An Open Letter to Pak Lah on Corruption

Very Honourable Prime Minister,

May I take advantage of your kind invitation to the rakyat to tell you the truth. Its about what you had proclaimed and loudly promised during the general elections, about a year ago.

You have ceaselessly chanted about combating corruption in this country, but truthfully, your crusade against the corrupt has been to date mere claptrap,devoid of concrete results.

Your battle cry against crooks has quite clearly become a cliché and a cheap charade, with civil servants still ahead of the corruption curve.

The spell of change with which you had first cast on this country has evaporated, and so has the confidence of the rakyat and foreign investors, in your credibility.

You had asked for more "muscle" - a clear and strong mandate. The rakyat gave you a nine-tenth majority! Sadly you have reciprocated with political muscular dystrophy.

You started off looking good as a PM and you had made the citizens of Bolehland feel good, but you have failed to deliver the goods of transparency and accountability.

You had insisted that you were starting with a clean slate, but added to the already sad state of affairs by slotting into your Cabinet soiled reputations and spent characters.

Your officers lie low with no more high-profile individuals to be prosecuted -- not even amongst the unknown 18 of high standing and low morals, high on the corruption list.

You say you need more time, but you do not have much time. The previlege of time was given to the last PM -- and the legacy you have inherited shows that corruption got worse through time.

Your invitation to work with you does not work at all. Whistleblowers and the alternative media like Malaysikini continue to be subjected to petty prosecutions and childish threats.

Failure to show that you mean business has resulted in "business as usual". Things are getting out of hand and daily reports by Malaysiakini on corruption make this truth stick out like a sore thumb.

At the last UMNO General Assembly you waved your wand instead of wielding the stick. You lost your magic -- and your party displayed the "worst case of money politics in history".

In the so-called war on graft, Parliament has remained but a rubber stamp, a symbol shorn of substance, stripped of essence, sidelined and side-stepped by the executive.

The citizenry of Bolehland are getting wary and weary of your nice guy image, your nice speeches and newsworthy moves on fighting graft, with nothing or little to show.

Mr Prime Minister, it is time to shut the door on the corrupt and to take down the "window dressing". Your honeymoon is over and you seem so divorced from day-to-day realities.

The country does not need a crooner on corruption and the crooked. It needs a leader courageous enough to translate his chorus against corruption into concrete reality.

Your efforts seem have been negated by the minister in your department Mohd Nazri Aziz, who has displayed quite limited knowledge on the difference between a April Fool's prank and a lie.

Perhaps the niggling Nazri was right when he accused Malaysiakini of "lying" -- the government has in fact not taken any concrete action against any high-profile individual!

Alas, it has taken a "lie" for your government, often in a state of denial, to tell or even insist on the truth that it has done nothing significant to curb corruption amongst people in high position!

By taking action against Malaysiakini, you would only be exhibiting to an amused world how your government has not only lost its credibility and sense of shame, but also its sense of humour.

Martin Jalleh
4 April 2005