OUT of the blue, Deputy Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Datuk Seri Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay has come out to criticise the attempts by certain quarters to turn corruption into a racial issue.

According to Ayob, some people had questioned why the authorities were not arresting bribe-givers who are allegedly predominantly non-Muslims.

Even this (issue of corruption) has been turned into a racial issue, according to him in a video posted on his Facebook page.

Last year, PAS president Tan Sri Hadi Awang had also attributed the root cause of corruption to non-Muslims which led to multiple police reports and an investigation.

So, is it true? Does corruption have a racial element to it? To put this question in perspective, the first thing we have to note about corruption is that it is generally a problem that affects post-colonial nations.

The origin of graft

These countries did not have a corruption issue prior to colonisation. In Malaysia for example, people were not complaining about corruption during the Sri Vijaya or the Sultanate of Malacca era.

We only started to see the cancer of corruption affecting our lives negatively from the time the British left our shores.

From this fact - and the fact that colonising countries like the UK or France are not deeply affected by corruption - we can deduce that the root causes of corruption in post-colonial nations is actually exposure to colonisation - not race.

The imperialists did not treat the people they colonised in the same way they treated their own citizens. The social and economic arrangement that colonising forces made with the societies they colonised was basically prejudicial, oppressive and exploitative.

Corruption was likely a coping mechanism that the colonised people developed to mitigate the effect of prejudice, oppression and exploitation that they were subjected to.

In other words, corruption was probably legitimised in the minds of the colonised people as a necessary sin that they had to perform to survive in the exploitative, prejudiced and oppressive system that their colonial masters imposed on them.

Hard to eradicate

The reason that corruption continued to survive in the post-colonial era is because the system, structures and practises colonisers left behind continued to enable the conditions for corruption to thrive although they had physically left,

Singapore have only managed to eradicate corruption by completely transforming tits citizens into becoming a mirror image of their colonising masters.

But the populace of countries like Malaysia who is still deeply attached to their pre-colonial identities continues to be infected by corruption due to retainment of pre-colonial local identity that prevented them from severing the relationship between colonial masters and colonised servants which serves as the ground from which corruption rises.

In Western countries, there is a direct link between an individual citizen and their nation but in countries like Malaysia, there has never been a direct individual link between an individual citizen and their nation.

An individual citizen in an Asian country like Malaysia is traditionally only directly linked to his family. It is his family that is linked to a larger grouping a clan or a tribe, and it is his clan or a tribe that is linked to his race which is in turn is linked to the concept of a nation.

Because an individual citizen in Malaysia is traditionally only directly linked to his family, their loyalty is traditionally given only to their family.

What this means is that if an individual citizen in Malaysia has to decide on whether he should act in favour of his family or his nation, his values will tend to persuade them to act in favour of his family rather than his nation.

Rooted to colonial past

When your values incline you to act in favour of your family rather than your nation but the operational system of your country is built upon the idea that you must act in favour of your nation rather than your family, your country will almost inevitably be mired in corruption for corruption will be required to balance out the discrepancy in such a contradictory arrangement.

At some point, we have to start being aware of the fact that the Westminster style parliamentary democracy that they British suddenly imposed on us before they left our shores is a system that is alien to the worldview of Malaysians because it is is built upon an idea that an individual citizen has a direct relationship with their nation.

This idea might be meaningful in a western country but it is not meaningful here.

That the Westminster style democracy was never indigenous to our mind is not only the reason why our parliament tends to be such a joke but also the reason why the disease of corruption is endemic to our nation.

As long as we never confront our colonial past meaningfully, we will never exorcise the ghost of colonialism that still possesses our systems and structures.

For as long as we are possessed by the ghost of our colonial past, every race in the country will be forever trying to replace the British colonial masters by exploiting every other race as they each engage in corruption to mitigate the effects of prejudice, exploitation and oppression that they will be subjected to under the colonial arrangement and mindset. - Aug 9, 2024

Nehru Sathiamoorthy is a roving tutor who loves politics, philosophy and psychology. 

https://focusmalaysia.my/is-not-about-muslims-committing-more-graft-than-non-muslims-but-eradication-of-colonial-mindset-which-is-root-cause/