According to the Law and institutional reform minister Azalina Othman Said, the five Bersatu MPs declaring their support for Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in exchange for development funds could not be considered a form of corruption.
Her reason is that it can only be considered as bribery if Anwar had made such an offer in a bid to become the prime minister.
But since Anwar is already enjoying the support of 149 MPs and did not require the additional support of the five MPs, according to Azalina, what the 5 Bersatu MPs did is not corruption.
I don’t know about you, but I find this definition to be bewildering and self-serving.
Going by Azalina’s definition, if the government leader and the opposition leader did the exact same thing – which is to promise MPs on the other side of the aisle to switch their support to their side in return of receiving favors - only the opposition leader will be guilty of corruption, because only the opposition leader wants to become the prime minister.
The leader of the government cannot be considered as guilty of corruption, although he does the exact same thing that the leader of the opposition does, simply because he is already the prime minister.
Going by Azalina’s definition, corruption is not defined by the act itself, but by the needs of those who participate in it. What this means is that if the 5 opposition MPs switched their support when Anwar only had the support of 107 MPs, then it is corruption, because Anwar needs their support to become PM. But since Anwar already has 149 MPs backing him and he doesn’t need the 5 MPs' support, then the 5 opposition MPs doing the exact same thing will no longer be considered as corruption.
Going by this definition, I reckon the rich and the powerful are never corrupt. It’s only the poor and the helpless that can be guilty of corruption. If you give a hundred ringgit to the office peon to subvert the office’s rules and the regulation, that is corruption, because the office peon, not having a few hundred ringgit in his wallet, obviously took the hundred ringgit you gave him out of need. If you give a million ringgit to the head of the office to subvert the rules and the regulations however, this is not corruption, because the head of the office already has a million ringgit in their bank account, so they don’t need your million ringgit. Your million ringgit to them can thus just be considered a donation or a gift.
What kind of definition is this?
This “corruption is defined by the needs of the receiver, not the act itself” theory that Azalina advocates for by the way, sounds eerily similar to the theory that Najib applied when he took a few hundred million from a Saudi prince when he was in office. Since he also claimed that he did not need the money or used the money on himself, he thought there was nothing wrong with him taking the money either.
Listening to Azalina and thinking of Najib made me wonder whether all politicians interpret terms like corruption or nepotism the same way.
Other than their self-serving definition of corruption, Anwar also gave a similar defense when he was accused of nepotism after hiring his daughter to a high government post not too long ago. According to Anwar, using his powers to appoint his daughter to a high position in the government, although she does not have the experience or the qualification to take on that job, and despite the fact that her appointment by-passes many more qualified and experienced candidate, is not nepotism, because his daughter is not taking any salary in her position.
Note the similarity in argument between Azalina, Najib and Anwar here. They all seem to believe that corruption is not something that is defined by the act, but by the self-assessment of those who participate in the act.
According to their point of view, it doesn’t matter if a Saudi Prince gives you hundreds of millions of ringgit for no reason, or that 5 opposition MPs bizarrely decide to support the government leader while remaining in the opposition fold or if you get selected to a highly prestigious job without having any necessary experience or qualification, the act itself doesn’t make it corrupt. It is only corrupt if you feel that you have gained something from it. If you don’t think that you have gained something from it, even if the act itself is indicating as clear as daylight that you did gain something from it, then it's not corrupt.
Your self-assessment of your gains vs your needs, in other words, is the final arbiter of whether you are corrupt or not.
Does everybody in the country think like this, or is this just a belief that is peculiar to the politicians?
Nehru Sathiamoorthy is the author of “While Waiting for the World to end”. He was a columnist at FMT and a frequent contributor to the South China Morning Post, Malaysia-Today, MalaysiaNow, MalaysiaKini and Focus Malaysia.
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