In the current anti-graft campaign that has brought charges against an ex-managing director of the national steel company and a cabinet minister, the media reported that there were another 18 high-profile people likely to face charges, and the burning question, according to a caption in The Straits Times Interactive , is: ' Who will be next? '

To this question, the reactions from different sides are interesting.

According to Brendan Pereira's piece (' Abdullah's strong signals on graft ') in The Straits Times , several cabinet ministers had sent word to Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to 'go slow' hours after the minister was arrested.

If true, many of us would also wish to know why "go slow" when there had been practically no motion at all in the previous administration as regards to high-profile cases. Let's look at their reasons.

According to the report, "It appears they were worried that the tough action by the administration was raising expectations to the point that only continuous prosecution of high-profile businessmen and politicians could satisfy the public".

Well, to an extent, this is true if the letter of malaysiakini reader (Fence Sitter's ' Pak Lah we want more blood ') were anything to go by. His appeal, "Dear premier, you have wetted our appetite, give us more blood" is understandable given the long pent up frustrations of Malaysians with corrupt officials and high-profile public figures accorded political protection.

The appetite of the DAP is, for example, definitely not whetted. DAP's Lim Kit Siang called on the ministers who advised the premier to go slow to identify themselves in the interest of transparency.

He said that the minister was a political lightweight, outranked by the tycoon who was not a "big fish" but "only of middling size".

Well the DAP should equally, in the interest of transparency, not speak elliptically and come out open with who, after a cabinet minister, is in its view the bigger fish or mother of all big fish that it hints about.

According to Pereira, the ministers were "also concerned that the prosecutions could create the impression of a witch-hunt. Some of them may also have been unnerved by the prospect of Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) officials sniffing around, unencumbered".

Witch-hunt is a popular allegory connoting a cultural phenomenon of mass hysteria serving political interests to victimise certain group of people often innocent. In the witch-hunt of Salem in 1692, 19 men and women (including a mute man and two dogs) were hanged for witchcraft. It was time when Massachusetts theocracy was weakening, there was a vested interest and a political end to bolster it, and of course, there was this superstition about and fear of witches.

Is the present campaign against graft so fraught with finger pointing and innuendoes associated with the beginning of witch-hunt for one minister to threaten legal suit against opposition leaders for slander, and for an opposition leader to retort " go ahead ", and yet another minister, taking the cool opposite stance of remaining unperturbed and even resigned: "I can't run away, I am a minister, its talk of the town and its news.".

Where the analogy of a witch-hunt breaks down is that a witch-hunt has a strong element of official and organised persecution of groups of innocent people. We know the belief in witches is superstition but the belief in corruption and the fact that those protected are not made accountable is often real.

In respect of the present anti-graft campaign, are those implicated and named in reported high profile investigations but not yet prosecuted deemed innocent for the allegory of witch-hunt to apply?

The answer is yes only in the sense that a person is presumed innocent until arrested and proven guilty by court of law. Until then, the person is entitled to a reputation unsullied by unnecessary innuendoes and speculation as to whether he or she will fit the bill in answer to the original question posed by Pereira: "Who will be next?"

The problem here is that many of ordinary folks believe that non-prosecution is not necessarily indicative of innocence but protection, while conviction is not necessarily indicative of guilt but selective prosecution.

The issue then boils down to credibility. To restore trust in integrity of governance, Pak Lah has to proceed against graft by actions and not mere words, without fear or favour.

This is the hardest part. There are two major obstacles here.

First, it is an open secret that corruption in various shades and manifestations has long been rampant within our feudal political culture, and money politics involves the distribution of largesse involving public assets licences and public contracts in exchange for political support of party supporters and corporate cronies.

Because of this "exchange", spoils are distributed between politicians, political supporters and political parties. Indeed with their financial dealings being enmeshed in a seamless web, how does one bring down a politician for graft without he implicating other politicians and the party from which he hails?

To many, private gain is the very raison d'etre of a career in politics. If this campaign against graft proves serious and sustained, what is then the incentive of joining politics? Public duty or service? The official salaries of cabinet ministers are nothing to shout about by comparison of standards down South.

What other reward is there for public service? Even the glory and mystique of honorific titles now have been dymystified by the number of Tan Sris being investigated for graft or abuse of power, and Datos being associated with triads, and rumours of titles being bought for RM200,000 and above. Amongst family of nations, we probably have the highest number of titled personages controversial or fallen from grace!

Secondly, the human mind, inclined to fair play, abhors injustice that arises from either selective protection or selective prosecution.

To the minds of ordinary rakyat (people), big fish, middling sized or small fish should be prosecuted alike. They urge the campaign to proceed with greater vigour.

To high-profile public figures and politicians investigated, there is, to them, no justice at all when they are used to a political milieu that in exchange for unswerving support they will get protection. They got careless in what they reaped. Suddenly with a regime change, they are now caught with their flanks exposed. They were frankly not given prior warning that the present regime would proceed beyond the usual rhetoric against graft. They have no time to cover tracks.

To them, it is rudimentary justice that if the top gets serious to curbing graft, there should be ample prior warning with compensations for high office being put in place as a price for giving up graft before serious crackdown begins. (It might be a good idea to follow American system of lobbying and contributions where official graft is eliminated by simple expedience of defining legally influence peddling as permissible and not graft).

And even then, actual crackdown should be prospective against graft committed after warning has been given but not heeded. It should not be retrospective against past sins committed when perpetrators were lulled into belief that no one was then serious about a general crackdown except in isolated cases of those posing a political threat or liability.

According to Lim Kit Siang, the ACA had a very colourful expression which was used in today's frontpage headline of Nanyang Siang Pau lead story on the ACA campaign against "big fishes" - "There are so many rivers, the sea is so huge, how can there be no fish?"

The dilemma here is that if one resolves to catch all the fish from the rivers and seas, without fear or favour, the ecological system of government and administration is so pervasively affected that it will have to grind to a halt (that is, if the piranhas and sharks have not coalesced to earlier bite first in pre-emption of vested interest). In any other scenario, resentment and animosity will be engendered for perception of selective prosecution.

Some ministers may have, as what Pereira said, been unnerved by the prospect of ACA officials sniffing around, unencumbered. If corruption is not checked, there will be overzealous religious police and officials sniffing around, unencumbered because the strategic decision makers of the ruling coalition have already correctly surmised that its influence over the young voter is waning, and it is corruption more than anything else that is the strongest scoring point for the opposition fundamentalist political party to win their votes and wrest victory in the elections of the future.