Before the Pak Lah Administration made integrity a buzz-word, it was not on the lips of most public officials or even the public in general. Maybe it still is not.

The government has even set up the National Institute of Integrity and launched the National Integrity Plan.

That should not be the end of their good intentions, for integrity is meant to be more than this.

On Dec 9, 2005, the Executive, through Parliament, set up the bipartisan Special Committee on Integrity with a two-year term from Jan 13, 2006. The terms of reference are still available on the Parliament website in Malay, although no longer in English.

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The first chairperson, Bernard Dompok ( photo ), resigned later on principle. I understand this is because certain department heads had elected not to attend the public review of their operational policies, especially related to the infamous ‘Project M’. Out of sheer frustration and inability to finish the ‘integrity job’ assigned to him, Dompok resigned.

Now, with its two-year term over, it would appear that the committee has not even completed its job on integrity and therefore, failed to fulfill a primary responsibility set by the Executive for the Legislature.

Is the government in a position to call a general election when a cornerstone of its agenda has not yet been met? Can we, the people, continue to take for granted the integrity of the Executive and the Legislature when they cannot keep their promise?

Do we Malaysians truly understand the meaning of ‘integrity’? Can we accept the concept and definition as per the Pak Lah Administration? If so, can we not hold them accountable for their broken promise?

I have reason to feel hurt and disappointed. I was one of those who believed that the Pak Lah Administration was very serious about the issue of leadership integrity towards good governance. Therefore, I took the trouble to go to Parliament for the committee’s first hearing on Feb 13, 2006, and registered a litany of complaints related to lack of leadership integrity in the public services. I was then told that my complaints would be addressed and resolutions found during the committee’s tenure. This is an unfulfilled promise.

I therefore have to conclude that the Pak Lah Administration had no real political intent to purse its agenda of integrity and worse, it may not even have fully understood the concept and meaning of integrity.

Integrity defined

Integrity is a complex concept. The dictionary defines it as ‘the quality or state of being of sound moral principle; uprightness, honesty, and sincerity’. The root word is ‘integer’ which means ‘anything complete in itself; entity; whole’.

Honesty is a synonym for integrity. Uprightness is a synonym for honesty as well. Stephen Carter in his book, ‘Integrity’, maintains that it is perhaps “first among virtues……because in some sense … [it] is prior to everything else: the rest of what we think matters very little if we lack essential integrity and the courage of our convictions, the willingness to act and speak on behalf of what is right”.

It is apparent that we need a broader definition of integrity in ‘operational’ terms.’ Integrity can also be applied to different levels of organisational reality; whether at personal level, the lived environment level or national level.

An extensive definition is found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: ‘Integrity is one of the most important and oft-cited of virtue terms. It is also perhaps the most puzzling. For example, while it is sometimes used virtually synonymously with ‘moral,’ we also at times distinguish acting morally from acting with integrity. Persons of integrity may in fact act immorally – though they would usually not know they are acting immorally. Thus one may acknowledge a person to have integrity even though that person may hold importantly mistaken moral views.’

Integrity is therefore both a quality or virtue of a person but is also applied to various systems, including performance of work or accomplishments. For example, we refer to integrity of a computer system being compromised. Or, we talk about integrity of the wilderness as a sense of wholesomeness or completeness. At other times we talk about the integrity of a piece of music. Therefore, integrity involves more than moral uprightness – it includes the relational dimension, when evaluated in the context of performance within a defined context.

The Encyclopedia continues: ‘What is it to be a person of integrity? Ordinary discourse about integrity involves two fundamental intuitions: first, that integrity is primarily a formal relation one has to oneself, or between parts or aspects of one\’s self; and second, that integrity is connected in an important way to acting morally, in other words, there are some substantive or normative constraints on what it is to act with integrity. How these two intuitions can be incorporated into a consistent theory of integrity is not obvious, and most accounts of integrity tend to focus on one of these intuitions to the detriment of the other.’

Five concepts

The Encyclopedia defines five distinct and different ways integrity can be understood. Let us review each in order to evolve a clearer concept of integrity for this nation.

Integrity as the integration of self

This is a matter of persons integrating various parts of their personality into a harmonious, intact whole. Understood in this way, the integrity of persons is analogous to the integrity of things: integrity is primarily a matter of keeping the self intact and uncorrupted.

It is this view which appears to be the way the former health minister and the media dealt with his moral weakness. Some sought to paint a picture of integrity over his actions as minister and his personal virtue for telling the truth about his moment of failure.

Fewer sought to argue for his dismal failure to be the right example as a father, husband and political leader. Nevertheless, it was probably at the point of failure of the self-integration view of integrity that the minister chose to resign. He was admitting to a failure of integrity.

Integrity as maintenance of identity

Another related approach to integrity is to think of it primarily in terms of a person holding steadfastly true to commitments, rather than ordering and endorsing various other human desires. The person’s identity is closely linked to core commitments or beliefs professed.

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Within this context, ‘commitment’ is used as a broad umbrella that covers different kinds of intentions, promises, convictions and relationships of trust and expectation. A person may be committed in different ways to different things: people, institutions, traditions, causes, ideals, principles, projects, and so on.

Commitments can be explicit or implicit. Some are relatively superficial and unimportant. Others are very deep, like the commitment implicit in genuine love or friendship. This may be the reason that Prof Lim Teck Ghee ( photo ), the author of the CPPS’ controversial 9th Plan document resigned, after the Asli president withdrew endorsement of the thesis. Resignation was the most honourable option when dignity and honour as a scholar is questioned. Even the human desire to survive in an organisation has secondary value.

Integrity as standing for something

The social character of integrity is a matter of a person\’s proper regard for their own best judgement. Persons of integrity do not just act consistently with their endorsements, they stand for something: they stand up for their best judgment within a community of people trying to discover what in life is worth doing.

As author Calhoun puts it: “Persons of integrity treat their own endorsements as ones that matter, or ought to matter, to fellow-deliberators….lying about one\’s views, concealing them, recanting them under pressure, selling them out for rewards or to avoid penalties, and pandering to what one regards as the bad views of others, all indicate a failure to regard one\’s own judgment as one that should matter to others.” (Calhoun 1995 p. 258)

This may be the reason that Johor Baru MP Shahrir Abdul Samad ( photo ) resigned as the chairperson of the Backbenchers Club; and the reason that the Minister in the PM’s Departmnet resigned as chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Integrity. Both must have felt that they could not compromise on a commitment to a core value and still uphold their integrity as a member of Parliament.

Integrity as moral purpose

Another way of thinking about integrity places moral constraints upon the kinds of commitment to which a person of integrity must remain true. There are several ways of doing this. Elizabeth Ashford argues for a virtue she calls ‘objective integrity, which requires that agents have a sure grasp of their real moral obligations (Ashford 2000, p. 246). A person of integrity cannot, therefore, be morally mistaken.

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Understood in this way, one only properly ascribes integrity to a person with whom one finds oneself completely in moral agreement. This concept of integrity does not closely match ordinary use of the term. The point of attributing integrity to another is not to signal unambiguous moral agreement. It is often to ameliorate criticism of another\’s moral judgment. Maybe it is in this context that I hold Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi morally responsible for the introduction of the concept of integrity during his administration.

Unfortunately, it would appear that he has been unable to provide the requisite authority to uphold the moral agenda; whether one calls it Islam Hadhari or the Integrity Agenda. This kind of judgement does not question his personal integrity but obviously raises questions about his decisions as prime minister on many different occasions.

Integrity as a virtue

Finally, it may be that the concept of integrity is a cluster of inter-related concepts, tying together different overlapping qualities of character under the one term. In Cox, La Caze and Levine 2003, the authors argue that integrity is a virtue, but not one that is reducible to the workings of a single moral capacity (in the way that, say, courage is) or the wholehearted pursuit of an identifiable moral end (in the way that, say, benevolence is).

They take ‘integrity’ to be a complex and thick virtue term. One gains a fair grasp of the variety of ways in which people use the term ‘integrity’ by examining conditions commonly accepted to defeat or diminish a person\’s integrity. Integrity stands as a mean against various forms of excesses.

My purpose in writing about integrity is to tell Pak Lah that his government, in my opinion, has failed dismally to stand up to the moral standards espoused. To me, the greatest failure has been that it did not measure up to many of its espoused values and virtues. In fact, if one were to review all the promises made, there are many, many failures.

Meeting the test of integrity is not about the ability to make promises, but to keep one’s word, especially to the whole nation. May God have mercy on Malaysia, and her leadership in the matter of integrity.