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Malaysia’s revolving door of corruption, persecution hurts support for Anwar’s crackdown
- A Malaysian public that’s accustomed to politics shaping prosecutions largely sees PM Anwar Ibrahim following in the footsteps of his predecessors
- Until he can make clear exactly what sort of reforms his government is pursuing, observers say Malaysians’ lack of trust in the system will persist
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In Malaysia, a corruption crackdown barrelling towards the family and allies of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has failed to ignite much enthusiasm, observers say, as the public largely sees through the headlines and suspects politics rather than transparency is at play.
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The country’s corruption problem was once again thrust under the spotlight on April 1 when the king, Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar, described corruption as the greatest scourge of a nation that ranks 57th out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index.
“My honeymoon is over, now go catch the bees,” the king said after a meeting with Azam Baki, the chief commissioner of Malaysia’s anti-corruption agency, presenting him with a container of honey to mark the end of the “honeymoon” period.
The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) certainly has been busy in recent months, even investigating tycoons whose businesses and profiles soared during Mahathir’s first 22-year stint as prime minister.
Last week, prosecutors charged “Casio King” Robert Tan Hua Choon for allegedly “cheating” his way into a government contract worth nearly 4 billion ringgit (US$842 million) for the supply, repair, maintenance and management contract of vehicles for federal use.
Tan, seen as close to Mahathir associate and businessman Daim Zainuddin, had previously secured a similar contract worth billions of ringgit in the 1990s while Mahathir was in charge.
Daim and his wife Nai’mah Abdul Khalid, have also been charged with failing to declare their assets. Meanwhile, Mahathir’s two eldest sons have been asked to declare assets they accumulated since 1981, the year their father first took power, as the corruption probe zeroes-in on those closest to the 98-year-old ex-leader.
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