Nothing technical about corruption — The Malaysian Insider
Dismissing corruption as a technical matter will not help the prime minister get rid of this cancer. It will also not help him in justifying Isa’s candidacy for the Bagan Pinang by-election.
Datuk Seri Najib Razak is right. Everyone deserves a second chance.
Even Tan Sri Mohamed Isa Samad, who served his party and state well, and later served three of six years’ suspension for money politics in Umno.
But the Umno president is wrong to call Isa’s offence a technical matter within the party as he told a student in Paris yesterday. “This (Isa’s offence) is only a technical matter in the party and he has already paid for his deeds,” Najib was quoted as saying by the Bernama news agency.
The only reason why Isa did not face any charges in court is because Umno’s money politics is under a preferential category of crimes.
And thus, up to the party to decide whether those in the wrong need to face the full weight of the country’s laws. Isa did not because the former Negri Sembilan mentri besar is powerful and, as Najib himself admitted, popular and capable of winning.
But if that is how Najib looks at corruption, then it calls to question the prime minister’s attitude towards fighting graft and eradicating the scourge in the country.
His predecessor boosted the powers of the maligned Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) and made it the more powerful and nominally-independent Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), modelled after the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).
MACC’s honeymoon and being the darling of the country did not last long. The mysterious death of DAP political aide Teoh Beng Hock last July 16 brought into focus the anti-graft body’s methods of interrogation.
The federal opposition had earlier complained that MACC was only targeting their lawmakers and leaders but not those in the ruling coalition. Several high-profile corruption cases — Tan Sri Eric Chia’s Perwaja case and Tan Sri Kasitah Gadam’s case — had earlier come to naught.
As it is, the MACC has not been seen moving in the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) case despite the proliferation of task forces, reports and counter-accusations by parties involved in the scandal that could cost RM12.5 billion.
So Najib is wrong to say that corruption is technical even if it is just vote-buying in Umno. Isa has paid his price for his misdeeds but he was found guilty of corruption and nothing can wash that taint away from him.
