Malaysian judiciary among least corrupt: Survey
THE SUN - 25 MAY 2007

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia is ranked ninth out of 62 countries in an international survey on perceived

corruption in the judiciary. About 19% of the respondents polled described the judiciary as corrupt, in Transparency International’s 2007 Global Corruption Report “Corruption in Judicial Systems”, which ranked the least corrupt countries at the top.

Although Malaysia has a relatively low level of perceived judicial corruption, Transparency International Malaysia (TI-M)

president Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam said yesterday efforts must be made to improve the perception. “We must always review and improve our society and governance to check any slide in accountability, transparency and integrity before it is too late,” he said at the launch of the report. “If we do not take urgent and purposeful measures now to effectively combat corruption, Malaysia could move towards the beginning of a weak and even failing state.”

According to the report, Malaysia was behind Denmark, Singapore, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Germany, Switzerland

and Luxembourg. TI-M plans to keep campaigning for a better international rating for Malaysia. This includes undertaking

a local survey to find out the level of confidence in the judiciary and prosecution services, and calling for the formation of “Integrity Pacts” in both public and private sectors.

The corruption report is released every year, covering specific sectors each year. Although the report had little information on the survey methodology, Ramon said the ranking “keeps us all on our toes”. He said TI-M will try to find out the methodology used in the survey – the report only said the poll was conducted between June and September last year, involving 59,661 respondents in 62 countries. “We do not know whether the survey was scientifically done and if there was a fair sample of respondents involving people from a cross-section of society.” Bar Council president Ambiga Sreenevasan, who was also present, said the survey was not indepth enough as it did not identify who the respondents were.

“It did not really have a focus on Malaysia. It did not even say whether Malaysians are involved in the survey. We can only assume it to be so.” We must always review and improve our society and governance to check any slide in accountability, transparency and integrity.”