Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi made the word \’integrity\’ intensely popular in Malaysian folklore and culture since 2004. Every Malaysian, even in primary school, has probably now learned the word in Malay and Dewan Bahasa must have translated the word in their kamus as \’integriti\’ because this was the official name of the Institut as labeled by the government and not \’amanah\’ – the Arabic word as usually argued by scholars like Syed Tawfik Ali Alatas. But, does this word have political integrity?
Much like with the word \’Allah\’, it appears that the Malay transliteration and words are what really matter in popular folklore and not the Arabic or pre-Islamic etymological origins of the word or its meaning. Such ‘political non-integrity’ was made evident when the chair of the Integrity Committee of January 2005, a cabinet minister and head of a constituent party in the Barisan Nasional also stepped down as a matter of principle. His concern and views about ‘Allah’ and ‘political integrity’ have yet to be addressed.
If I am not wrong, even the special committee’s report to Parliament has yet to be tabled in the now-not-so-August house. I should know as I was the second complainant who went to Parliament to table my issues and concerns when it was first set up. It was also my first duty as the executive director of my NGO. The first fortunately was DAP secretary-general, Lim Guan Eng, who is now already chief minister of Penang. At least the citizens heard his cry and appeal, and gave him a chance to ‘walk his talk’.
In hindsight, and trying to better appreciate Malaysian administrative history, the closest Dr Mahathir, our former PM of 22 years, came to the use of this word ‘integrity’ was when he espoused the BN campaign and political philosophy of Bersih, Cekap dan Amanah or the BCA campaign in the early 1980s. Translated into English it was a move towards a cleaner, more trustworthy (or more accurately, ‘a system with more integrity’) and a more efficient governance in Malaysia. Today, almost 30 years later, even with a newer MAAC , and a proposed EAIC (Enforcement Agencies Integrity Commission), development agents like myself do not yet envision a peoples’ ABC movement (see my previous column on this) or a movement against bribery and corruption. The espoused BCA must now become the ABC, a theory-in-use but also, one by the people, of the people, and for the people.
This was also the personal advice of the late Dr Syed Hussein Alatas when I invited him to talk at my 4th National Congress on Integrity. He said, “Unless it is a people movement, it is not yet a real movement.” Government programmes, he said, have their limitations. The late Syed Hussein studied, researched, taught and wrote about corruption for more than 50 years in Malaysia.
Total moral decadence
While in public service, I even had a boss who espoused the concept of ‘tanggong-hisab’ instead of merely ‘tanggungjawab’. But, having served 32 years in public service and having studied, observed, practiced and talked about integration and integrity, I see total moral decadence of various forms within our governance system, at all levels. My complaints in Parliament still remain as valid and unanswered. Therefore my rhetorical question today is ‘Which Values, Whose Responsibility?’ Malay transliteration or Arabic meanings, or really the truth of a matter; with all the complications and realities of historicity and the etymological origins of these root-words.
Today in Parliament, we even have Pak Lah’s final bill for legacy and posterity: to create a newer so-called integrity-related and ‘politically correct’ commission for oversight of enforcement agencies. But can values and responsibilities in the moral dimension of life be ‘en-forced’ or rather should they be only ‘en-couraged?’ Can force replace courage to undertake truth?
Therefore, to my mind the new commission in an ‘omission rather than a commission’. It is political gamesmanship without real political will on the need for one single anti-corruption, and pro-integrity agency commission like the much touted one in Hong Kong. It is an apology for the original police commission that was recommended by the Royal Commission to the Yang di- Pertuan Agong who supported and endorsed the same to the government.
But why then has that recommendation not been implemented, as was? Why was such inaction by the government not an insult to the Malay ruler and a seditious action? Why do we not consider such a ‘slap on the face’ an insult to the royalty, if Karpal Singh can be charged in court? How can the federal government act with impunity on many such matters, and close one eye but no action is taken at all? Which or whose values are we talking about? The nation’s or Umno’s? Can the nation have values that belong to the community of Malaysians?
Why all the wayang kulit?
Why therefore all this wayang kulit in managing the governance process of Malaysia after more than 50 years? Is it really true that consequent Umno leaders over 25 years, who claimed and owned the integrity agenda, as a promise to the people cannot really find the political will to rid our nation of such moral corruption and decadence? What does it really mean therefore that an Umno VP who is charged and found to be ‘corrupt’ and is disqualified from contesting the deputy president’s post but is still good enough to be chief minister of Malacca? Is that not double speak from the incoming Umno president.
After all Pak Lah was ‘forced out’ from within Umno; and we all know who were the parties behind that. Is the former Umno member and law minister Zaid Ibrahim then not right to question the implicit assumption that an Umno leader is always the defacto prime minister of Malaysia? Are we not going back into the history of Malacca when we are no surer whether Hang Tuah or Hang Jebat are the real heroes?
Instead, the so-called \’un-enforce-ing police\’ chose to take action against Karpal. The close-one-eye Parliament without an integrity report votes to take action against the son, who merely raised an issue of integrity right there before the ears of the so-called next prime minister of Malaysia? All they were doing is asking, the rhetorical question whether the Constitution is King in Malaysia, and not whether the Yang di-Petuan Agong is the head of state in Malaysia, or why the Parliament should not discuss who the new PM who has the ‘confidence of the majority in Malaysia’ should be?
Come on Malaysia. Our independence or the Merdeka that Tunku Abdul Rahman spoke about is moving from our dependence on colonial values and traditional notions of responsibility and accountability premised on the British culture and tradition towards our own values and visions of where we want to go as a developed nation. Development cannot mean that only greed is good. The development that we want must include the eradication of poverty regardless of ethnicity, or country of real origin, or by date of arrival in Malaysia. Yes, even the refugees are real people given human dignity by God. Trading in people is outlawed by the United Nations, and yet we do it; so far without impunity.
Malaysia, we need to decide our own future. Bad or poor leaders have taken us this far but not far enough. Even Mahathir, often hailed as a statesman of modern Malaysia, has doubts about whether Malaysia can now achieve 2020. We are today only a fast developing nation with first world-type infrastructure in urban areas but everywhere else with a third world mentality and morality. We need to learn the meaning of the word integrity and use it more sparingly before we bastardize this word too. May God Bless Malaysia.
