KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 27): Veteran DAP strongman Lim Kit Siang cautioned that Malaysia was back on the slippery slope of corruption as before the 14th General Election in May 2018.

In a statement on Thursday (Jan 27), Lim who is also DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri took a swipe at the government and said the Cabinet was utterly impotent when it dared not discipline Tan Sri Azam Baki as Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) Chief Commissioner for Malaysia’s dropping five points in score and 11 points in rank in the last two years in the Transparency International Malaysia's (TI-M) Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2020 and 2021.

“In countries where there is integrity and accountability, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) Chief Commissioner would have handed in his resignation at the atrocious TI CPI 2020/2021 reports but not in Malaysia,” he said.

Lim said the country was promised that under the former UMNO-BN regime in the last decade that Malaysia would achieve the target to be in the top 30 countries in the world in public integrity and anti-corruption.

“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.

“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,” he lamented.

He also argued that from the TI CPI records of the former Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s administration from 2010-2018, it is likely that China would have overtaken Malaysia in the TI CPI series before 2030.

However, he added that China may overtake Malaysia in both TI CPI score and ranking by 2025,

“China was ranked No. 40 with a CPI score of 2.16 out of 10 in 1995. In 2018, China was ranked No. 87 with a CPI score of 39 out of 100.

“In 2021, China is ranked No. 66 with a CPI score of 45. – three points behind Malaysia’s 48.

“In the last two years, China gained 4 points in the CPI score to reach 45 out of 100 while Malaysia lost five points to reach a CPI score of 48 out of 100,” he highlighted.

Lim also mooted a scenario of Indonesia overtaking Malaysia about before 2030 if Malaysia continues to regress in anti-corruption while Indonesia continues to make progress on this front.

“In the TI CPI 2021, Indonesia improves its score by one point while Malaysia drops by three points.

“If Malaysia does not buck up in the anti-corruption front, it is not inconceivable that Indonesia may even overtake Malaysia in the TI CPI before 2025,” he said.

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