Out of the blue, Deputy inspector-general of police Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay has come out to criticise the attempts by certain quarters to turn corruption into a racial issue.
According to Ayob, some people had questioned why the authorities were not arresting bribe-givers, who are allegedly predominantly non-Muslims.
Even this (issue of corruption) has been turned into a racial issue, he said in a video posted on his Facebook page.
Last year, PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang had also attributed the root of corruption to non-Muslims, which led to multiple police reports and an investigation.
So is it true? Does corruption have a racial element to it?
Well, to put things in perspective, the first thing we have to note about corruption is that corruption is generally a problem that affects post-colonial nations.
If you look at the globe today and see which country is deeply mired in corruption, almost all of them come from a colonial background.
These countries by the way, did not have a corruption issue prior to colonisation. In Malaysia for example, people were not complaining about corruption during the Sri Vijaya or the Sultanate of Malacca era. We only started to see the cancer of corruption affecting our lives negatively from the time that the British left our shores.
From this fact, and the fact that colonising countries like the UK or France are not deeply affected by corruption, we can deduce that the root causes of corruption in post colonial nations is actually exposure to colonisation, not race.
Colonising countries did not treat the people they colonised in the same way that they treated their own citizens. The social and economic arrangement that colonising forces made with the societies they colonised was basically prejudicial, oppressive and exploitative. Corruption was likely a coping mechanism that the colonised people developed in order to mitigate the effect of prejudice, oppression and exploitation that they were subjected to. In other words, corruption was probably legitimised in the minds of the colonised people, because it was likely a necessary sin that they had to perform, in order to survive in the exploitative, prejudiced and oppressive system that their colonial masters imposed on them.
The reason that corruption continued to survive in the post colonial era, is because though the colonisers had physically left, the system, structures and practises they left behind, continued to enable the conditions for corruption to thrive.
The fact that centuries of colonisation, had caused colonised nations like Malaysia to internalise and normalise the practise of corruption, added with the fact that the colonial forces like the British left most of the systems and structures that enabled corruption to thrive even in their absence, is likely what is making colonisation so difficult to eradicate in the post-colonial era.
The population of countries like Singapore have only managed to eradicate corruption by completely transforming themselves into becoming a mirror image of their colonising masters, but the population of countries like Malaysia, who were still deeply attached to their pre-colonial identities, continued to infected by corruption, because our retainment of our pre-colonial local identity, prevented us from severing the relationship between colonial masters and colonised servants, which serves as the ground from which corruption rises.
Let us also not forget, corruption is a sin that is committed by an individual citizen towards their nation, but for that sin to be committed, there must first be a direct relationship between the individual citizen and the nation.
In Western countries that practise individualism, there is a direct link between an individual citizen and their nation, but in countries like Malaysia, there has never been a direct individual link between an individual citizen and their nation.
An individual citizen in an Asian country like Malaysia is traditionally only directly linked to their family. It is their family that is linked to a larger grouping a clan or a tribe, and it is their clan or a tribe that is linked towards their race, which is in turn somewhat linked to the concept of a nation.
Because an individual citizen in Malaysia is traditionally only directly linked to their family, their loyalty is traditionally given only to their family. What this means is that if an individual citizen in Malaysia has to decide on whether they should act in favour of their family or their nation, our values will tend to persuade them to act in the favour of their family rather than their nation. When your values incline you to act in favour of your family rather than your nation, but the operational system of your country is built upon the idea that you must act in favour of your nation rather than your family, your country will almost inevitably be mired in corruption, for corruption will be required to balance out the discrepancy in such a contradictory arrangement.
At some point, we have to start being aware of the fact that the Westminster style parliamentary democracy, that they British suddenly imposed on us before they left our shores, is a system that is alien to the worldview of Malaysians, because that system is built upon an idea that an individual citizen has a direct relationship with their nation.
This idea might be meaningful in a western country, but it is not meaningful here.
That the Westminster style democracy was never indigenous to our mind, is not only the reason why our parliament tends to be such a joke, but also the reason why the disease of corruption is endemic to our nation.
As long as we never confront our colonial past meaningfully, we will never exorcise the ghost of colonialism that still possesses our systems and structures.
For as long as we are possessed by the ghost of our colonial past, every race in the country will be forever trying to replace the British colonial masters, and exploit every other race, while every other race will be engaging in corruption, in order to mitigate the effects of prejudice, exploitation and oppression that they will be subjected to, under the colonials arrangement and mindset.
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