By C C Pung
Justice of Peace
It’s been an assertion for a long time that corruption in Malaysia is a systemic one.
What that means is that the entire unit, the system, the organism we’ve come to know as Malaysia, is malfunctioning.
Its not just another word play.
It tells of the severity of our problem with corruption to exaggerate it a bit – everyone is cheating and stealing, and all others not stealing or cheating are keeping quiet.
From the RM11 million ringgit toilet renovation in Kota Kinabaly to the top brasses at the Armed Forces accused of graft, to the corrupt immigration officers at the Kuala Lumpur Airport, Malaysian are lost for words on how bad are we on the graft front.
And in the background is of course the biggest thief of all, Najib.
It’s gotten so bad that some dangerous malfunction of our moral compass is taking place.
Crime is wrong. There’s no justification for crime, or so we were taught.
But there’s now suggestions that since big time corrupt officers are getting away with a minor punishment or a slap of the wrist, people caught for petty crimes like shoplifting should be let go.
So, is it now OK for an out-of-work mother to steal to feed her children? Are we prepared to teach such to our young ones?
I think that Malaysians are in a state of corruption fatigue.
Since Najib and 1MDB, we’ve been subject to heavy bombardments of everything about corruption.
We have been desensitised.
So many supposedly respectable officers, many in uniforms, are involved that I’m beginning to feel rather insignificant.
So many people are rightly or wrongly implicated in cases involving big amounts of public money that not to be mentioned or liked seemed to magnify my irrelevance.
It is like being gold that I had no problem with the Inland Reevenue Board simply because I don’t make much money in the first place.
You know ….feeling small. Are there people out there thinking perhaps they should do some cheating and stealing in order to be in the league?
You know … if you cant beat them, then joun them lah. That’ll be the ultimate rot. Wouldn’t it?
Our corruption tolerance has improved.
That’s evident because the Sabah government recently appointed some men caught in serious corruption allegations to big positions in some govt-linked companies.
God bless these companies. There’s now musang in the chicken coops.
Editor: The views expressed here are of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of the talantang.com
