MP SPEAKS | M'sia back on the slippery road of corruption

MP SPEAKS | Last week, I asked a Malaysian who had been intimately involved with past Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index (CPI) reports as to what he expected of TI CPI 2020.

This was his reply: “Drop. Not more than three points in score. It takes time to drop significantly since some of the data (surveys) used were (based on) 2018/2019. Next year we can see big changes.”

He was right:  there was a drop of “not more three points” in score, as Malaysia fell in score from 53 to 51 points, which resulted in a six-point fall in ranking from No 51 to 57.

If he is right about next year’s TI CPI 2021, then we are faced with the question as to whether Malaysia is heading towards the lowest TI CPI score and rank in TI CPI 2021 in January 2022.

One of the things which concerns me when Transparency International releases its annual Corruption Perception Index every year is how Malaysia is faring with two nations, China and Indonesia, which were regarded in the past as very corrupt nations.

In fact, in the first of the TI’s annual CPI series from 1995, China and Indonesia were ranked 40th and 41st, the last two of the list of 41 countries surveyed.

China scored 2.16 while Indonesia scored 1.94 out of 10 points in 1995. Malaysia was ranked No 23rd with a score of 5.28 out of 10 points.

China and Indonesia are now far from the most corrupt nations in the world, which are occupied by the most corrupt five - Venezuela and Yemen with a score of 15 out of 100 points in the TI CPI 2020, Syria with 14 points and Somalia and South Sudan both with 12 points out of 180 countries surveyed.

Both China and Indonesia have improved considerably in the last 26 years and China is now ranked No 78 with a score of 42 while Indonesia is ranked 102 with a score of 37.

While both China and Indonesia have improved considerably in their TI CPI scores, Malaysia had regressed considerably, with a score of 51 and ranking of 57 out of 180 nations.

Malaysia’s TI CPI ranking fell to the lowest level of No 62 out of 180 countries in 2017 while the TI CPI score fell to the lowest level of 4.3 out of 10 in 2011.

The country was promised that under the Umno-BN regime in the last decade Malaysia will achieve the target to be in the top 30 countries in the TI CPI 2020.

Studying the TI CPI ranking and score for the 24-year series of TI CPI from 1995-2018, there was no ground for anyone to believe that the target of Malaysia being ranked in the top 30 countries of TI CPI 2020 could be achieved.

From the TI CPI record (2010-2018), it is likely that China would have overtaken Malaysia in the TI CPI series before 2030 and Indonesia would have overtaken Malaysia after 2030.

Countries which had been down on the list of the TI CPI ranking in the first series in 1995, like China, Thailand, India and Indonesia, were fast catching up to Malaysia’s level, which had regressed since 1995.

Fortunately, this trajectory was stopped when the Pakatan Harapan government took over, and in the TI CPI 2019, although China improved both its TI CPI rank and score to No 80 and 41 points out of 100, Malaysia achieved the best TI CPI performance in 25 years with a single-year improvement of six points for TI CPI score and 10 placings for TI CPI ranking – a ranking of No 51 and a score of 53 out of 100.

Malaysia was poised for a new era of anti-corruption by achieving better TI CPI score and ranking every year from TI CPI 2019, and was on the road to becoming one of the world’s top 30 countries in public integrity before 2030.

But the Harapan government was short-lived, as it was toppled by the Sheraton Move conspiracy which brought in the backdoor and illegitimate Perikatan Nasional government.

Now we are back on the slippery slope of corruption and the TI CPI 2021 is likely to see “big changes” for the worse – with Malaysia heading for the worst TI CPI ranking and score in history.

Can we expect a statement from Prime Minister Muhyddin Yassin and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission chief commissioner Azam Baki on the TI CPI 2020 and a worse TI CPI 2021?

LIM KIT SIANG is the DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.