Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) advisor Ramon Navaratnam expressed disappointment that the disclosure of assets and liabilities by public office bearers was not one of the proposals by the government ‘corruption laboratory’.

“The public will only gain confidence and support the government if an example is being set by the very top,” said Ramon who chairs the MACC corruption prevention and consultative panel.

NONE Ramon ( right in photo ) was commenting on the ‘corruption laboratory’ proposals that were displayed at the Government Transformation Programme (GTP) exhibition in the Sunway Convention Centre, Petaling Jaya yesterday.

The ‘corruption laboratory’ was established by the Performance Delivery and Management Unit (Pemandu) to study and make recommendations as part of the federal government’s six National Key Result Areas (NKRA).

During the exhibition yesterday, members of the public were able to scrutinise proposals to improve the government delivery system by each of the six ‘laboratory’.

This was backed by a series of lectures and dialogue sessions.

NONE Commenting on this, Ramon said he was “very impressed” with overall exhibition and praised the ‘laboratory’ facilitators for explaining the proposals to the public.

“They were very helpful and they do know their stuff. For the first time that I can recall, people will able to express their grouses, anxieties, criticism and frustrations under one roof,” he said.

However, he said feedback that he received from many individuals showed that the public, while generally impressed with the proposals, were sceptical about the actual implementation.

1Malaysia NKRA also missing

Meanwhile, public policy research unit Research for Social Advancement (Refsa) director Richard Yeoh expressed disappointment that the exhibition plans to forge national unity were withdrawn at the last minute.

NONE “This should be the ground-breaking initiative as it reportedly included proposals such as meritocracy and inclusiveness in the civil service and the government-linked companies (GLCs) and doing away with discriminatory policies and practices.

“It appears that the cabinet could not reach agreement on these NKRAs,” said Yeoh, who is also a councillor for the Petaling Jaya City Council.

The national unity NKRA, better known as the 1Malaysia NKRA, was scrapped at the eleventh hour and replaced with a 1Malaysia booth to highlight Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s 100 days in power.

Officially, the 1Malaysia NKRA has been put off to give cabinet more time to provide input on the subject.

candlelight vigil 060105 richard yeoh Overall, Yeoh ( left ) said that the exhibition was a good effort because many thorny issues were now open for public discussion, but lamented that the exhibition did not include a concrete timeline for the implementation of the proposals.

“For example, we are told that we will have independent institutions, including a free media. Do you see this happening within your lifetime under this same regime?

“And when will we see an end to the virtual shutout of non-Malay employment in most sectors of the civil services and GLCs?” he asked.

He warned that although voters will react positively to the pledges to implement these proposals, failure to ‘walk the talk’ may cost the ruling BN its votes.