Idris Jala / Pemandu better pray hard to improve BN corruption index lah!
_________________
Pemandu blames new measurement method for poorer graft score
By Yow Hong Chieh, The Malaysia Insider, December 01, 2011
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 1 — Malaysia’s corruption score would have improved to 4.5 if Transparency International (TI) had not included a new measure which dragged down overall performance, the government’s efficiency unit said today.
“TI’s Bribe Payer Index (BPI) was conducted only in 28 countries. This is the 1st time this has been introduced into the CPI,” the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) said on its @gtp_roadmap Twitter account for its Government Transformation Programme (GTP) section that covers anti-graft programmes.
“BPI is a new survey conducted to measure the propensity of Msians paying bribe to parties outside of Msia. If BPI was not taken into account, Msia’s score would jump to 4.5 and the country ranking would remain at 56.”
Malaysia’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) score has worsened for the third consecutive year to 4.3 from 4.4 in 2010, according to a report released by TI’s Malaysian chapter today.
Malaysia’s country ranking also fell to 60 out of 183 countries — between Saudi Arabia and Cuba — from 56 out of 178 last year.
It remained the third-least corrupt nation in Asean after Singapore (9.2) and Brunei (5.2), with Thailand (3.4) and Indonesia (3.0) following in fourth and fifth places respectively.
Pemandu also said Malaysia had increased scores in key surveys like the PERC Asian Intelligence Survey, WEF Executive Opinion Survey and Bertelsmann Transformation Index, which are aggregated into the CPI score.
It promised Putrajaya would work harder to stamp out large-scale corruption after having achieved “encouraging” results in TI’s Corruption Barometer (CB), which measures public perception of graft.
“On a day to day basis, while people continue to deal w petty corruption, many of these issues are being tackled,” it quoted chief executive Datuk Seri Idris Jala as saying.
“Now, more than ever, the focus has to shift to dealing with grand corruption.”
According to the CB, 49 per cent of Malaysians thought the government’s efforts to fight corruption were effective or very effective, up a touch from 48 per cent last year.
However, the number of respondents who felt Putrajaya’s long-running battle against graft was ineffective or very ineffective rose five points to 25 per cent.
Members of the public saw the police and political parties as the most corrupt institutions, with the police named as the most likely recipient of bribes in the past 12 months.
TI’s CPI is an aggregate measure of the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist in the public sector which draws on 17 surveys and country assessments from 13 different independent institutions.
Two-thirds of the 183 countries surveyed this year achieved a score of less than 5.0.
New Zealand (9.5), Denmark (9.4), Finland (9.4), Sweden (9.3) and Singapore (9.2) were ranked the least corrupt nations in the world, while Somalia (1.0), North Korea (1.0), Myanmar (1.5) and Afghanistan (1.5) were the most corrupt.
_____________________
Pemandu claims improvement in overall graft scores
By Yow Hong Chieh, The Malaysia Insider, November 01, 2010
Idris Jala’s team says that when several credible reports are averaged, Malaysia is doing better in the fight against graft.
KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 1 — Pemandu today defended its CEO Datuk Seri Idris Jala’s view that Malaysia was “on the right track” in its corruption fight, ignoring the Transparency International (TI) report which stated the opposite.
The Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) pointed to other corruption perception surveys by “reputable international organisations” which indicated Malaysia improving in its graft fight. Malaysia dropped slightly from 4.5 to 4.4 in TI’s annual Corruption Perception Index (CPI).
In a statement today, Pemandu said that in the past year, Malaysia had bettered its graft score from 5.2 to 6.3 in the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook, from 3.6 to 4.6 in the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy’s (PERC) Asian Intelligence Newsletter and from 4.5 to 4.6 in the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Competitiveness Report.
“If we take the average score of the four surveys, it is clear that Malaysia’s index has improved from 4.45 in 2009 to 4.975 in 2010,” the statement continued.
Last Thursday, Idris insisted that the government was still on track in tackling corruption despite Malaysia continuing to score poorly on the CPI.
He downplayed the graft watchdog’s findings, claiming that Malaysia’s CPI score “essentially” remained the same this year and did not reflect the government’s progress in combating corruption.
“Although this score is not quite a case for celebration, it need not be seen as a negative development,” Idris had said in a statement.
The CPI released last Tuesday showed that Malaysia’s score dipped further this year, from 4.5 to 4.4 out of 10 — with 10 being the least corrupt — after the country experienced its worse ranking ever last year.
The annual TI CPI measures how corrupt a country’s public sector is based on data sourced from 13 different polls and surveys from 10 independent institutions over a period of two years.
The three least corrupt countries in the world were, in order, Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore.
Malaysia’s previous worst scores below 5 were 4.8 in 2000, 4.9 in 2002 and 4.5 last year.
The country’s ranking puts it on par with Namibia and Turkey.
In releasing its report, TI had said the Najib Administration still lacked the political will to weed out corruption and stressed that steps must be taken to tackle problems with implementation.
Despite government efforts to fight corruption, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Agency’s (MACC) inability to prosecute “big fish,” lack of progress in the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) fiasco, inaction by the Attorney-General’s Chambers in the “Lingam tapes” case, and contracts without open tender have continued to haunt public perception.
“We acknowledge that if one were to look only at Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, there is a slight reduction. We need to do a lot more work. However, if one were to look at the outcome of the other 3 surveys on corruption in Malaysia by reputable organisations, then the score clearly shows that there are improvements.
“Hence, Dato Sri Idris Jala said that on corruption efforts, we are the right track. Furthermore, it should be clarified that Transparency International CPI for 2010 takes into account 9 surveys which were conducted between January to December 2009 and January to September 2010. Our NKRA work on corruption only began in January 2010 after the GTP Roadmap launch on 28 January 2010 and therefore, the CPI surveys conducted in 2009 do not reflect the NKRA work which only began in 2010,” said Pemandu in a statement today.