“With the increasing government budget deficit and the removal of subsidies, the public is demanding more accountability and public disclosure of how and what decisions are made,” TI-M president Datuk Paul Low (picture) said today in a press statement.
“Going for significant improvement would require identifying the root causes that gave the abusers the opportunities to extract gains for themselves or for their proxies,” he added.
Low said that corruption is often fed by the process of “state capture”, whereby those in a position to determine or influence important decisions abuse this privilege to change policies, procedures and processes to favour themselves or their proxies.
“In many cases, the civil servants who are involved in these processes do not benefit personally from them. But, either for fear of reprisal, or because they want to be obedient to their bosses, they may carry out certain instructions,” he said.
“Furthermore, with the opaqueness in government decision making as fettered by the all-encompassing Official Secrets Act, public accountability is undermined.”
Low pointed out that each year, many are shocked by the Auditor-General’s findings on many of areas of maladministration.
“While one may try to be politically correct, and say that these are “mistakes” made due to a lack of knowledge, poor training and mismanagement, one must not dismiss that there are elements of corruption here,” Low said, adding that the process of procurement must involve the participation of independent monitors at every stage of the tender process.
“Such misdeeds continue to occur year after year and actions that may have been taken (if any) against those who are accountable have not been made public.”
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