Malaysia urged to cut anti-graft agency (ACA) free
Corruption is a problem among parties making up Malaysia’s ruling coalition and needs an independent graft agency to root it out, the local head of Transparency International said on Monday.
Malaysia fell five notches last year to 44th place in Transparency International’s corruption perception index, which measures investor perceptions of governments in 163 countries, despite a three-year-old official campaign to tackle graft.
Ramon Navaratnam, head of Transparency International’s Malaysian chapter, said lack of action against corrupt politicians at the lower and middle levels of constituent parties of the multi-racial coalition was a part of the problem.
“The anti-corruption agency … should be made a truly independent body,” he told government officials and businessmen at a conference on Malaysia’s strategic outlook.
Navaratnam said the Anti-Corruption Agency should be taken out of the Prime Minister’s Department so that it would be better able to pursue corruption among the ruling parties, which were reluctant to carry out their own purges.
“If you have too many politicians at the lower level and at the middle level who are corrupt, then it’s very hard because then you almost destroy your party,” he told reporters later.
Source: Reuters India
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