LAW enforcement officers from various agencies seem to be regularly arrested for corruption.
The tendency of some members of these agencies for jobbery consistently hogs the headlines, their officers indicted on charges for enabling significant criminal offences from procedural scrutiny.
This spells turning a blind eye or protecting criminals from planned raids and active investigations, making the latter "untouchable". They include peddling licences and tests, or conspiring with transport companies to overlook their drivers' major traffic offences. It also involves selling identification documents, including passports and fee scams, issuing fraudulent visas, data tampering, collusion with human traffickers and, in recent days, scheming a smuggling ring at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
These corrupt officers remain undeterred by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission's (MACC) sensational arrests, indictments and convictions.
Government corruption, it seems, may not be innate, but it's easily manufactured, flourishing under certain circumstances.
First, they may be financially hard-pressed to search for alternative income. Second, the opportunity to wield authority to facilitate and execute bribes has presented itself. Third, inadequate internal controls enables collusion with bribe-givers, sometimes goaded by colleagues and superiors. Then, in the right environment and place, corrupters abuse their position or organisational function to exploit opportunities.
Despite strict supervision, transfers, demotions, sackings, indictments and convictions, such jobbery, like a virus, finds ways to reorganise and regroup, similar to the vicious Hydra in Greek mythology — cut off one head, two more pop out — and the blood is very toxic.
The policies of upholding public sector integrity, transparency and accountability while curbing malpractices hasn't produced the desired results, at least to the bribe-takers. While it is hoped that the new civil service pay hike can temper this alarming phenomenon, instilling more powerful ethical and perhaps spiritual values remain cogent while procedures and charters need re-evaluation.
Nevertheless, the correlation between family influence, public perception, peer pressure and self-indulgence and graft has revealed fault lines needing urgent corrective measures.
These correlations, however, pale in comparison with how certain top leaders — some indicted, some imprisoned and some perhaps still in power — rake in millions, if not billions, through conflicts of interest, kickbacks, "free" contracts and outright thievery.
The government rank-and-file observing this absurdity may assume that if these leaders can indulge in top-level corruption with impunity, why can't they too do likewise.
If such devious corruption is to be eradicated, it begins and ends by taking down every crooked person from the top down. This has been the MACC's core mission, unshackled ever since Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim took office in 2022 to execute the nucleus of his reforms.