Malaysia backsliding in graft war, says Kit Siang

By Lisa J Ariffin, The Malaysian Insider

Malaysia is losing ground in the fight against graft and risks slipping behind China, infamous for its endemic corruption, DAP’s Lim Kit Siang warned today.

Lim was responding to a report released by Transparency International (TI), in which Malaysia’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) dropped for the third year running — slipping to 4.3 this year — leaving it in 60th place out of 183 countries, compared with 37th when Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi took over as prime minister in 2003.

“Other countries which had been down on the list of the TI CPI ranking are fast catching up while Malaysia is fast falling down,” Lim said today in a statement, citing China in particular.

“At the annual average rate of China’s improvement and Malaysia’s regression… China will not only catch up but will leave Malaysia behind… In the matter of four years,” he added.

Lim said the 1 Malaysia Government Transformation Plan Roadmap under the ruling government released in January 2010 admitted that the perception of corrupt practices in Malaysia had risen in recent years, adding that the target was to increase “our CPI score from 4.5 to 4.9” by 2010.

“The anti-corruption NKRA target was another colossal failure… Malaysia’s CPI score for three years from 2009 to 2011 was 4.5, 4.4, 4.3 — all three the lowest scores ever registered in Malaysia,” he said.

“This is most deplorable… There must be change of federal government in the next general elections as only a Pakatan Rakyat government in Putrajaya will have the political will to carry out a serious, committed and uncompromising anti-corruption programme,” he added