.: ShaolinTiger - Kung-Fu Geekery :.

Now this is an interesting topic...and it comes back to the same old subject again sadly. Malaysia hypocrisy and apathy.

It's a fairly serious topic, but one that comes up fairly often. It's somewhat confusing as a foreigner in Malaysia, especially at first, trying to comprehend the Malaysian mind-set.

At first Malaysians seems like patriotic people who are passionate about their country and want to see positive changes in the bureaucracy and governance of the country. But later you realise they just like to talk about it, and aren't actually willing to do anything on a ground or grass-roots level to make the changes.

My case in point today is corruption.

You'll often hear someone or other whining about corruption especially with this $27 million cop splashed all over the papers, and even before that they'll moan about corrupt cops, corrupt politicians and corrupt business practices.

All you have to do is ask them...when you get stopped for a traffic offense do you bribe the police to get away?

95% of the time they'll say "Yeah of course la, what else to do?"

Which makes them just as bad as the people they are complaining about, it's their fault corruption still continues and is so blatant. I hold all people that pay police bribes on the street accountable for the corruption in this country.

Me? If I do something wrong, I take the summon and pay it like a good citizen. If I didn't do anything wrong, I won't allow the police to harass me into paying them just so I can get away easily.

Stand your ground if you didn't do anything wrong, don't pay just to get away faster. You are just making things worse and opening more doors for them to do it in the future.

If you did something wrong, accept the summon and pay it through the proper channels. If you get a discount in the police station that's fine. But don't bribe the man on the street.

When the police ask me if I want to settle I offer them RM10 - just to insult them and ask for them to hurry up writing the summons.

In a way you can blame it on the government for paying the police such pitiful salaries, they 'need' to collect kopi duit to survive...apparently.

And from what I know corruption on high levels exists in some form in every country in the World, according to the local cultural practices.

Business has opportunity cost as well which even in UK or US might have some kind of 'gift' associated with it.

It's just not so blatant and it doesn't effect the people.

The problem with the police on the street being corrupt is you have no faith in them solving important crimes or looking after the citizens, their first priority after all is collecting YOUR money - which YOU are allowing them to do.

It effectively removes the whole point of having a police force.

No doubt in UK the government is corrupt at high levels, but the man on the street be it a bobby walking the beat or a traffic cop is 100% corruption free and you can trust that whatever their interest in a given situation it's not according to money, bribes or sweeteners.

This makes you feel safe.

Stop bribing and the corruption will stop, the police will have to start doing their jobs properly and they will eventually get paid properly.

Well the clampdown has finally begun as reported by The Star today..

KUALA LUMPUR: Ong Tze Chiang was rudely awakened at about 1pm by his father who told him that a group of people wanted to meet him outside his house at the Sri Johor flats in Cheras here.

Ong was the first person to be arrested under Ops Warta IV.

Source: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2005/1/18/nation/9926600&sec=nation

If you've been following my posts, you'll have noticed I had some summons, and I had to work my ass off to get them paid...they make it so fucking difficult.

Now this whole shennanigan hasn't exactly been well publicised, I've seen one tiny 1/4 column text only piece in the paper mentioning the fact that summons need to be paid before January 2nd or you might get hauled off to prison..

I wonder why they would do that? Oh yeah...if they publicised it, people might actually pay, there would be less opportunity for bribes and getting people into court for ridiculous crimes such as parking in the wrong places, or in my case exceeding the speed limit by not more than 30km/h...

The paper also published the fact that all counters would be open 'til 6pm so people could pay easier, I mean wtf? Most people finish work at 6pm, some of us work in a freakin jungle (Cyberjaya) and are miles away from the nearest Balai (Police Station)..How exactly are we supposed to pay?

Even though that was complete bullshit anyway as I went to the PJ police headquarters and was duley informed the counter had closed at 3pm....waste of time or what.

There are counters in shopping malls too, I've visited the one in 1 Utama about 5 times, all of which the computer was 'offline'. For anyone who's interested, it's in the old wing, Eneos car centre..I mean for the love of monkeys, I am trying to give them money, it's like they don't want people to pay, they want us to be arrested and beaten on the soles of the feet with bamboo canes.

So, what's the deal here in Malaysia..

Deal 1 - Common Occurence (see Mr. Ong above)

1. You do something naughty, like going a bit fast
2. Some(one|thing) sees the naughty act
3. You get a summons
4. You get 0 notification, yes I mean NONE
5. Unless you check yourself, online you don't even know you've gotten any summons
6. You don't check online, you get some fat officer knocking on your door wanting to arrest you
7. Rinse and Repeat

Deal 2 - My Case

1. You do something naughty, like going a bit fast
2. Some(one|thing) sees the naughty act
3. You get a summons
4. You get 0 notification, yes I mean NONE
5. You check online and find you have summons against your car
6. You spend 2 weeks trying to pay the damn summons and waste like 2 days of annual leave
7. Eventually persuade someone else to pay the summons because you have a job you wish to keep
8. Have the summons paid with the realisation you will have to go through the whole shitty affair again
9. Rinse and Repeat

In UK it's like this.

1. Speed
2. Get Caught
3. Get a notice through the post 2 days later with the location and offence
4. Have 30 days to pay with discount, 90 days to pay before court appearance
5. Pay by cheque through the post, by credit card over the phone or cash at the nearest police station
6. Don't speed again because you'll get 3 points on your licence (12 is a 1 year ban)

Don't get me wrong, I love this country I really do, but there are still a lot of things that have to change...the bureaucratic system, customer service (or lack of it), racial bias in the education system and in general (both positive and negative racism), sexual crime, business attitudes and various others things such as the attitudes of civil servants and other workers Tidak Apa, which means never mind or it doesn't matter (stems from other issues previously mentioned).

Will blog about all these topics as they unravel in my mind..

The lesson to be learnt is, don't get summons, check regularly online just in case you did, keep your ears open for clampdowns (I heard about this one on IRC) and finally don't expect to be able to pay your summons easily..

For those who want to check their summons online you can do so via Rilek/Catcha HERE.