I refer to the Malaysiakini report ACA officer rapped for sloppy work .

Having read Chuah Lay Choo’s testimony before the royal commission of inquiry into the Lingam Tape scandal, it got me seriously thinking about the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) and whether this is truly a serious agency to stem out corruption.

The agency is formed under the Anti-Corruption Act 1997. Under Section 3 (2) of the act, the director is appointed by the King ‘at the advice of the prime minister’. This has now come to the attention of the Malaysian public and now we have multifarious interpretations from all the learned people in the Lingam tape affair right from the previous prime minister to the learned past chief justices and the lawyers appearing at the commission’s hearings.

We now see the wisdom of having an independent panel to recommend the appointment of judges as suggested by the Bar Council and the several NGOs.

Learning from the problems of the Judiciary, we now look at the ACA’s organisational set up. The first glaring fact is the ACA is under the Prime Minister’s Department. The second glaring fact ars that matters of finance and human resources are also handled by the Prime Minister’s Department.

Other than that, it is said that it is an independent body. Let’s get serious - how independent can this body really be?

Chuah Lay Choo headed the Lingam tape affair investigations. She is a senior officer and I am quite sure she is by any measure not a stupid person. However, her very obvious reluctance to reveal who told her that Loh Mui Fah is the Chinese man in the video clips shows clearly that she is under instruction not to cooperate with the commission.

The commission chairperson had to force it out of her in that it was VK Lingam. However, her answer to the second question as to whether Lingam admitted that it was him in the tape, she echoed the famous Lingam line: ‘It looks like him, sounds like him but he is not saying it is not him’.

The investigation on Lingam stops there. It is obvious she is not helping the commission’s purpose.

With the structure of the ACA being as it is, can it really function as was intended?