New MACC Head & RM47M Dead Police Chief

A Kadir Jasin

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FOR THE sake of all Malaysians, I pray that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission’s Chief Commissioner designate, Abu Kassim Mohamed, is not being premature in his proclamation.

The soon-to-be-promoted deputy head of the MACC, according to media reports, had vowed to restore the credibility of the agency when he takes over on Jan 1.

"I will introduce several plans and measures to redeem MACC's integrity and public confidence," he told reporters after opening the Integrity Conference 2009 in Penang on Dec. 5.

He said cooperation from other agencies and non-government organisations was also important in restoring the MACC's credibility.

He had earlier spoke at a one-day seminar themed 'Integrity in Development', which was opened by Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng and attended by staff and officers of various government agencies

Abu Kassim is slotted to replace Ahmad Said Hamdan, who would retire at the end of the month, five months ahead of his retirement date.

Personally, I would like to express my deepest hope that Abu Kassim makes a good Chief Commissioner.

I recall that during the sitting of Royal Commission for the Enhancement of the Operations and Management of the Royal Malaysian Police in 2004 and 2005, Abu Kassim had impressed the members of the Commission.

He was then the head of the Penang Anti-Corruption Agency, the predecessor to the MACC, and had volunteered to brief members of the Commission on the inside stories of corruption. He showed the Commission video recordings of the corrupt and their corruptors in action.

It sounds to me that the same fire is still burning in his belly. So I wish him all the best and hope he’ll use his new position and the wider powers of the MACC without fear and favour to bring small and big fish to book.

He has to act on the corrupt and their corruptors with equal ferocity.

The corruptors – the chin chai and the duit kopi givers, the holiday sponsors and the “offerers” of retirement posts to civil servants and politicians -- are as evil as the corrupt themselves.

We have seen how retired senior government officers and politicians shamelessly accepted board appointments at gaming companies and conglomerates with extensive gaming operations.

Abu Kassim and his officers must not be cowed by political pressure from any quarter, be it the ruling party or the opposition.

He must come down equally hard on both because there’s nothing to stop the opposition from becoming the government and the government becoming the opposition in future.

It’s not too much to say that the MACC is our last hope of ridding our political system of corruption and abuse of power.

The MACC can offer us this glimpse of hope by being proactive i.e initiating investigations on suspected political figures without waiting for complains to be filed.

Simply put, if we are going to continue to have the BN as our government, let’s have a cleaner and more credible BN. On the other hand, if the voters feel that it’s time to replace it with the Pakatan Rakyat, let us be sure that the latter is free of corrupt and abusive leaders.

We cannot have a situation where one weak political party is replaced by another weak political party as our government simply because too many of our politicians are under the cloud of suspicion, either for corruption or other immoral activities.

Since political parties are unlikely to be able or willing to get rid themselves of corrupt but powerful warlords, only a proactive and fearless MACC can help weed out such people from all parties so that when the next general election comes, the voters are assured of better candidates to choose from.

Let’s put it this way, how can we ever put our system above suspicion when we read in the newspapers of a dead Deputy IGP leaving behind assets worth RM47 million? Unless it could be proven that he came from a very wealthy family and had inherited such a fabulous wealth, a posthumous investigation should be carried out. These days, they call it forensic investigation.

The New Straits Times reported that a bitter legal tussle is brewing between a brother and the son of a former deputy inspector-general of police Jaafar Abdul, who reportedly left behind RM47.3 million in property on his death in September.

Jaafar’s son, Jeffri Jaffar, the report said, had obtained an interim order against his uncle, Ahmad Dedol, from the Syariah High Court in Muar on Nov 4 to freeze all movable and immovable properties of his father until a decision by the court.

Or am I, in placing my bet on the MACC chief designate, is making another futile call? I hope not. The reverse of that is the continued downgrading our corruption index and with it our global competitiveness.

At the end of the day, everybody pays a high price for the crime of the corrupt and their corrupters.