By:
Natalie Shobana Ambrose
The past week has been an interesting one – mainly the re-election of a president and China's leadership transition. To add to that, the week has seen two influential people step down; BBC's director-general George Entwistle, and CIA head David Petraeus.
Not to glorify their deeds, but it is however worth noting that in the midst of all these allegations and proof of misdeeds, they 'did the honourable thing' and stepped down. The same can be said of Montreal mayor Gérald Tremblay who stepped down after being accused by his party for allowing corruption and electoral misspending.
At the news conference where he announced his resignation, he said, "The city's functioning is much more important than my own personal interest." Of course, it would be preferred that he carried out his responsibilities with this mantra instead of leaving it as a parting word, but nonetheless, he too stepped down.
What should be pointed out here is that these men have been accused of alleged wrongdoings, all have yet to be charged, yet they stepped down. This almost never happens on our side of the world.
This past year a sequence of blatant abuse of public funds has been exposed, yet no one has stepped down. In fact, the reverse happened; they became party leaders, continued with business as usual and added insult to injury by making unintelligent statements about not being their child's lover, not knowing what their husband did or vehemently denying that there is a conflict of interest when a politician's kin amasses an obscene amount of wealth through government projects or gifts. Perhaps our politicians need some serious family counselling for such communication breakdowns.
While Russia fired its defence minister, Anatoly Serdyukov, for a US$100 million (RM306 million) corruption scandal this past week, little can be said of our fight against the culture of corruption.
Corruption occurs in many forms – graft, nepotism, cronyism, bribery, extortion, patronage – and it extends to facilitating criminal enterprise. The reality is that, no country will ever be free of corruption – that is a fact. Yet we can strive to stop it, and not accept such gross abuse of power – the question is, are we willing? If we are, then how do we do it?
It's time we started challenging the culture of corruption instead of waiting for transformation programmes to take effect. We need to champion leadership that is clear on its mandate against corruption – and not one that meanders. Why? Because we risk losing our economic vitality in the long run and that money is not for the benefit of an elite few but for our country as a whole. Thus far, such practices have crippled the efficiency of services and public goods. In this day and age, there is no room for rent-seeking behaviour and neither is there room for secrecy when it concerns a 40 million lump sum donation to a political party.
We need to start championing leadership that does the honourable thing and take lessons from people such as Malawi President Joyce Banda who is taking a 30% pay cut in an act of solidarity with her people who have been affected by a 25% inflation rate after the devaluation of their currency.
In that vein, we may not fully agree with Obama's politics but a leader who fights to increase his own tax rate is worth championing. Instead, in Malaysia we have leaders lining their pockets to ensure that their heirs are well taken care of for generations to come.
Balance, accountability and transparency are what our country needs yet lacks. It's telling that year after year, Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index looks like it spilt its red marker all over our part of the world.
We still have yet to take corruption seriously in Malaysia. Even in China, where stories of corruption run deep, things might be changing with the country's premier Wen Jiabao's request for the Communist Party to investigate New York Times' allegations against him and his family for amassing US$2.7 billion in 'hidden wealth' during his tenure.
This sentiment against corruption was reiterated in Hu Jintao's speech at the 18th Party Congress last week where he said, "If we fail to handle this issue well (combating corruption), it could prove fatal to the party, and even cause the collapse of the party and the fall of the state. We must thus make unremitting efforts to combat corruption."
If only our politicians could be that honest with themselves and with the people who determine the extent of their power.
Natalie believes that bottom-up anti-corruption mechanisms are most effective.
Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
