Corruption is about greed, not creed

THERE is this video of former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew talking about his old friend Teh Cheang Wan. The man was the country’s minister for national development back in 1986. He was a brilliant architect, had many lucrative contracts and was rich – very rich.

But according to Lee, Teh made a fatal mistake. He had on two occasions taken bribes to help a private company buy over and retain a piece of state land.

When the police started investigating, Teh reached out to Lee, but the prime minister refused to meet him. “I told him that if he talked to me, I would have to testify in court,” Lee said.

Days later, Teh was found dead in his house. He had always denied the charges but, with his honour at stake, he decided to take his own life. “As an honourable oriental gentleman, I feel it is only right that I should pay the highest penalty for my mistake,” he wrote in his final note.

Teh was Chinese.

Lee also said the American CIA had tried to bribe him with US$3.3mil back in 1961 to keep an espionage attempt under wraps. That’s no paltry sum. Today, it would be worth more than RM120mil.

Lee had a choice – he could have made himself very rich, or “I serve my country, my people and let my country be in the list of 10 best economies in the world.” He chose the second.

Lee, too, was Chinese.

Four decades after the Teh case, another Singapore minister is now facing a corruption probe. Transport Minister S. Iswaran has been ordered to go on leave while investigations are under way.

Iswaran, who remains innocent until proven guilty, is Indian.

Corruption, you see, does not operate by race. It is about greed, and that is something that can be found in all creeds of people.

However, there are those who don’t think so. In their blinkered view, it’s all about race. Kedah Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor, known for his wild claims, believes the non-Malays and non-Muslims are the biggest bribe givers and takers. He is not alone.

His boss, PAS president Tan Sri Abdul Hadi Awang, is known to have said that the non-Malays are the root cause of corruption in the country.

From left: Lee, Iswaran and Muhammad Sanusi.

Are they really? We have one former prime minister in jail for corruption, another facing charges, and many ministers and political leaders also being hauled up. They are of all races – Malays, Chinese, Indians, even Sabahan and Sarawakian bumiputra.

The truth is: race – or religion – does not play a part, the needs of the individual do. A survey last year of about 500 people showed that some 88% of convicted bribe givers were non-Malays, but the recipients of the bribery were almost all Malays.

That, basically, means both sides are equally corrupt! I can believe that. In a country where the civil service is more than 90% Malay, it seems quite obvious why.

Like former Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) deputy chief commissioner Datuk Seri Shamshun Baharin Mohd Jamil said, the givers usually were business people who needed to get their work done.

“In the past five years, MACC has identified that the group with the highest number of corruption cases involved civil servants, followed by members of the public such as council members,” he said.

Most of those who gave bribes wanted projects, licences and permits, or to have services expedited. And the people in charge of all these things are civil servants, councilmen or council employees. Most are Malays.

Neither the bribe giver nor the taker did it due to their DNA or ancestry. It was just about the position they were in. The business people needed to get work done quickly, and the civil servants were happy to oblige – for a little extra.

Race is hardly a factor. The real factors are more likely to be poverty, the rising cost of living and poor wages.

I think most Malaysians have, at one time or another, been involved in bribery – or at least turned a blind eye when confronted with it.

How many of us prefer to just hand out a few RM50 notes to the policemen who stopped us at a roadblock instead of having to go through the hassle of police station, courts and fines? I know of many.

Of course, it would be easier to just pay when the government offers discounts on these fines. I just paid RM200 for four offences, instead of the RM1,200 I would have had to pay otherwise. It was far cheaper, and I can claim that I am clean.

The problem lies with how we look at it. Malaysia is ranked 61st in the world corruption index. Singapore, despite having a Chinese-majority, is ranked fifth and has zero tolerance for corruption. Singapore has built a culture where bribery and corruption are bad words. In Malaysia, liberalism and LGBT are bad words. Corruption, according to Hadi, is not a crime under Islamic law.

All Malaysians must loathe corruption. Both giver and taker must say no.

For too long now, rent-seekers have been allowed to grow unabated, making loads of money by misusing government policies that were designed to help the purportedly backward Malays climb out of poverty.

As Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has exhorted since he took over, corruption is the biggest scourge of the country. All that talk about race and religion, he says, are just smokescreens.

Malay survival, he says, is being threatened by a coterie of greedy leaders who have been stealing public funds.

This corruption is in high places, with millions – even billions – changing hands. When those up high are corrupt, there is little cause to blame the small man for taking a paltry RM50 to RM100.

What we need is to stamp out corruption in big places and punish those responsible.

We also have a burgeoning civil service. They are underpaid, and the extra comes in useful to meet the rising costs. We need to pay the civil servants more. For that, we also need to cut the size of the civil service.

Therein lies the rub. That would be a disastrous political move for any government. And there’s the Catch-22.