It is a truth foretold that while the rest of the world is corrupt and corruptible, Malaysia has such high standards of probity that corruption could not rear its ugly head. So insists every cabinet minister from the prime minister (it does not matter who) down. They repeat it as a mantra, whenever the occasion asserts, of the severe penalties for corruption and corrupt practices, and why corruption destroys the nation's soul.

That few are caught and charged proves, in their self-smirking view, how effective these measures are. How many politicians and senior civil servants have been charged, let alone convicted, for corruption and practices? Almost none. That is proof there is no corruption in this country at the level that has destroyed others.

Every elected official and civil servant must submit an annual return of his assets. The prime minister gets the returns of politicians, and he has no doubt none is as corrupt as claimed. These returns are never made public. But when allegations surface, usually with a grain and nore of truth, the Anti-Corruption Agency is there to affirm whatever the prime minister insists is the truth. Meanwhile, over the years, the government has defanged every legislation which could be invoked to bring the corrupt to justice.

The former MCA president's 27-year-old son could get bank loans worth RM1.2 billion and promptly squander it. The ACA decided it cannot be corruption: what has the son's ability to get a loan of that size when his father could not, because his office forbade it, raise a finger to help him.

In another case, after two sessions with the ACA, a cabinet minister's assets was RM304 million more than what he had admitted - that's more money than what he could possibly have earned in a lifetime of selfless public service. The ACA thinks it is jealousy that makes people cast wild aspersions against honest politicians. It writes its report to the prime minister, who in all but one case promptly filed it.

Fairy tales

Today, an ACA investigation is a much-welcomed sign of being cleared of all wrongdoing. We are conditioned to believe in fairy tales to believe protestations of cabinet innocence on these matters.

The biggest fish caught is one it wished it had not: to prove former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, was corrupt, the system was corrupted to convict. The Inspector-General of Police, no less, helped the process along by assaulting the blindfolded and manacled man. But the corruption he was convicted had nothing to do with exchanging money or favours to corrupt the system; it was misuse of power of a type cabinet ministers and others avail every day of the year.

That is all right so long as the prime minister does not want you destroyed. What it did was to turn the political system upside down, destroy the Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamed's credibility, and Umno as a major political party. It upset the system that corruption does not have the meaning in Malaysian political and official life as it once had.

Mahathir hands over power to his chosen deputy, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, in three months. Both have modified their views of an incorruptible Malaysian civil service to now say a few rotten apples have raised corruption to a fine art.

They now demand that should cease and desist, that damnation is their fate if they persist, that the law will take its course.

So, civil servants beware. But they would not accept that corruption exists not only in the civil service but among the politicians, the cabinet, the state executive councils, the judiciary, the armed forces, the police, in short, in every nook and corner of officialdom in Malaysia.

Corruption is as Malaysian as nasi lemak: one as official food, the other as the food of the masses.

Elaborate network

What made it worse is the dismantling of the checks and balances in the civil service and government without another to take its place. When the government ignored, as policy, civil service procedures to award contracts, usually worth billions of ringgit, to cronies, it set up an elaborate network of corruption. The probity once expects of civil servants disappeared. If the cabinet minister could take a bribe of millions why could not the civil servants of RM50,000, is how one retired civil servant said to me over lunch the other day.

This has got out of hand. The corruption is so endemic in the civil service that one dreads to have anything to do with it. You want to get a much needed letter from a government department? Be prepared for a long wait unless you pay some money to speed it along. You have to get a transfer done at the Land Office. There is an inbuilt system of an automatic bribe if you want it done immediately. You are caught speeding? The police man who stops you is prepared to accept half the RM150 that a speeding ticket will cost if you pay him in cash. It is so widespread that high ranking politicians, steeped in it, cannot understand why it is so prevalent.

Corruption has now got out of hand. Nothing works without a liberal dose of corrupt money. It does not matter if he is politician, cabinet minister, menteri besar, state executive councillor, policeman or civil servant.

One senior police officer is in serious trouble because he is reputed to take in a mere RM700,000 a month so his men would not be as harsh on those they crack down upon. Another was found with RM4 million he could not explain: the matter was hushed up, and he asked to leave quietly.

This can be multiplied hundreds of times every day of the year. There is no facet of official life in this country where corruption does not rear its ugly head several times a day. And blatant: one cabinet minister demanded RM40 million in bribes for a contract awarded to one businessman to be paid through a named nominee; he was told he could have it if he raised the contract amount by what he wanted. It was.

It is now a political issue as well. Umno and the National Front must attack corruption, at least in form, for its own political survival. Which is why there is this sudden concern for corruption.

This is not unusual. Corruption exists every where and at all times. What keeps it within limits is when the laws are harshly applied that it becomes an illegal and generally considered by the public at large as abhorrent to civil society. The wrongdoer is excoriated by society at large.

No opprobrium

When a corrupt official wears it as a badge of honour, the battle is lost. When a cabinet minister has a fleet of motor cars in his garage which he could possibly not have bought with his own money, when another sends by plane a 1967 sports coupe he liked to the manufacturers to refurbish new to its original specifications for a mere 150,000 Euros, could you blame a civil servant to be as blatantly corrupt? Especially when there is no opprobrium in being corrupt?

A DPP drives around in a brand new BMW for months before he was transferred. Talk to the court staff and they tell you how corrupt he was. The list goes on.

The difficulty for Pak Lah is that mere words are not enough. It is must be backed with action. Not by sending a low level clerk or policeman to jail, but a secretary-general or cabinet minister to jail. There is this sustained belief on the street that the whole government is corrupt. The words they spout against corruption mean nothing. There is no accounting. When corruption is highlighted in the Malaysian press, no action is taken against them.

When officials of a government corporation's subsidiary issued foreign bonds worth billions in a deliberate scam, a few officials were arrested, but that could not have happened without official approval. When a crony with a contract to build computer labs in schools failed, the government took no action than pointing fingers at various irrelevant players in the drama: the culprit sits in relative comfort in South Africa. He was also the brains behind the computerisation of hospitals, which in true Malaysian tradition, is unworkable. No doubt he thinks of another scam to fail yet again and make millions of ringgit at public expense. There is no sign of seriousness to correct corruption.

The cosmetic changes cannot change an ingrained lifestyle. And corruption, like nasi lemak, is here to stay.