He also said, and I know many other former officers would agree with him, “…that the military camps were like ‘Third World facilities’ that have not been maintained” and "when the men are asked to serve overseas, they are mocked by the international forces".

Ghafir, who led Malaysian peacekeepers in Namibia, said that they took an ambulance van along and it "always broke down".

Political mileage

So, this is not some earth-shattering revelation that the PM and the defence minister knew of such cartels. In fact, the better question would be who in Madani or any of the former administrations did not know of the existence of various cartels within the government machinery?

And if they did not know, then either these people are the most clueless people that ever walked on Malaysian soil, or they did not care or that all those campaign speeches about reforming corrupt systems were merely horse manure.

Of course, claiming that the PM knew of the existence of cartels gets good political mileage, especially now that Madani is despised by its own base.

But the reality is that every former prime minister and defence minister knew about these cartels. Honestly, do you really think that these cartels stopped operating when someone like Mohamad Sabu was the defence minister?

Think about it. Here we have the government in a protracted legal battle with armed forces retirees about their pension schemes, and here we have high-ranking officers with their hands in the cookie jar, living large.

This is why average service men or women think that it is better to feather their own nest because the higher-ups are looking after themselves. This is part of the cycle of life of corruption within the government.

The entire political system of this country is part of a complex ecosystem of private and public interests that seek not only political hegemony but also religious hegemony. We are not dealing with corrupt individuals within a system, but rather a system of corruption with a few honest men and women.

Corruption - part of DNA

Corruption is not a recent phenomenon; it is part of the DNA of the organism, fuelled by racial and religious imperatives and a compromised electoral system.

Let us not forget that when we talk of corruption, we are not only talking about the corruption of the political elites but also of institutions which are considered sacred cows to the bangsa (race) and agama (religion) crowd.

So you see, even though I believe that there are many honest political operatives in Madani, they are outnumbered by people who are willing to make compromises and sustain the system either for political gain or because they are so narcotised by their political party that to make waves would be detrimental to their political survival.

The tragedy here is that Madani is doing something about corruption, albeit nothing that would reform the system.