KUWALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s new graftbuster has promised to restore public confidence in the anti-corruption agency which has been hit by allegations of bias and abuse in less than a year of operation.

The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission’s first chief commissioner, Ahmad Said Hamdan, announced at the weekend he would retire in December, five months earlier than planned, but denied he did so under pressure.

His successor and former deputy, Abu Kassim Mohamed, told state media he would take steps to rejuvenate the MACC, launched at the start of the year as part of the government’s anti-graft pledge.

“I will introduce several

plans and measures to redeem MACC’s integrity and public confidence,” he told the state Bernama news agency.

Modelled on Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), the MACC was vaunted as more independent and accountable than the toothless agency it replaced.

However, the commission

has been accused of selective prosecution by ignoring major graft cases, and instead pursuing figures in the opposition,

which alarmed the government with unprecedented electoral gains last year.

It faced intense criticism in July when a Malaysian opposition aide fell to his death from the 14th floor of a MACC office where he was being questioned through the night.

Famed Thai pathologist

Porntip Rojanasunan told an inquest in October that there was an 80 per cent chance that 30-year-old Teoh Beng Hock had been murdered.

Last month, watchdog Transparency International (TI) said Malaysia’s global corruption ranking had fallen to 56 from 47 last year on a global league table and that graft had hit “alarming” levels. TI Malaysia president Paul Low welcomed the MACC leadership change. “The public’s perception rightly or wrongly is that the MACC is not politically neutral and it must not only be neutral but act neutral and improve the competency of its officers to prosecute graft cases wherever they are. There cannot be selective prosecution and the MACC must represent the people’s interest,” he said.

The opposition said Ahmad Said’s tenure had seen Malaysia’s performance on corruption decline despite repeated government pledges to tackle the scourge which is endemic in government and society.

“The Malaysian public want to have an anti-corruption agency which has teeth and which can jail the corrupt, regardless of position or status,” said veteran opposition lawmaker Lim Kit Siang.