It has been almost a year since Abdullah Ahmad Badawi wore the crown and cast a spell on this country with his chant of change. The citizens of Bolehland were no doubt charmed by the Mr Clean image and the candour of the prime minister when he first took over.

They had clapped and cheered their champion on when he got his men to charge in court a prominent businessman and a (though quite insignificant) cabinet minister . When he had asked them for more 'muscle' - a clear and strong mandate in the general election - they gave him their overwhelming vote of confidence - a nine-tenth majority!

They did this in spite of his inclusion of several 'unsavoury characters' in his candidates list for the polls, a move which seemed so contradictory to his anti-corruption stance. With such sizzling results, there was no way of the prime minister's promises fizzling out so the Bolehlanders had thought to themselves.

For 22 years the battle-cry against corruption had been reduced to an occasional cry by the then PM Dr Mahathir Mohamed. In spite of the slogan 'Clean, Efficient and Trustworthy', the rage against rogues had been mere rhetoric than reality, with civil servants a little ahead of the curve. The slogan that had followed - 'Leadership by Example' - had been equally ironic - for there was no shortage of leaders who proved their competence in corrupt practices.

Enter Pak Lah - the transformer and reformer. The people did not mind even when he chose a script similar to that of his predecessor - they wanted change - real and not cosmetic change. High hopes? Unfortunately, very little seems to have changed over the past year, and Pak Lah's war against corruption looks more like a worn-out clich now.

The looking good prime minister who had the citizens of Bolehland feeling good for some time, has so far failed to deliver the goods. The powers-that-be lie low with no more high-profile individuals to be prosecuted for graft to show - not even amongst the unknown 18 of high standing on the corruption list. Occasionally, the net is cast to catch an 'ikan bilis', i.e., a small fry - big enough for the arrest to be front page news, to try to convince almost everyone of the existence of an ongoing cleanup.

Meanwhile the government of Pak Lah remains true to the tradition of his predecessor by giving honorific titles to people still under investigation either by the police or the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA). Still being very captivated with Pak Lah's chime against corruption, some feel that he should be given more time. It is too early to tell. Change takes time.

But surely Pak Lah cannot take his time. He does not have another 22 years. We gave that privilege to the last man on the job and things got worse through time. Further, Pak Lah's anti-graft stance is nothing new. It began long before he became PM. He was very well-versed with it. Perhaps that's the problem - it has been more verse than verve.

There is also the argument that some things were beyond his control, for example, the system that his predecessor had cultured and bred and which he had been very much a part of.. It had spawned so much abuse of power, injustice, corruption and inequality, and is still deeply-entrenched, that some believe it cannot change from within and by its own accord.

But it must be said that there have been decisions which Pak Lah made during the past year which were out of his very own choice and within his control. They were decisions that ran clearly contrary to what he had proclaimed, preached and promised. He also seemed particularly coy about change albeit the political clout given to him.

Alas, time is not the only harbinger of change - there is also conviction, courage and commitment to change. And Bolehland citizens are now asking, will they see this in Pak Lah? Is the combat against corruption merely a charade? Sadly, some events of the past year of his premiership seems to suggest that it is.

The fact that the battle against crooks has been mainly claptrap was first seen during the run-up to the general elections in March this year. The man who had promised change employed the same Barisan Nasional bag of tricks, threats, trite sloganeering and tampering of boundaries , to win the March elections. Pak Lah condoned and kept conspicuously mute over the continued abuse of the 3Ms as seen in past elections - money, media and machinery.

There were many allegations of vote buying which unethically favoured the incumbent BN but he shamelessly took advantage of it. He and his BN did not seem to having any qualms about abusing the media and government resources and facilities for their campaigning during the elections. If there was any change he had tried to introduce, it was the shortening of the campaign period to eight days - the shortest in all of the 11 general elections in the nation's 46 years history!

Then there was also the controversy over the allegation by a group of suppliers that they had not been paid for supplying BN an estimated RM100 million worth of election paraphernalia. His reappointment of cabinet ministers who had been tainted by serious allegations of graft made the public wonder further whether his performance will ever match his pledge.

Pak Lah had won the elections on an anti-corruption platform. He was expected to use his overwhelming mandate to clean the slate. But it was quite apparent he chose not to. That Pak Lah was hardly different than his predecessor could be also be seen in the Election Commission (EC)'s continued subservience to the government. He even brushed aside the bold suggestion of the EC chief of the setting up of an independent body to investigate the complaints by the opposition on the conduct of the polls.

During the course of his one-year-old premiership, Pak Lah kept on insisting that his was not a one-man crusade against corruption. But cracks began to appear in the supposedly solid support and collaborative spirit that his cabinet and administration had shared with him in the crackdown on corruption.

For example, the chief secretary to the government Samsudin Osman's statement that graft was not a serious problem in Malaysia appeared to be conflicting. The plea by cabinet ministers to Pak Lah to 'go slow', hours after Land and Cooperative Development Minister Kasitah Gaddam was arrested, was contradictory. BN Wanita chief Rafidah Aziz speech to a crowd of young voters in Shah Alam that they should not be too idealistic in wanting a clean government was inconsistent.

The BN MPs strong refusal to make a public declaration of their personal assets ran contrary to Pak Lah's message of a clean government and good governance. No one was more out of sync with the PM's anti-corruption message than Minister in the PM's Department Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz who had declared in a seminar that parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) should not be chaired by the opposition as they would not understand that certain budgetary 'sensitivities' need to be protected.

The shocking level of money politics which reared its ugly head soon after Pak Lah's keynote address at the recent Umno general assembly made the 'I am not alone' leader look so alone.

Pak Lah wants the citizens of this country to believe that he is serious in his anti-corruption stance. He also wants the public to be more involved in his efforts to check corruption. Yet, and very ironically, like the order of old, his government castigates those who expose corruption, penalises them by forcing them to retire or resign, prosecutes them in court or even jails them.

One example is former deputy chief of the Kuala Lumpur Fire and Rescue Services Department, Mohd Ali Tambi Chik, who blew the whistle on his director-general Jaafar Sidek Tambi. Mohd Ali had accused his boss of corruption and abuses of power in relation to the use of department personnel and facilities to organise lavish wedding receptions for his son.

In spite of the evidence Mohd Ali had produced, the ACA cleared Jaafar of any wrongdoing and Mohd Ali was forced into early retirement in December last year 'in the interest of the public'. The whistleblower's response was: 'As far as I am concerned, this is one big joke. You do something good for the country (in exposing corruption) ... but eventually end up like this.

'So, what is the new prime minister going to do about all this?' he asked, in reference to Pak Lah's frequent statements about coming down hard on corruption. Another example was the government action against the whistleblower on the Election Commission (EC)'s plan to hire election workers from Puteri Umno just before the last general elections.

Instead of the police probing into the allegations of collusion between the EC and Puteri Umno, an editor was questioned for publishing leaked letters exchanged between the commission's top officials and the then Puteri Umno chief Azalina Othman on the controversial arrangement. Alas, in Bolehland it is the whistleblowers, not the abusers, who seem to get punished.

And laws such as the Official Secrets Act are used to protect those guilty of corruption as in the case of Mohd Ezam Mohd Noor . Should we be surprised that 'Don't get involved - it's not worth it' has become the philosophy of life for many Malaysians?

Nothing has changed too, with regard to the powers (or powerlessness?) of the Attorney-General's Chambers, the Auditor-General's Office and the ACA. They remain beholden to the PM who pulls the strings and control their purse strings - in spite of the plea of opposition leaders and NGOs to the government to ensure a more proactive and independent ACA .

The results of a Transparency International commissioned survey released last year reveals that Malaysia's systems and institutions to counter corruption and abuse of power are not working because of lack of political will, unwilling legislature, weak enforcement of laws and absence of public outrage. It also attributes the situation to agencies that are 'not truly independent' including the Anti-Corruption Agency, the Auditor-General's office and the Public Complaints Bureau.

The people want to believe that Pak Lah is sincere and serious about combating and curbing corruption. But events of the past year show that more needs to be done and done quickly. The 'tell-me-the-truth PM' must know the truth that the citizenry of Bolehland are getting wary and weary of his nice speeches and newsworthy moves on fighting graft.

In mid-September, malaysiakini quoted a survey which revealed that the public's graft-riddled image of the government still persists. Another report, the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2004, shows Malaysia having dropped two spots from last year to rank 39th out of the 146 countries surveyed.

In his response, Pak Lah said that the index had 'overlooked the country's strict laws and regulations' and the 'sound institutional framework in place to help check corruption'. Alas, what is the point of having strict laws without strict enforcement? And what good will it do to have a framework full of 'sound and fury but signifying nothing'?

The PM must show that he means business or it will be 'business as usual' for the corrupt - a reality seen at the recent Umno general assembly, described by a party veteran as 'the worst case of money politics in history'. It is time for Pak Lah to shut the door on the corrupt and to take down the 'window dressing'.

The same old 'tap-and-dance routine' synonymous with his predecessor has to stop. Better late than never. Pak Lah must prove his critics and skeptics wrong, lest we become, in his very own words - 'a nation with first world infrastructure and a third world mentality'. The honeymoon is over. His credibility is at stake.

Now is the time to walk the talk, and to show greater resolve in the face of growing resistance to change. The country does not need a crooner on corruption and the crooked. It needs a leader courageous enough to translate his chorus against corrruption into concrete reality.

It is time for the 'tell-me-the-truth' PM to show us the truth.