“You are now seeing a new Malaysia that is passionate about transparency, accountability, competency. This is a different Malaysia from the global kleptocracy at its worst. This is a new Malaysia that wants to free itself from the past of corruption and abuse of power.”

– Lim Guan Eng.

COMMENT | Maybe some readers are too young to remember this but the rhetoric of the “opposition” in the all or nothing days of the BN regime, specifically when the old maverick was the grand poobah, was on the issues of cronyism, abuse of power and conflicts of interest between the plutocrat class and political operatives.

Opposition political operatives had a field day pointing out numerous dubious relationships between business tycoons and the political class, and people were first shocked, but later became apathetic, by the bare-faced denials from the Umno/MCA combo that dominated business and politics at the time.

To get a feel of the kind of rhetoric and how the opposition viewed corruption and conflict of interests read Kua Kia Soong’s piece "I would prefer Lim Kit Siang as attorney-general", a broadside against (then) oppositional politics which had embraced the old maverick.

The allegation that Lim Guan Eng when he was finance minister during Pakatan Harapan’s brief stint at the helm about facilitating with the attorney-general (AG) on some sort of deal for a tycoon to unfreeze his accounts points to the dysfunctional system that Harapan claimed it wanted to correct.

Now, I can say that I have no trust in the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC). As it is, the MACC is currently embroiled in a brawl with the former AG concerning a sweetheart deal with Riza Aziz. And now, we have another kind of sweetheart deal with someone from the plutocrat class.

The responses of Guan Eng has been troubling. Equally troubling is the fact that many so-called anti-corruption activists have been as quiet as church mice. Once you strip off all the legalese and conspiracy theories surrounding the MACC and the media organisations that broke the story, questions remain as to what exactly was going on in “New Malaysia”.

Forget about the nonsensical outrage of the MACC about leaked documents and about how politicians or government officials are petitioning on behalf of tycoons. Just read the responses of Guan Eng to this issue, and you should be very concerned about the way Harapan not only abandoned its...