It is very ironic in Malaysia that despite the government as its daily routine engage in deplorable acts of corruption, no one was bothered with what the Auditor-General (A-G) has to say about this. If the scenario were to take place here in New Zealand where the audit profession is under round-the-clock public scrutiny, the A-G would have long ago been thrown out of the office for its inability to ensure transparency and accountability over the public funds.
I couln't agree more with what Malik Imtiaz Sarwar had presented here, here and here on how the A-G is responsible to provide accountability information to the parliament who would then scrutinise and monitor the government’s performance. He highlighted an important trait of the A-G that most Malaysian citizens (including me) are not familiar with i.e. the fact that A-G is a creation of the parliament therefore it sits on the same level as the executive branch, the legislature branch as well as the judicial branch. This effectively means that the A-G can report anything it wants because unlike other civil servants, it does not have any interest in the government. Hence theoretically, the A-G’s independence is secured. But it does not necessarily work well in practice because independence can be bought off easily.
I’d like to put a spot light onto the profile of our current A-G i.e. Dato’ Setia Haji Ambrin Bin Buang. So he has an Economics first degree from University Malaya and a Master in International Business from University of South Carolina U.S.A., after which he had been serving the government from different departments including Kementerian Perdagangan dan Perindustrian, Lembaga Perindustrian Kayu Malaysia, Institute Pentadbiran Awam and appointed as Malaysian Ambassador in Japan for 3 years. He crossed into private sector after that as General Manager of KLIA for 4 years, and jumped back into government department as Selangor State Secretary, Secretary of Education Ministry and now at the Audit Department.
Now, let’s look at the profile of Mr Kevin Brody the New Zealand’s A-G. Mr Brady was a Chartered Accountant (CA) and had a Masters in Public Policy from Victoria University of Wellington. He was made a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants after writing several major reports on aspects of local government. He also did work as secretary of the South Pacific Association of Supreme Audit Institutions.
May I ask where does our A-G stand in regard to the current international standard? Even a 7 year-old can tell us that our Dato’ Ambrin is obviously not suited to be in the A-G office. He is not even a CA to begin with. There are 27 million people in Malaysia, and we have him as our A-G. He may have been all over the place with no one government position he has not held before, but this doesn’t compensate the disapproving fact that he knows zilch about auditing.
Posted at: 06:58 AM | Add Comment
