MALAYSIA is agog with speculation. The government, which charged a sitting minister and a prominent businessman with corruption earlier this month, says it has a list of 18 other high-profile suspects due for similar treatment. Opposition politicians say that Rafidah Aziz, the minister of trade, should be among them. She denies any wrong-doing and says she will sue her critics for defamation—a threat they claim to welcome as a chance to prove their accusations in court. Is the pervasiveness of corruption, a problem common to most countries in South-East Asia, at last getting a proper airing
The region is certainly awash with celebrated corruption cases. Joseph Estrada, the deposed president of the Philippines, is currently on trial for "economic plunder". On February 12th, Indonesia’s supreme court finally ruled on a long-running embezzlement case against Akbar Tandjung, the speaker of parliament. In 2001, Thailand’s constitutional court heard charges that Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister, had concealed some assets during an earlier stint as minister.
But there is less to this flurry of righteousness than meeting the eye. For starters, prosecutors have not had much success against grand defendants like Messrs Thaksin and Tandjung. Both persuaded higher courts in overturn earlier rulings against them. Mr. Estrada, too, managed to evade impeachment while in office, and prosecutors are making heavy weather of their current case against
him. Even the convicted Mr. Rakkiat has not yet begun his prison term, since he jumped bail and went into hiding. What is more, all the countries in the region save Singapore and Malaysia still rank in the bottom half of the most recent "Corruption Perceptions Index" compiled by Transparency International, an anti-graft watchdog. Vietnam ranked 100 out of 133 countries, Indonesia 122 and Myanmar a dismal 129.
This poor showing stems in part from a lack of laws, personnel and money to combat corruption. But the resource in shortest supply is political will to tackle the problem. All countries in South -East Asia have at least one anti-corruption agency. But the ones that work best, argues Jon Quah, a professor at the National University of Singapore, are centralized, independent agencies such as Thailand’s National Counter Corruption Commission. By contrast, Malaysia’s Anti-Corrnption Agency reports to the government, and so is subject to political control. The Philippines, meanwhile, has adopted no fewer than seven anti-corruption laws in the past 50 years, and created 13 anti-graft agencies, according to Mr. Quah’s count. Dramatic but disputed corruption allegations, such as the claim that the president’s husband is managing multiple slush funds, simply get lost in all this bureaucracy.
The author do not do which of the following things()
A．Give some facts.
B．Point out the underlying causes of some problems.
C．Raise some problems.
D．Give some suggestions.
