Thursday, April 11, 2013


Corruption in my Personal Perspective

 

This write up discussing the subject matter above is in no way based on factual findings from any source of information, but merely an idea of the author’s own opinion and point of view and an unsubstantiated verbal findings through conversations from friends and family.

 

I would also stress that whatever I have mentioned should be taken lightly and some of you may or may not agree with what I have to say, but it is of course up for comments.

Corruption has been something very apparent in Malaysia even during the induction of the country back in ’57. Heck, I think Malaysia was already considered a late adopter owing this “culture” to our foreign predecessors.

 

Everyone or at least almost everyone, when put in a third person’s POV, would always criticise about the serverness of the matter, OR about how stupid the person would be to exercise corruption in the utmost obvious manner to the point that the entire nation noticing it.

But if we look at it in our own shoes... would we do that? The reason that they act at that magnitude is because they have reached to that magnitude. It has never been about suddenly becoming stupid, it has always been about a growing obsession. To put things into perspective, a small business starts by making RM100 a day, but when it grows to be a big business, it starts making RM1,000,000 and you just won’t stop right? There’s a reason why the riches are getting richer. The same goes for corruption, you start small and you go big. Neither is it stupidity nor rocket science – it is just plain ‘ol greed.

Case in point: an employee of a friend who is a Admin assistant of a company, she does the checking and compilation of her departments expenses claim, where she intentionally adds in extra figures into the claims without the knowledge of her colleagues. So when they reimburse the claims, she cashes in on the extra money that she made during the process. She’s been doing it for a couple of years and it became something ordinary to her like it was routine – a person usually feels that way when they know there is a loop hole and there is nothing to be afraid of. But come one day, perhaps she was paying off a big debt or she had kids who needs to study abroad, greed comes into place and she decided to play around with bigger numbers. Because it was so noticeable, she was caught red handed. Now was she stupid? I don’t think so, but I am sure as hell she was greedy.

 

So I guess, the same happens for all these people up there, at first it was like child’s play, but soon greed have the best of them and that’s when people start noticing the things they were doing. I mean bad habits are progressive, you slowly develop that said habit, and from time to time, it gets more apparent to a point where people start noticing.

Well if you ask me, if I was being presented with an opportunity like that, would I ever take it? Well if everyone is doing it, and I could get away with it, then what is stopping me? It’s not like I’m making so much “side income” like the top dogs, so it should be fine, isnt it? A little food for though.. would you do it? Don’t give me the bullshit that you tell to people about spending the citizen’s income tax, cos if you’re in their shoes, will you still practice what you preach?