This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on January 28, 2016.

KUALA LUMPUR: The government is not serious about fighting corruption despite repeatedly promising to do so, said global anti-graft body Transparency International (TI).

TI-Malaysia president Datuk Akhbar Satar said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s administration had not walked the talk on fighting graft despite his earlier promises during his six years in office.

He said they included proposals to create laws to make corporations liable for corrupt employees, and to publicly declare the assets of politicians.

Najib’s administration has also repeatedly ignored demands by anti-graft groups to make the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) more independent.

“He is not serious about combating corruption, he does not walk the talk. He has made several promises in his past speeches which he has not delivered,” said Akhbar at a press conference to announce the 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).

When he first took office in 2009, Najib pledged to strengthen efforts to weed out graft and improve good governance in the public sector.

Malaysia dropped four places in the 2015 CPI, mainly because of the view that there was interference in the MACC’s investigation into the 1Malaysia Development Bhd and RM2.6 billion political donation scandals.

“If there is no improvement in efforts to fight corruption and no satisfactory explanation, the analysis of the government for the 2016 CPI will be negative,” Akhbar said.

Bernama reported that the government is taking a serious view of the decline in Malaysia’s CPI score, according to Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Paul Low.

In a statement yesterday, he gave an assurance that progressive transformation to improve governance through structural changes and process reforms are ongoing.

However, he said, those measures would only become increasingly visible to the public in the near future as their implementation progresses were embedded into the delivery system.

“We recognise there is also a pressing need to regulate political funding within the country, for which the National Consultative Committee on Political Financing was specifically formed last year and is now undertaking a comprehensive review,” Low said.

He added that it was also essential to strengthen the enforcement institutions, in terms of capacity, powers and independence.

“Firm steps are also being take to address this area of concern,” he said. — The Malaysian Insider/ Bernama