This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on March 2, 2026 - March 8, 2026
The “corporate mafia” exposé involving the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) as alleged by Bloomberg could be Malaysia’s biggest governance scandal after 1MDB. It reminds us of the Lingam tape episode in 2007 when a prominent lawyer was revealed to be influencing judicial appointments.
Weaponising public institutions for private interests is the scariest form of corruption. Beyond the MACC and judiciary, such “institutional capture” may happen to other institutions governing law and order, from public prosecution to the police, immigration, customs and the tax bureau.
This is why the proposed bill on the separation of the Attorney-General’s (AG) chambers from the Public Prosecutor’s (PP) office, to be voted on in Parliament on March 3, must ensure that the new PP’s office is protected from a MACC-like trap.
How may public institutions be protected from decadence or predatory capture? The ancient solution is integrity — if the right person holds office, no wrongs can happen under his or her watch. In modern times, a solution used in democracies is to have elections for high offices — so, never mind if power corrupts, voters can vote the rascals out.
A third solution is professionalism because we cannot have elections for every institution or high office, not least because we do not want public decisions to sway to the tune of populism or drift with the political tide. In fact, contemporary democracies have seen the growth of independent unelected bodies, which political scientist Frank Vibert calls “the fourth branch” that checks and balances the elected branches.
How do we separate professionalism from integrity? Professionalism is beyond private virtue. It is public in nature, moulded by norms, peer review and pressure, competition amongst practitioners and public scrutiny. Professionalism may not be entirely self-regulated but often benefits from legislative scrutiny, which draws public attention and makes unelected officials answerable for their decisions.
Why should we reject Executive pressure but welcome parliamentary scrutiny? Not because parliamentarians are better persons than ministers but because parliament and its committees are multipartisan in nature, hence checks and balances are built in through competition.
The root cause of the MACC scandal is fundamentally political, not a matter of its chief commissioner Tan Sri Azam Baki personally.
The MACC is capturable by rogue businesspersons for two political reasons: first, the commission is controlled by the prime minister through his power to hire and fire; second, it is shielded from parliamentary scrutiny.
The MACC is designed as a powerful agency for the PM to go after the corrupt. The danger is that power corrupts. The PM can use it to selectively prosecute his enemies and let off his allies. As long as the MACC boss can stay useful to the PM, the PM may keep him in that powerful position. Why should the MACC boss then not use his unchecked power to profit himself?
This is exactly the peril with the present office of the AG, who is controlled by the PM and is incentivised to do the PM’s bidding to prosecute or grant immunity (even after the establishment of a prima facie case). Article 145(3) of the Federal Constitution, which gives the AG the absolute discretion to ensure his/her independence, turns out to be his licence to withdraw charges or execute a witch hunt.
This is why the separation of the AG and PP is of paramount importance, but it is not about just having a new office of PP. The new office must be appointed on merit without Executive influence and must be answerable to Parliament or one of its committees.
With a protected tenure of seven years (unlike the current AG who can be dismissed anytime by the PM), being answerable to Parliament does not mean that the new PP would be subject to political pressure, but that he or she is given the opportunity to explain and justify decisions taken and so build public confidence.
Unfortunately, the proposed separation has no mechanism of parliamentary scrutiny for the new PP who would enjoy absolute discretion under Article 145B(1), just as for the current AG under Article 145(3).
The Executive influence remains through the membership of the PM-appointed AG in the Judicial and Legal Service Commission (JLSC) that recommends the PP candidate.
The most problematic part is the appointment process under the proposed Article 145A(1). “The Yang di-Pertuan Agong shall in his discretion, on the recommendation of the JLSC and after consultation with the Conference of Rulers, appoint a person qualified under Clause (2) to be the Public Prosecutor for the Federation”.
The wording is so vague that it may be interpreted that the King can ultimately make an independent decision. Some royalists have argued that the King does not even have to convene the Pardons Board to grant a pardon, even when the wording in Article 42 clearly states the opposite.
Making the King and the Conference of Rulers the decision maker in the PP appointment exposes the royal institution to the risk of political attacks that currently the PM faces for any purported misconduct of the AG.
The business community should scrutinise the constitutional amendments carefully and act strategically to protect their interests, and by extension, Malaysia’s attractiveness to investors. Corporate capture facilitated by an unaccountable office of PP might embolden it to go for conglomerates, not just alleged pressure on executives into selling shares, effectively enabling takeovers of companies.
Wong Chin Huat is a political science professor at Sunway University and a member of NGO Project Stability and Accountability for Malaysia (Projek SAMA).
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