A case of true justice for MACC

A case of true justice for MACC

In a briefing on INTAN No 1/2017 executive programme, ‘Fight against corruption: challenges and impact on national transformation’ at the National Institute of Public Administration (INTAN) campus in February, 2017,  MACC Sabah director Datuk Sazali Salbi stated that MACC Sabah is gathering feedback and  the effort was one of the initiatives taken by top management to visit agencies handling public affairs.

Sazali mentioned that the Sabah State Water Department corruption case has become a benchmark for MACC cases nationwide.  If the Sabah State Water Department corruption case is a benchmark for MACC cases nationwide, I think it is too low a bench mark money-wise as only a few hundred millions Ringgit but corruptions come in various forms and many such schemes have been ignored by MACC as my many experiences with MACC confirm that. Should it be a bench mark when only less than half of the amount as alleged graft of RM1b was placed on record as recovered from the culprits? How can it be a bench mark when almost 30 senior civil servants were arrested for suspected graft and only 2 plus one non civil servant were charged in court after more than 3 months of action? What is the fate of those civil servants who are not charged but possibly back at work with a “black mark”? It is likely that in the mind of the people, this case is another cover up after “political” intervention. By the way where is the money recovered from the culprits and it should be returned to the Water Department to complete the project where it has been left out for a few years?  Without transparency and details of action by MACC, how can it be a bench mark to deal with other similar cases of bigger scale in the nation?

 Should not I be rewarded for all my many efforts of whistleblowing corruptions and abuses of power in several major police reports since the start of the century until I am fed up recently with the bias of MACC?

Like many people with datuks, corruption is rampant in Sabah and the nation with very big ones of colossal size in Peninsular Malaysia as most cases are perpetrated from the Putrajaya with too many known cases as exposed but MACC has been “sleeping” hopefully not in cement drum.

I think MACC should have lots of information and if it decides to act, there won’t be enough prisons to contain the corrupters be it in Sabah and Malaysia.  The figure could be in the millions.  You can imagine how much of ill-gotten gains had gone astray.  For the information of the MACC, the MACC should consider its role with great urgency as how the nation has accumulated the nation’s debt of RM90b in 1997 to RM317b  in 2008 to almost RM847b in 2015 (Source – The Economist).  The figure can be touching RM1trillion now with recent capital commitments for certain massive projects. Is not this part and parcel of massive corruption in the way expenditure and project costs had been handled as sort of out of control?

I hope Sazali is on fire for much longer and look at some of the major operators/implementers of many multi billions projects in Sabah and elsewhere.  The list can be very long.  Most of these major massive projects were done without proper procedure like tenders as some agencies consider such projects as their personal “babies” for their cronies to derive massive kick backs.

Just to give Sazali some indicators of those likely abused sectors in Sabah, I would like to list out some of the glaring concerns by sectors. Such sectors of mega dimension in recent decades are for development projects KKIP, SDC (SEDIA), SEDCO, TAED (on the drawing board in excess of RM30b); infrastructures projects from Putrajaya passed out via awards from KL; utility projects like TNB/SESB; Esscom (Esszone); the two very much over priced “obsolete” submarines in Sabah; supplies to the armed forces, hospitals, educational institutes; production/revenue resources in land matters; forests, oil and gas, ports, Yayasan Sabah, major ministries (Federal and States) with substantial allocation of expenditures (always without supervision) and various enforcement sectors and the list can go on.

I hope MACC would march on to bring back the sanity of good governance to do away with the corruption culture so that Malaysia would rank high on the Global Transparency Index.

Joshua Y C Kong 7 Feb 2017.