Remember the furor when our academic ratings went down and the professors start screaming that the methodology is all wrong. When the ratings went up recently, they were all full of praise.
So AB you are not alone in this line of thinking. But the problem is by saying this you are revealing your lack of common sense and contradicting yourself.
Whether it is perception or based on actual cases, it is irrelevant. The same methodology is used for all countries worldwide, 180 of them. And this is a survey participated by experts and businesses. So both the scores, points and ranking, are relative measures. Unless you say Malaysia wants to be kataks and need to be assessed separately and only by Malaysians.
In business and investment, perception is all important. Do you know perception precedes and predicts the fate of the economy and stock markets for example. Perception is forward looking, predicting the future, actual cases are history of no predictive and actionable value. To the kataks time stands still, no future and no learning from history or others.
Having said that, you then compared Malaysia with other countries. How can you compare your 'flawed measurement' with other countries. Oh, it suits our narrative, right.
In fact, you should be happy the measurement is only perception, otherwise our ranking will be much lower. The whole world has witnessed our court cases on kleptocracy, and several other cases not investigated, prosecuted or withdrawn during trial.
In fact, you as the head of MACC were accused for some wrong doings. It was claimed you held shares beyond your financial capacity, you didn't deny it but said it is on behalf of your brother which is against SC's rules. But the SC said you lied, and the shares are yours, so they cannot take action against you. But then, you have violated the civil service rules on share holding limits.
You refused Parliament scrutiny saying the request is not proper, and refused to submit to any independent investigation. You even sued the whistleblower, rather than giving protection for exposing the truth in public documents.
You have given the perception no wrong doing was committed, but a reality measure would say otherwise. Only a katak will disagree.
Oh, one more thing Sri Lanka is ranked 102 in 2021. This is good news for Malaysia, because at 62 we are a long way from becoming a failed state like Sri Lanka. Here, Zafrul will say it is not perception, but reality. He already said our finances are better than Singapore and Japan.
But the read the excerpt from TI 2022 report.
"Corruption enables human rights abuses,
setting off a vicious and escalating spiral. As rights and freedoms are eroded, democracy declines and authoritarianism takes its place,
which in turn enables higher levels of corruption."
I hope the government does not brush this aside as perception. We are witnessing all these in Malaysia right now.
Only a katak di bawah tempurong will deny this and live happily ever after. Actually real kataks are smart, otherwise they would have been extinct long ago.
Story: TI-CPI ranking: I would resign if I were MACC chief, says Rafizi
Malaysiakini : The Center to Combat Corruption and Cronyism (C4) today questioned if
the MACC chief commissioner’s comment on Malaysia’s rank in
Transparency International's 2021 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) was
an attempt at minimising his own culpability.
In a statement
today, the anti-corruption group said Azam Baki’s criticism of
Transparency International for including human rights and business
ethics in its corruption index was wrong.
“Azam, as the chief
commissioner, should better explain the CPI’s value rather than
discredit the country-wide index, and worse, make statements that
decouple corruption and its links with democracy, human rights and
business interests.
“This is an extremely shallow take on
corruption that belies a lack of understanding on the subject, and a
shocking one coming from a top graft buster. “To state that corruption has little to do with human rights and
business ethics is simply wrong - the continued harassment of
journalists and crackdown on free speech in an attempt to silence those
who would reveal abuses of power perpetrated by the government
demonstrates a clear link between corruption and human rights, to
provide just one example,” it said.
