The Obvious Solution

“That which may be destroyed by the truth should be.”

1. Whistleblowers are simply witnesses with often confidential, often critical information.
2. Without whistleblowers → no ground truth on all policies, Ministries, agencies, institutions.
3. Without whistleblowers → no urgency nor measurement of reform.
4. Malaysia’s status quo is heavily anti-whistleblower.
5. Most anti-whistleblower attackers are public servants themselves, often in a superior rank.
6. All disciplinary / civil / criminal cases are jeopardized without whistleblower protection.
7. Piecemeal reforms and case-by-case “internal reviews” demolish whistleblower motivation.
8. Whistleblowers are “the most significant means” to find serious misconduct & corruption.
9. Whistleblowers have run out of time in every district; meanwhile, rural and / or poor whistleblowers remain the highest risk.

“People ask why we don't compromise on whistleblowers. There is no middle ground between the arsonist and the firefighter. That is why.”

Public Service Integrity

1. Whistleblower protection is a long-held, never-delivered demand by the civil service, e.g., CUEPACS, an IGP, an ex-MACC Chief Commissioner, and an ex-Chief Justice.
2. Anti-whistleblower public officers create a “dictator trap” where they “must demand loyalty and crack down on criticism. But the more they do so, the lower the quality of information they receive.”
3. Most civil servants are afraid of reporting corruption to even their superiors. Obviously, then, neither the police nor MACC are clean enough and brave enough. Less than 0.01% of public servants are brave enough to report corruption.
4. Unfettered corruption significantly decreases the morale & reputation of all public servants.

"For the love of money, truth will fall silent.”

Nationwide Unity

Misconduct, leakages, abuse of power, budaya diam, fraud, negligence, and corruption are problems in every district. There is nothing more unifying that a concerted campaign led by local heroes to eradicate these universally-hated traits of Malaysian life.

Sabah 🤝 Sarawak 🤝 Peninsula

1. SCANDAL! In Sarawak, major scandals in land ownership and forests have stolen millions from the State Government.
2. SCANDAL! In Sabah, immigration enforcement officers took bribes from marginalized communities.
3. SCANDAL! In Sarawak, a senior police officer allegedly sexually assaulted a 19-year-old shop assistant while she was in the police toilet. The survivor claimed the officer’s family offered her  bribes to withdraw her report so the alleged sexual predator could keep his pension.
4. SCANDAL! In Sabah, the Sabah Water Department scandal caused hundreds of millions of leakages; one officer was acquitted by somehow paying an RM30 million compound.
5. SCANDAL! Over RM871 billion was lost in 10 years through illicit domestic-to-foreign transfers throughout Malaysia. A former IRB confirmed it: “When the income is illegal, they are protected by a wall of secrecy.”

“Nobody is trying to fix the problems we have in this country. Everyone is trying to make enough money so the problems don’t apply to them anymore.”

Rural 🤝 Semi-Urban 🤝 Urban

What does the government control in every district? Education, healthcare, transportation, infrastructure, enforcement, administration, workplaces, natural resources, community resources, and budgets. And the legal responsibility to deliver our rights to each of the above.

1. Rural districts are disproportionately affected by hidden, widespread, and entrenched public service corruption. How? Rural districts have little to no local media, good governance CSOs, nor support systems. Meanwhile, rural or poor Malaysians depend on a clean, competent public service for all major necessities.
2. A 2018 study in Ranau, one of Sabah’s rural districts, showed that 73.3% of respondents said “corruption is the biggest issue that the country is currently facing”, 52.3% said the government has “failed to lead with a sense of transparency, accountability, and integrity”, and 56.5% were “unsatisfied with the progress of infrastructure development”.
3. SCANDAL! MACC confirmed Sabah’s education sector is rife with graft and abuse of power. Meanwhile, Sabahan students have the lowest SPM scores in the nation.
4. SCANDALS! Kota Belud is one of Malaysia’s 10 poorest districts. In 2018, eleven Kota Belud police officers were arrested for corruption. In 2021, four more Kota Belud police officers were arrested on similar corruption charges.
5. SCANDAL! RM10 million in bribes were exchanged to control a public transport system project. If they will bribe to control the project, who will they bribe to hide safety defects?
6. SCANDAL! Nearly RM650 million of transport projects were given with direct tender before the Unity Government was installed and changed them to open tender.
7. SCANDAL! A whistleblower alleged the police, Shah Alam City Council, and illegal gambling syndicates were colluding to protect criminals. Dangerously, the whistleblower’s identity was exposed. Later, MACC arrested four MBSA officers on bribery claims.

"Standing behind predators makes prey of us all."

Multiracial, multi-religious

1. SCANDAL! Many Malaysian Muslims bought fake halal meat, where suppliers & businesses pocketed money, whereby many Malaysian Muslims ate fake halal meat for 40 years.
2. SCANDALS! Numerous cases of sexual abuse and death have been exposed at Tahfiz schools. Might other teachers have known earlier and could have stopped these horrific scandals?
3. SCANDALS! The culprits behind the forced disappearance of Pastors Raymond Koh and Joshua Hilmy, highly suspected to be corrupt senior police officers, have never been revealed nor brought to justice.

“Do not separate responsibility and authority.”

Education

1. Over 60% of teachers are too afraid to report corruption to the MOE. Overall? 0.01% are brave.
2. Decades of severe misconduct have evidenced the MOE’s internal investigations are corruptible, illegitimate, and violently anti-whistleblowing.
3. MOE employees have a uniquely high-liability position with unfettered access to children.
4. Surveys expose deplorable tolerance in schools for pedophilia, abuse, criminal misconduct.
5. MOE whistleblowers have gone to the media again, again, again, and again: ready to act, while the MOE maintained its anti-whistleblower policies.

“In order to get people to throw themselves into the fight to save this broken country, we need leaders who can convince them that they haven’t already lost.”

“If this child was strong enough to survive it, you’re strong enough to stop it next time.”

Health

1. Sexual abuse, bullying, abuse, and misconduct against nurses, junior doctors, and patients disastrously degrade the quality of healthcare. In other words, a lack of whistleblowers is killing Malaysians.
2. Hospital staff are severely overworked with stolen wages common, even as they saved the nation from an even-worse COVID-19 pandemic. Who are our real heroes?
3. Healthcare is a heavily-used public service, with life-or-death consequences: over 82% of Malaysians rely on public healthcare for inpatient care.
4. After the Ministry promised one-off protection, over 200 Malaysians blew the whistle in health settings. Still, no legal guarantee was ever made.
5. Malaysia’s shortages of nurses and doctors can be traced to toxic work environments that are hidden, unsustainable, inefficient, and anti-healthcare: overworked staff are a dangerous norm.
6. Nearly 30 frontline healthcare workers privately shared that at the peak of the pandemic major overwork, burnout, unfair policies, poor delivery, and abusive hospital administrators had all been heavily censored.

"It is an act of evil to accept the state of evil as either inevitable or final.”

“Oh, you’re experiencing a structural problem? Have you ever considered trying different personal choices instead?”

Law Enforcement

1. Any successful prosecution of public officers depends on witnesses (critically including whistleblowers) being safe. Without protection, every prosecution is unstable and in jeopardy. Stronger witnesses are often too afraid, even with more convincing evidence.
2. For decades, major reports have exposed clear-cut corruption in our enforcement agencies, showing that prosecutions are just the tip of the iceberg.
3. Azam Baki, the still-current head of MACC, sued a whistleblower, after an exposure regarding his claimed ownership of millions of business shares.
4. Human trafficking requires corruption in immigration agencies. Up to 80% of Malaysia’s border officers were claimed to accept bribes, according to 10-year surveillance.
5. The claimed forced disappearance of Perlis social activist Amri Che Mat is highly suspected to be corrupt officers in the Special Branch under the IGP, according to a whistleblower.

“The universal methodology of the tyrant is always incrementalism.”

Finance & Economy

1. SCANDAL! In December 2022, MOF officials claimed knowledge of “serious procedural breaches” during pandemic funding, but only revealed such after a new Government was installed.
2. In 2017, corruption in Malaysia lowered our nation’s GDP by RM47 billion.
3. SCANDAL! After the multiyear 1MDB exposure and a near-government-wide conspiracy, only 3-5 Malaysians may see jail. Protecting public officers is criminal gratification under the MACC Act.
4. The Head of Deloitte Forensic Malaysia called whistleblowing  “the most significant means by which serious misconduct, such as fraud and corruption, is detected.”

“They must fix whistleblower protection legislation and not rely on whistleblowers to out-manuver corrupt public servants. It's unfair and actually insulting to put that burden on our backs."

Labour & Cost of Living

1. Corruption in the supply chain is a critical root cause of rising living costs in education, housing, and overall significantly weak competition throughout the market.
2. Our laws claim to protect workers, but poor workers are attacked for exposing illegal minimum wages—itself a criminal offence.
3. Tax raises against ordinary citizens have repeatedly been mooted to “save” Malaysia’s economy, while everyday corruption in the economy continues in full force.
4. Malaysia’s brain drain is, among other reasons, directly caused by biased government department heads, low quality standards, severe discrimination, and corrupt enforcement. Over 500,000 skilled Malaysians have left, many feeling Malaysia has “no future”.

“What kills me about whistleblower protection is the people angry about it would forget in a week and the people who would be saved would remember it for the rest of their lives. It’s such an easy political win.”

Targeted Communities

1. Orang Asli: Many have long alleged, and some proven in Court, negligence, abuse of power, and scandals against orang ali communities; instead of transparency, witnesses were threatened or ignored.
2. B40: B40 communities are colonised people in their own country, where critical service degradation, abuse of power against the unprotected, backwards class mobility, and generational despair have led to mass loss of lifelong potential.

“If the abuser is welcome, then the victim is not.”

Judiciary & Legal

1. RCIs, litigation, and third-party investigations are often demanded by Malaysians because these avenues provide some whistleblower protection. Why is protection not the default?
2. The Courts have previously lamented the Federal Government’s failure to uphold the Constitution and bring errant public officers “ to task” so “that such unlawful actions should not happen again.” Ref: Selvi a/p Narayan & Anor (Pentadbir Bersama Estet dan tanggungan Chandran a/l Perumal, simati) v Koperal Zainal bin Mohd Ali & Ors [2017 MLJU 11]

“Corruption has reached almost every level of society. It must be curtailed before it becomes a pandemic. If corruption is left unbridled, our society will come to accept it as a way of life or business.” — High Court Judge Mohamed Zaini Mazlan

Environment

1. Significant destruction in Malaysia’s environment has only been exposed after the damage was done. This permanent effect could have avoided had whistleblowers come forward.
2. To avoid environmental regulations from Malaysia’s unmitigated climate emergency, corrupt businesses and public officials may prefer coverups to avoid compliance.

Strategic Benefits for Policymakers

1. Whistleblowers are a very measurable metric to “clean up government”.
2. Whistleblowers are a very public, heartwarming, and passionate story to fix local and national problems. Plainly, the optics are unbeatable.
3. Whistleblowers are in every district & state. We know the worst government scandals that hurt ordinary Malaysians that most politicians don’t know about, much less try to fix.
4. Whistleblowers dismantle the “deep state” problem in the only way possible: transparency.
5. Whistleblowers overwhelmingly are not elites, have little institutional authority, small social media presences, no media contacts, and do not have RM100K+ for legal teams, personal security, and a stable income after being fired.
6. Whistleblowers can save the Government millions in future Court damages and save billions of illicit outflows.

How do we talk about whistleblower protection? The pervasive budaya diam is unperturbed without evidenced examples, clarity of problems, obvious solutions, and clear terminology.