Malaysia’s anti-corruption efforts received a blow last week when the 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) revealed that it had fallen six spots to No 57 in the global rankings. It was only last year that the country earned its best score in seven years, scoring 53 out of 100 points, and the then government was lauded for putting it on the right track in its battle against graft.
While much has been said about the worsening corruption situation, is anything actually being done?
After all, much has occurred in recent years to raise hopes that we were actively eradicating corruption. Some of the initiatives included the introduction of a Corruption-Free Pledge by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) which was subsequently taken by federal agencies such as the Royal Malaysian Police and the Fire and Rescue Department of Malaysia and a Corporate Integrity Pledge for the private sector.
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Transparency International has released its 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index which gauges levels of perceived public sector corruption in 180 countries and territories around the world. The index scores them on a scale of zero (highly corrupt) to 100 (clean) with the average score just 43 out of 100. As Statista s Niall McCarthy notes,
two thirds of countries scored less than 50. The research found that corruption was rampant across the world in 2020 and that it undermined the response to Covid-19, threatened the global recovery and contributed to democratic backsliding.
Transparency International states that 2020 has shown that Covid-19 is not just a health and economic crisis but also a corruption crisis. When it comes to healthcare in particular, corruption takes many forms such as bribery, embezzlement, overpricing and favoritism.
Greece rose one place in the 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index
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Greece rose by one place in the global Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) in 2020.
According to Transparency International, Greece is in 59th place among 180 countries with a score of 50 points, one place higher compared to 2019.
The index captures the level corruption in 180 countries, using a scale from 0 to 100.
0 corresponds to countries where there is a high level of corruption, and 100 to countries with a low level of corruption.
At the top of the index is Denmark, New Zealand, Finland, Singapore and Sweden, while the lowest countries are South Sudan, Somalia, Syria, and Venezuela.
The coincidence is instructive. Barely 24 hours after Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, last Wednesday, carpeted the Federal Government for allegedly giving up on the battle against corruption, the Transparency International (TI) released its annual global corruption index whose fatwa aligned with Soyinka’s verdict.
Soyinka, while appearing on Africa Independent Television (AIT’s) morning magazine programme, Kakaaki, noted that the system had been so corrupted that cases are allowed to extend and eventually go silent with the deployment of all kinds of technicalities.
“There are so many people who should be in prison if this government had not run out of steam, and so the system is being manipulated, the laureate said, adding, “there are cases where the prosecution had reached the level where evidence had been given on governors who had been stealing and depositing in bits and pieces so as not to flout a certain regulation.