Malaysia doesn’t need a ‘political reset’ for corrupt elites – it needs accountability that works

Kua Kia Soong

Ong Kian Ming is right about one thing.

In our racially prickly society, DAP leaders should indeed be sensitive to the feelings of Najib Razak’s supporters after his failed attempt at converting his prison sentence to house arrest.

Malaysian politics has long been saturated with identity, grievance and historical memory. Needless provocation only deepens mistrust. On this limited point, Ong’s call for restraint deserves agreement.

But sensitivity is not the same thing as surrender. And empathy is not a licence for elite absolution.

What Ong proceeds to suggest – a so-called “political reset” through pardoning Najib, Mahiaddin Yasin, Zahid Hamidi, Lim Guan Eng and all other politicians charged with corruption – marks the point where sensitivity quietly mutates into impunity. At that moment, moral reasoning is replaced by elite convenience.

Let’s give this proposal a more honest name: the Great Political Rinse Cycle.

In this rinse cycle, corruption is treated not as a crime against the public but as an occupational hazard of politics. Everyone gets tossed into the same moral washing machine – Umno, DAP, yesterday’s villains and today’s embarrassments – spun vigorously under the slogans of “national reconciliation”, “new political reset” and “moving forward”, and then released back into public life, freshly deodorised.

The people, meanwhile, are expected to clap politely and pretend the stains never mattered.

Why should politicians charged with corruption be let off? The answer is never stated plainly.

Instead, we are offered euphemisms: prosecutions are “revenge indictments”, accountability is “politically motivated”, trials are “divisive”. Justice itself is recast as an irritant to stability.

Revenge indictments are all we have got!

Yet here is the inconvenient truth of Malaysian politics: those so-called revenge indictments – in the revolving door of power – are often the only moments when people in Malaysia ever get to see corrupt politicians face consequences at all.

As long as they remain incumbents, they are shielded by office, institutions are paralysed, and investigations stall. Only when power changes hands does the curtain briefly lift, allowing the public a glimpse – however imperfect – of accountability.

In a system where independent prosecution has been repeatedly compromised, these post-incumbency indictments are not evidence of vindictiveness. They are symptoms of a deeper failure.

To dismiss them wholesale as “revenge” is to admit, implicitly, that corruption is untouchable while one holds power – and pardonable once political bargains are struck.

This is the perverse lesson being taught. Not that corruption is wrong, but that timing matters. Loot while in office, deny everything, wait for the next realignment, then negotiate absolution in the name of unity.

If Najib’s supporters have feelings – and they do – so too do millions of ordinary people who watched public wealth disappear while being lectured about patience and sacrifice.

Sensitivity cannot be selectively applied to those closest to power. Otherwise, it becomes a velvet glove covering a very familiar fist.

Genuine political renewal

A genuine political renewal would break this cycle, not sanctify it. It would strengthen institutions so that corrupt politicians are held accountable while they govern, not only after they fall. It would insist that innocence be established in court, not granted retroactively through pardons brokered by political elites.

What is being proposed instead is not a political reset, but a Ctrl+Alt+Delete accountability manoeuvre – one that wipes political hard drives clean while leaving the same corrupt operating system running beneath.

Malaysia does not need a Great Political Rinse Cycle. It needs consistency, courage and a justice system that does not depend on electoral defeat to function.

Until then, calls for a “reset” will sound less like reform – and more like a polite request to forget.

Dr Kua Kia Soong, a former MP, is the director of Suaram.

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