KUALA LUMPUR, July 10- Malaysians have registered their strong willingness to support the fight against corruption, according to Transparency International’s 2013 Global Corruption Barometer (GCB) results released yesterday.
Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Paul Low Seng Kuan said an overwhelming majority believed that ordinary people could make a difference, while almost 80 per cent would report an incident of corruption.
“In addition, the percentage of those surveyed who said they had paid a bribe in the past 12 months remained low at 3 per cent (2011 figure was 1.2 per cent) compared to the global average of 27 per cent,” he said in a statement, here, today.
The 2013 GCB results were based on a public survey covering 114,000 people in 107 countries worldwide. In Malaysia, the results were based on a survey conducted between September 2012 and March this year, involving 1,000 respondents.
Low said the police and political institutions continued to be perceived as the most corrupt institutions in Malaysia, which was also consistent with the worldwide results where 36 countries viewed the police as the most corrupt, the judiciary as most corrupt in 20 countries and the political institutions in 51 countries.
“Of those who had paid a bribe, the police and judiciary were allegedly the main recipients. It is worth noting that in the previous survey conducted in 2011, the police also made up the biggest number of recipients while the judiciary scored 0 per cent,” he said.
Low said the percentage of Malaysians having a positive perception of the government’s actions in fighting corruption had fallen to 31 per cent from 49 per cent in 2011.
“Correspondingly, those holding the middle ground, which is neither effective nor ineffective, has now grown to 44 per cent compared to 27 per cent in 2011.”
He said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak had made combating bribery a cornerstone of his administration, and had already introduced the far-reaching anti-corruption National Key Result Area (NKRA) as part of his ongoing Government Transformation Programme (GTP).
“Corruption is not just peculiar to Malaysia. The GCB results have made it clear that it is now a global menace that must be recognised and addressed before it is too late.
“We will work to put in place comprehensive good governance and anti-corruption measures – ministry by ministry – with the personal collaboration of each minister,” he said.
As a minister in the Prime Minister’s Department overseeing integrity, good governance and human rights, Low said he would table the results of the survey to the cabinet.
– BERNAMA
