Keynote address at Transparency International Anticorruption Summit 2018

blogtunm.blogspot.com Tun M

Text of PM Keynote address at Transparency International Anticorruption Summit 2018.

Excellencies ladies and gentlemen.

Firstly, I would like to say thank you to Transparency International Malaysia for this invitation to deliver a keynote address at this very important conference. This conference is about corruption.And how to combat corruption.

We in Malaysia have just emerged from a period where corruption was rife. Corruption in fact became a sort of slogan for the government in power. Indeed there were allegations that the Prime Minister himself might be involved in corruption.

Now when in a country the top men is corrupt the rest will follow suit.

Because the top man is responsible for trying to combat corruption but when the top man becomes corrupt there will be no attempt to combat corruption. Indeed the slogan of that time was Cash is King.

Now when you say Cash is King what you mean is that corruption is the way. Corruption will make you the king will give you power that in itself shows the kind of government we had previously.

But the people reacted. The people may be given money bribe etcetera.Although they will receive. They receive the money but they were still much against corruption.

And so when it came to an election the 14th general election in Malaysia the people exerted their people’s power they voted out the corrupt government.

That is just the first phase.

But in order to combat against corruption the new government must have a program on corruption or anti corruption. This is not easy because not only was money used in order to win popularity but the whole government machinery has become corrupted because they too enjoy corruptions during that period.

And so we have a machinery of government that is defective.Defective machinery of government cannot easily combat corruption.

The machinery itself needs to be cleaned up.

And so the new government which was elected with a good majority in the 14th general election having taken over power in this country had a tough time trying to combat corruption.

To combat corruption you need the current the support of everyone in particular the government machinery. But as I said just now the government machinery has become corrupted and he will not be likely do things to combat corruption.

The cleaning up involves removal of very senior officers.

But when the senior officers are removed we have need to replace with other officer who may not be so senior who may not be as experienced and so after the cleanup we have another weak machinery of government that has to combat again old practices and the extensive corruption that was happening before.

But the machinery of government has been reorganized in particular that is a good machinery of government that is dedicated to combating corruption.

We have actually 4 different agencies now which look into various indication of corruption in the government.

However, the fact that the new government is dedicated to the removal of corruption means that that machinery of the government itself must be clean from corruption.

We all know that when the top man is corrupt then of course the others will follow suit. So in this government it is important that government personnel elected during the election must avoid corruption. So new rules have been set has been put in place in order to combat corruption among the government leaders.

They now enjoy the same power as the previous government. The previous government abuse that power and as a result of the country became corrupt at all levels.

Now new government having vowed having promised to fight corruption must show from the very beginning that the government itself is free from corruption.

The promises had been made and agencies of government have been setup.

To date we have not heard of any government offices being corrupt at least not openly.

If they hide their activities, we have agencies which will seek them out and then ensure that the corrupt will be punished.

Currently the focus is on the corruption involving the previous government but if there is any evidence at all or corruption in the new government we hope that people will indicate will be good whistleblowers to inform the authorities that there are corrupt personnel in the new government.

So far we have not heard of any report of the new members of the new government being corrupt indeed many things were put in place to prevent corruption from taking place.

Where before appointments to various agencies of government agencies were from the the party forming the government these people do not care about you implementing the work they were tasked with instead they founded the power they wielded what’s good for them to make money for themselves.

But now all those party appointed officers have been removed and new offices who are not involved in politics have been put in place in order to ensure that they will run agencies institution and companies properly.

These are professional people they are not party members and they are tasked with eradicating corruption in their organisation. Apparently this has salutary effect facts on the institutions and we now have such blatant corruption as happened during the previous government but we have to maintain it.

Government on necessity must have power without power government cannot function.

But power can be abused.

There is a saying that power corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely so we must have the power but we must avoid corruption. We invite the public the people to report cases of corruption this will not result in action being taken against the whistleblowers this is because this government respect the separation of powers within the Legislative, Executive and Judiciary.

So if any one of these agencies are reported to be corrupted then the other two agencies will function during the corrupt person to Justice. This is the promise of the new government and this so far this has been implemented because today we do not hear as much as we did about leaders of the country being corrupt. We are no longer described as a kleptocracy.

A government of Thieves but today we are implementing democracy in the best way possible.

We have resort the rule of Law so the Law previews in all cases should be there be any abuse of power by any one of the three agencies of government which exercises power the other two can take action in order to stop the corruption.

Today we are in the process of punishing those who were corrupt before it’s not the case of the government seeking revenge but the Law there is no one who is above the Law in this country if somebody is corrupt somebody abuses power then the Law will be applied and there will be judges who are free from corruption to decide on the guilt or otherwise the people accused of corruption.

We are watching the procedures going on and I’m sure that many of those people who are found guilty will be punished for their greed when they were in power.

The government has tough job because apart from trying to deal with corruption the government also has to rule the country and for that the government needs money.

When’s members of the public decided to help the government with his finances. The government started a fund. This fund is open to everybody to contribute it doesn’t matter how much money is paid. It is speed that count more. However, there has been attempt to use donation to this fund in order to influence government business. This has been rejected by the government because when huge sums of money are given by way of donation to the fund.

The government has to reject the huge donation because it may become a source of corruption.

There are many things that we have to do but basically we need the support of the people. The people must understand that corruption is not good for them therefore they on their part must play their role in eradicating corruption.

We will have to punish not only the receiver but also the giver.

Unless we do this corruption will be come rife in this country. Up to the moment we have found that corruption or accusation, allegation operation is not as frequent as with the last government. Maybe that is a good sign that we have succeeded in telling the people to avoid corruption but the people themselves must know that corruption is a crime and they must never try to corrupt officials in order to get approvals for whatever it is that they are asking for. This is our hope that the whole country must be dedicated toward fighting against corruption.

Corruption may be stopped by the laws of the country but the better thing is that the people themselves regard corruption as crime and you don’t get involved in corruption. This means that we must have a high standard in our value system we must reject corruption as a crime which benefits no one not even the person who’s trying to get his approval from government agencies. So we hope with that the public showing the interest in eradicating corruption and the government officers machinery being cleaned off we hope that this will result in reducing corruption if not eliminating it all together.

Public interest is very important because we depend on the public to tell us instances of corruption which may affect them.

After that of course our agencies, implementors will make sure that the people who are corrupt will be punished according to the laws of this country.

The rule of law is very important in combating corruption it is only when we abide by the law of the country that corruption be reduced or ended.

I hope in this meetingon good governance and integrity for sustainable business group would make a members of the business Community aware that although corruption may win them something but in the end they will lose because this country will not grow will not develop, prosper if corruption is rife in this country. So with this hope that I launch this Transparency International Anticorruption Summit 2018.

Thank you.

Government and Governance in the Islamic World

blogtunm.blogspot.com Tun M 

Full text of PM speech at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies on September 24th, 2018.

Bilsmillahirahmanirahim in the Name Of Allah the Merciful and the Compassionate.

Assalamualaikum and very good afternoon everyone. Mr. Nizam, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen. I feel deeply honoured that I had been asked to speak once again at Oxford University. I have chosen the subject called Government and Governance in the Islamic World. The first thing that you would note about the system of governnce in Islamic World is that it had hardly changed. At the time when the rest of the world were modifying their system of government. The Islamic World remained attached to the system the monarchy system which supports an authoritarian system. Nobody could think of any revision in that system. The ruler is supreme and obedience to him is a must. The ruler has absolute power. And this is accepted by the people in muslim countries that the ruler should have absolute power. Of course as you say absolute power corrupts and corrupts absolutely. Invariably this happens in most of islamic states. It doesn’t mean that they don’t provide good governance all the time. They have been rulers in Islamic state who have done a great deal for their country who have led their country to prominence until at one time of course the muslim appeared to be the most successful people in term of governance of their countries. They were strong they were able to conquer their neighbours. They were able to provide for the development of their countries. In fact they were so impressive they are letting a lot European countries felt they need to copy from the muslim governance system. And so therefore some time around 15th century Europeans began to study Islamic way of governance and development. They even studied arabic in order to gain access to the great libraries in Cordoba in Baghdad because they want to know how was it that the muslim so abled to build the great civilisation. The standard in those days was the muslim standard. Everybody felt that if they copy the muslim system they would progress. Indeeed they did around 15th century they gained access to the libraries of the muslim intellectual and they learned alot from the Muslim.

But unfortunately at about the same time the muslim decided that their system was wrong. They decided they were not Islamic enough. They thought anything that is not about Islam is not desirable. The study of other subjects will not gain merit for the after life. And so they cease to study all those subjects at which they excelled in the past. Of course we know of name like Ibn Sina, Ibnu Rusyd and the others who find many of the knowledge that gave muslim civilization the edge over other civilizations.

However, through out all these the whim and fancies of the ruler prevails. If they have good ruler then they succeed and they become very modern in that sense during their time. But the ruler upon gaining absolute power invariably abuse the power that they have and so we find that some of the intellectuals were the victims of jealousy on the part of the ruler. And of course they did not get the benefit of intellectuals in the governnce of their countries.

These prevail until today and now muslims have to admit that they are not leading the world anymore. They have been left behind and they have been left behind because they have discarded the learning that they find before. This has been taken over by the European and they find that they were left behind they continue to be left left behind. Eventually of course the great Muslim civilisation fragmented and almost all their lands and teritories were conquered by western countries. They no longer have anything to buy and to rule. This does not mean they are incapable they are very capable people but their opportunity to learn anything else other than religion had denied them. As a result they began to regret.

This is one of the things that happen when will give absolute power to anyone at all. They tend to be jealous of others and they tend to downgrade anybody else who may appear to be better than them. Throughout history of the Muslim word we see these things happening eventually they had to come around to prepare to accept the fact that they are no longer the great Islamic Civilisation that they used to be. They see all around them countries which had prospered greatly. These countries prospered because initially these countries learn from the muslim civilisation and they made progress from there on. After the muslim countries were conquered they felt that they were no longer able to compete with the West and they developed inferiority complex and they feel that they could do nothing right. The regression goes on and on until many of them migrated to

to live in other countries and and they find that other countries are doing better then their own countries. They find that giving power to one person is not right . They need to adopt the system that was developed in the West. Eventually of course they felt they too should become democratic.

But democracy is not the easiest way to manage. It is very complex it needs self restrain on the part of many people including of the people who have been given the right to choose their government but this is something that muslim generally does not understand how could the ruler be chosen by the people. The ruler should be because of his right because he comes from certain family even if the ruler is overthrown by some leaders in their community. The new leader inevitably adopt the title of ruler. They all became sultan and they all propagated same sytem of government in which the ruler does everything for the country for the people. Indeed all revenues go to the ruler. It is up to his generousity to distribute wealth to the country in order to grow or to administer the country .That is still stand today. Revenue of country belong to the ruler and it is up to him to be generous to pay for the administration and development of the country. And as I said just now invariably they become corrupt . So the answer to that is to change system of government and they found that system must be the democratic system and they were urge to overthrow their rulers and setup a democratic government.

We know they tried to do this now known as the Arab Spring but as you know democracy in the west did not become the system overnight. It took the West almost 200 years to develop the system of democracy. It required a certain frame of mind to accept having a ruler who is chosen by the people. The progress was slow. Initially only land owners were allowed to participate in voting for the government subsequently other groups were also allowed working people were allowed like to go to other government women took a long time get the right to vote for the government.

So you can see that the democratic system did not come to the West overnight. It took many many years before the frame of mind was such that they accept the result of simple things like a tick on a piece of paper called the vote to determine who will rule the country.

The other thing about the muslim world is that they believe in consensus that any decision must be agreed to by everyone. Until it is agreed to by everyone a decision cannot be made. It is almost impossible to have everyone agreed to anything invariably there will be wdifferences in their views and opinions as in order to achieve consensus they have to water down whatever decision to make until it becomes quite meaningless. So it is very difficult for Muslim countries to change on their own. They may have noticed the dictatorial ways of the absolute rulers but they could not think of changing the system because to do so need to have consensus. It took them a very very long time before some members of their community having been exposed to system of the government in the Western countries. For them to decide they took long time until they were forced by outside power to change. This was the regime change that they have to undertake.

It is now called the Arab Spring. Why it is called the Arab Spring is something that until now I cannot understand but the fact is that the the world caused is changing the system of government in the Muslim countries and this is something that is good . But they forget that it is not just the system that has to be changed it is also the mind set the value system of the people must change which has changed. From having hereditary king to having leader voted by the people is a big change which is not easy to adopt by whole country . So what we see is that they did carryout out revolution of sort to overthrow out the dictatorial leaders for all these they were all united . They thought that if the ruler is disposed then they will become the ruler. Always the thinking is still change a ruler for another ruler. They did not realised that the reason the why ruler was disposed was because there were many factions in their society wanted the leader to be dispose so for that reason they remain united. They have one objective to overthrow the ruler and they felt once the leader is overthrown then they will become democratic. But there are many factions which participated in the overthrow of the rulers and each faction believe with the ruler they will take over his place as soon as the ruler is overthrown they realise that the are many aspirants all wanted to pickup the ruler.

When they conducted election they found that through election one of them not all of them but one of them may achieve the desired number of votes in order to be the government.

But the loser do not want to accept this. They felt that something must be wrong if they themselves did not win. So a new government is formed with probably the people giving majority to one party the other party refuses to accept the result they would struggle to bring that government down In many instances of course they resort to violence and the new government elected by majoriy of people were pulled down and they’re either have to have another election or else somebody might elect to power . if there is a strong military force in society the military will take advantage of situation and form a kind of military government which of course is not democracy. Otherwise they might have an election they may be a new party would win but the new party will be subjected to the same forces which brought down the previous party. So sometimes you see something like musical chair with different parties becoming the government and being change without being able to rule the country.

This is because on the one hand the intellectuals may understand the workings of democracy but the vast majority of people do not understand that in the democracy you have to respect the vote. You have to respect the choice made by the people feel that if they are not being chosen there must be some mistake somewhere. So you find government being changed and change again some time through democratic processes at other time through seizure of power by some strong man or by military. You see this happening in many of the new democracies in the Muslim world.

If they are going to suceed I think it is necessary to give them more time to develop the mind set that understand that you can honour the vote of the people and accept there will be a ruler who is chosen by the people by the simple process of voting.

This is something that is not really understood in the Muslim world which I said just now is much more familiar much more comfortable with hereditary ruler. We find that even though there may be change of government invariably would try to assume the position of a hereditary ruler. They cannot imagine that after they finished their term either somebody else might take over from them. So you find in some dictatorship resulting from the overthrow of monarchy. Also setting a new monarchy with same system of hereditary ruler.

The expectation is that once a person win with his family have right to govern the country through his family forever. So this is the process that can only be avoided over time by learning and understanding the democratic system .

I am saying this about muslim countries. Malaysia is a muslim country not 100% muslim. 40% of our people are non muslim and 60% are muslim . But upon independence we decided that this system we would adopt would be democratic system.

This was not so easy because we have 9 rulers 9 hereditary rulers. Most of the muslim in the country are very loyal to this ruler. How do we deal with them? We thought we should adopt the British system of constitutional monarch. But then there are 9 monarchs so we decided to have a change of the ruler every five years but confined to the hereditary rulers of 9 states. Somehow it has worked because the people in the country seem to find that they still have their rulers but they can still have their democratic system.

It is not been easy there are problems like race differences and religion but Malaysian are probably the most timid people. They don’t like violent they are prepared to endure hardship with that government until it changes by itself. They are not going to make any effort to overthrow the government. No violence no assinnation and the like and so in Malaysia it seems to have work. But Malaysia is not 100% muslim. I do not know whether Malaysia as 100% muslim country would be able to fuction as democracy or not. We need to test that.

Perhaps by depriving the non muslim of the right to vote but of course we are not going to do that. But in other muslim countries we see the transition has brought about changes which are disastrous for those countries I think there is a need of them to spend more time understanding for the people themselves to understand the democratic system if you don’t understand that in a democracy the vote is powerful then of course you cannot have a democratic system. This is the problem faced by many Muslim countries because there is still much more comfortable with monarchy with authoritarian system even if there is seizure of power by a non royal still the new ruler would assume the title of king or sultan whatever and rule the country thru their authoritarian monarchal system so this is a problem that cannot be overcome overnight he’s going take long time unfortunately because they don’t understand the system they are facing terrible disasters today and every time they tried for democratic system they will be fighting among them and the countries can be almost totally destroyed. For me as a Muslim I feel shame that muslim countries are not so well governed to the extent that Muslims run away from Muslim countries to live in non muslim countries. That is what is happening today they find that non Muslim countries provide better protection and security for them but their own muslim countries are unstable one and oppressive. So Muslim need to understand that power given to the ruler is not for him to use for his own self but actually for the country and the people. This is something that many of the absolute rulers do not understand. I say this with repetition because even in my own country we cannot say anything against the ruler and of course you have such powerful rulers as it would be some abuses of power. We have in Malaysia we have to suffer in silence and some how or rather more likely is this a difficult task for us in Malaysia it is even more difficult for the 100% muslim countries because their people do not understand the democratic system. A system in which the people choose their government and support the government in their period of time . They cannot wait until term is over they need to change immediately after an election try to overthrow the winners. They cannot wait until 5 years or 4 years before the next general election is held . This is what we have seen today in many Muslim countries and I think it is going to take time for them to understand

the working of democracy, time for them to learn to respect the vote and set up government which uses power in order for betterment of country and people. I thank you.

Future of Democracy in Asia

blogtunm.blogspot.com Tun M 

Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to the audience here. Malaysia has gone through a very furious transition. I was the leader for 22 years of the government party which ruled Malaysia for 61 years.

Now I am now leading the opposition and the opposition has now become the government. So I am not changing my stand first I say that I still see have the same old ideas about the authoritarian rule which I might been accused of being dictator during my time. But I beg to differ I was not a dictator but that doesn’t make anybody change their minds. Whenever they mention my name they always described me as a dictator and today a dictator is going to talk about democracy. But I don’t know whether I’m qualified or not. But I will try.

In the first place of course democracy is not an Asian invention it came from the west. Again I suppose from Greece but now the whole world has been told that you have to become democratic else has seen rapid changes taking place in many places.

And as a result of trying to be democratic they have met worst fate then when they were under authoritarian rule. So does that mean that authoritarian rule is best. Well of course we deny that because we think that the only system of government that should be practised by all countries must be the democratic system. But democracy is not something easy to handle. The basic rules of course is that the majority of the people have a right to choose a government to govern their country. But even in a democracy there

can be autocrat to rule rather tightly as I have been accused of. But if you want to make government work you have to have certain disciplines.

Asian minds are not accustomed to the idea that country can be ruled by the people. We have always had monarchs with absolute power and we have survived in a way of course. There were a lot of criticism again the monarchies rule they tend to be rather cruel to their own people in order to sustain themselves.

But now Asian are told that they should have democracy. And democracy mean not having any monarch or any dictator. It is people who will choose their leaders would lead the country. The assumption of course is that the majority of the people must know what is good for themselves.

Unfortunately they are distracted by other things like money for example. If they’re given money some of them would vote for whoever gives money whether he is a democrat or he is an authoritarian ruler. So sometimes or rather quite often it happens that democratically elected ruler can behave like a dictator and that’s what happened to Malaysia since 2013 when the Prime Minister who has been ousted took over. He introduced into democracy a new slogan and that slogan is called Cash is King.

In other words he’s saying that it is legitimate and proper to bribe in order to do to get anything done. But prime ministers are not paid very well. I think if you are in the public sector doing business you’re better paid. But for Prime Minister who is running whole country the pay is very very low. So if you want to bribe and you don’t have money he had to think of some ways to get money. And the previous Prime Minister decided that he would steal the money because he hasn’t got enough money to give bribes which will change the minds of people.

That show that even if we elect a ruler doesn’t mean that he will behave himself. There are mechanism for removing ruler who is not fair who is cruel and all that but sometimes the whole system can be can be converted to the dictators ideas and they will carry out his instruction because they know that they will be very well paid for that. So even in a democracy there can be dictators. And we find that when working with the democratic government too many people have got ideas which they think should be carried out out by the government and because they had different ideas from the government we have opposition parties.

Opposition parties normally can only criticise the government but seldom they can overthrow the government or bring government down. Unless of course it is a two party system.But two party is not very democratic. It means some people will have to forget their own ideas their own ideals in order to be a part of the other party the opposition. Only if there is a united opposition can democracy, can there be election to form the government.But it is not easy to have just two parties because many people would believe that they they are the right people to form the government.

And so when you see the regime change taking place in the Arab countries they, every one of those people who campaign, who demonstrated in order to overthrow the authoritarian government every one of them felt that they were the ones who should be running the government. But they are not united they come from various parties and the only reason why they think the government should be brought down is because they think they would be able to rule after the government is overthrown. But there are so many people who wants to be the government and of course immediately after the overthrow of authoritarian ruler there be will quarrel among the people who overthrew him.

Because you belong to different parties with different ideas. The end result may be Civil War at least tension and instability in the country. And they see in some countries they lost the ability to run the country. They become Failed Nations because they kept on quarrelling quarrelling with each other and not getting any benefit at all from democracy.

So we cant claim democracy as if one size shoes which fix all because each country each people have their own cultures and some of their cultures are so strong that it is difficult for them to change from having a dictator of an absolute monarch and replacing him with someone you elect merely by making a tick on the piece of paper. This is not common with them and therefore this idea can not be easily practise in many many countries in Asia and the Middle East. So we need to accept that democracy is not a perfect system it has his flaws but to make it work the mindset and the value system of the people must be capable of accepting rule by a person who is elected every 5 years. Sometimes of course it doesn’t last 5 years or something may go on to rule the country for 5 terms.

But all these are still seen quite democratic but some will fail because of the quarrells that take place all the time with the people snapping at the government and the government spending time and money in order to govern the country. He will not be able to govern in the country because he has to face a lot of disruptions coming from the very people who elected him.

So in Asia today we find not too many democracies. India is supposed to be the biggest democracy and but the others are quite totalitarian such as kingdom and countries of central Asia. In the east of course although leaders may be elected the ability to rule is not so good because of the constant sniping at the ruler whoever he may be. So the future of democracy in in Asia I think well will be something that will will not be achieve overnight as happens with some of the Middle Eastern countries. They change over night and today we see more problems than it was before they had democracy. You see civil war you see a lot of fighting and you’ll see a lot of disruption of the environment and they are unable to rule well or to get others to come and invest in their countries.

So I hope that people will understand that it takes time for people to become democratic. The value system must be suitable for democracy before democracy it self can be used as a method of running a country.

Thank you very much.