Dr M: I Spoke Against Corruption!

Dr M: "I spoke out against corruption"
The Sun, Kuala Lumpur
31 May 2005

Excerpts of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad's press conference on Monday (30 May), which he called specifically to reply to criticism in a Sunday newspaper column which said he could have done more to fight corruption during his 22 years as prime minister.

Q: Who is the one trying to shut you up?

A: The report (in the Sunday Star) made it out, more or less, trying to tell me, what did I do? These things do not happen overnight, it takes years to build. What did I do? If you ask what I did, I did a lot of things.

I appealed to Umno, I even stopped elections in Umno to curb the habit. Malays have got more money now and they are using it wrongly. I know people who finance certain people.

I know during the recent election, a group of delegates were offered RM50,000 for a vote, openly. Everybody knew about it. The thing (is) it's getting worse and worse. During my time, I criticised, you people (reporters) know, how many times I had spoken out against corruption.

Q: Are you trying to say while you appealed to Umno, in the government machinery you also did the same?

A: I appealed to everybody because I know it's difficult to prove and get evidence on corruption. Because the person involved will never tell. He will tell you, but if I tell him to appear in court ... no way. He said "my business will be destroyed, these people will take action against me". They are afraid. It is very difficult to prove corruption.

Q: Can you indicate who is trying to shut you up?

A: Well ... the way it is reported ... (asking) me "what did you do when you were the prime minister?" So, if I comment on anything, he can go back (and) say what did you do when you were the prime minister. If you don't want my comment, don't ask me any questions. I didn't ask that you should come and see me. They wanted to come and see me. So, if you want to come and see me and ask for my opinion, I give my opinion lah ...

I have always maintained that you can't fight against corruption if it has become part of the culture. I am talking about that. I am not talking (about) government action. Government has limited capacity. Kalau boleh ... government action ... you know in China they shoot people to death if you are corrupt and still there is corruption. Because it is a culture, not the punishment. Same with drugs, we pass the death sentence but they still smuggle drugs.

Q: Umno vice-president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin proposes allowing grassroots members to elect Umno Supreme Council members. Don't you think this would involve more money politics? I know money politics also involves people at the branch level and many are
prepared to pay to win to become branch leaders. Sometimes, it does not involve money and other times they get things like computers, jerseys and calculators and they said they are just helping.

A: My suggestion is if you want to give to the members, give it to Umno headquarters and let them distribute to whoever deserves it but this did not happen. They want to be seen giving things to people to get publicity. From there everybody wants to become elected as delegates to the general assembly.

They like to become wakil because they have the chance of making money. Before it was not like this ... this is a new erosion, I remember before, you don't even have to campaign. I didn't go around campaigning, except during Anwar's time, we used to bring people to my house to give a speech.

Q: Do you agree that the cost of doing business goes up if corruption is involved?

A: Of course ... corruption is bad and I tried to explain that. It will destroy the whole country. It will make everything expensive and retard development. Already (there's) no development. You can see countries which are corrupt can't develop at all.

Q: What do you think of the level of corruption in Umno now?

A: There is slow erosion and corruption is now worse than before. Umno members are now talking more about this than debating on important issues like the party president's speech.

Q: Were you satisfied with what you had to do to fight corruption?

A: Yes ... ACA will take action only if they really have a proven case and they will not take any case to court if they don't have any water-tight case. What I tried to do in Umno was to tell them don't get involved in buying votes and things like that.

To a certain extent l knew that somebody who was paying money lost in the election because I told them to reject anybody who paid money. Nowadays, they come out openly and say, 'you pay me money l will vote for you'. The attitude is different now.

Q: Was money politics worse before?

A: Now it's worse. After the Umno general assembly, that is what they talked about. They never talked about the party president's speech. These people gave this much, that person gave that much. When complaints were made against the accusers, they retaliated, saying they were not involved.

Q: How about the awarding of closed tenders during your administration?

A: It was agreed that if it was an open tender, bumiputra contractors will not get any. But we didn't give to the same person all the time. We gave to people who were capable as, sometimes, the capital needed was very high. If you need one billion (ringgit) as capital, how many bumiputra contractors have one billion (ringgit) capital? It's not given to one person ... it's given to a whole lot and you can go and check on it.

The government used to give to Class-F bumiputra contractors computer lab projects and when we gave to everybody without experience, everything collapsed ... you had to choose.
Now it's a choice between bumiputras and bumiputras with the open tender, bumiputras will compete with bumiputras. It's good ... now we don't have to go through negotiated tender.



Dr M: My legacy will speak for me
The Star, Kuala Lumpur
Tuesday May 31, 2005

KUALA LUMPUR: The most important thing in the fight against corruption is to ensure that a culture of viewing the practice as normal and acceptable does not develop, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said.

"For me, this is a question of inculcating noble values, not about catching people," the former prime minister said.

He said this at a press conference at his residence here in response to a column in the Sunday Star by The Star's deputy group chief editor II Datuk Wong Chun Wai.

In the article entitled Pile on pressure against the corrupt, Wong said: "It is good that Dr Mahathir had come out strongly against corruption but personally I wished that he could have done more during his 20 over years in office."

Wong added that despite his strong leadership, authority and grip on Umno, Dr Mahathir had let slip the opportunity to introduce reforms, including effective enforcement of laws against corruption.

While remaining grateful to Dr Mahathir for the economic boom, Wong said one source of unhappiness was the introduction of the negotiated tender that lacked accountability and openness, which was like not having a tender at all.

Expressing his disappointment over Wong's column, Dr Mahathir said it seemed to suggest that "I did not do anything about corruption when I was Prime Minister."

"You can look at my record. There were wakil rakyat and exco members who were caught and punished.

"I did a lot, but I didn't want to talk about it.

"I took all kinds of action, but there is no need for me to tell you what they were," he said.

He added that he had even cried, prayed and even stopped elections when dealing with the issue.

However, he said his stress was on building a culture where corruption was not tolerated at all.

"People must reject corruption, because it is not correct. You do not steal because it is wrong, not because there is a policeman trailing you, waiting to catch you," he said.

Dr Mahathir said his fight against corruption was also hampered by the difficulty in proving that such acts had taken place, both in Umno and in the Government.

"Unless somebody comes up to give evidence, corruption cannot be proven. It is very difficult because everybody will deny that they had done it," he said.

Dr Mahathir added that corruption seemed to have become more rampant.

"After the last Umno assembly, all that people talked about was money politics. There was no discussion on points raised in the president's speech or other issues," he said.

Dr Mahathir suggested that Wong's article could be one way of stopping him from talking on corruption following his speech on the subject at the Perdana Leadership Foundation discourse on Social Reengineering last month.

During the function, when replying to a question from the floor, Dr Mahathir said people were no longer hiding the fact that they were corrupt.

Voicing his fear that corruption might become institutionalised, he called on the Government and political parties to be more serious in tackling the problem.

On negotiated tenders, Dr Mahathir said that under the open tender system, bumiputra contractors would never have been able to get jobs.

"However, we didn't give all contracts to the same person. We gave to people who were capable and who had delivered," he said.

Nevertheless, he said, it was good that there would now be open tenders.