Anis said. “These are shops selling items of little value and which aren’t manned by a shop assistant.
“All items have a price tag and the students put the appropriate amount in a sealed box. There are no hidden cameras. This is how you teach children to be honest.”
Anis also emphasised that the onus lay on both teachers and parents to nip the cycle of corruption in the bud through the next generation.
He said that it wasn’t difficult to make it compulsory for graduate teachers to impart values to their students through daily lessons.
“An accounting teacher can teach his students how to balance the books but to not use that knowledge to manipulate the numbers,” he suggested. “And what are parents doing to raise their children as ethical people?”
Anis recalled a time when his father was Penang’s chief health inspector and oversaw all the markets and hawkers.
Come Chinese New Year, the hawkers would trot over with gifts and his father would immediately return every single one.
“He told us that his retirement would be a gauge of their sincerity,” Anis said. “But because he was an honest man, the gifts still came after he retired.”
“And then he accepted them because there was no conflict of interest. You must understand how to educate the young otherwise the grand corruption of today will be peanuts tomorrow.”
Returning to the report, Anis again stressed that it was important to have a baseline understanding of the anti-corruption initiatives and where they went wrong in order to avoid making the same mistakes.
“This report is a reality check,” he said. “If we don’t have this then we’re talking in circles.”
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