Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has encouraged the rakyat to report any instances of corruption involving the Pakatan Harapan government, vowing protection for whistleblowers.

“Currently the focus is on corruption involving the previous government, but if there is any evidence at all of the new government (committing corruption), we hope that people will indicate.

“And it will be good for whistleblowers to inform the authorities that there are corrupt personnel in the new government.

“...we invite the people to report cases of corruption. This will not result in action being taken against whistleblowers,” Mahathir said in his keynote speech at the Anti-Corruption Summit 2018 in Kuala Lumpur today.

Thus far, he said, there had not been any report of Harapan government officers being corrupt.

“At least not openly.

“If they hide their activities, we have agencies that will seek them out and ensure the corrupt will be punished,” Mahathir warned.

Government machinery corrupt

Mahathir stressed that the government was committed to combating corruption but admitted that a key obstacle was the government machinery itself, both its susceptibility to leakages and its crop of inexperienced new leaders.

“The government machinery has become corrupted and it will not likely follow through (with the) things to combat corruption.

“The cleaning up involves removal of very senior officials, but when the senior officials removed we have a need to replace them with other officers who may not be so senior.

“[...] After the clean up we have a weak machinery of government that has to combat against old practices and extensive corruption that was happening before,” he said.

However, Mahathir said that mechanisms have since been put in place to address these problems, including setting up the Governance, Integrity and Anti-Corruption Centre (GIACC).