KUALA LUMPUR, June 3 — DAP’s Lim Kit Siang blasted today the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) over its alleged failure to arrest 418,000 civil servants for graft activities.

Lim’s remarks follow an explosive disclosure by Cuepacs president Omar Osman yesterday that as many as 40 per cent of the country’s 1.2 million civil servants were suspected of corruption.

The veteran lawmaker said that the MACC is a “big flop” as it only arrested 500 people last year and 144 people in the first quarter of this year.

He added that according to official statistics, only 76 out of the 144 arrested by MACC for corruption in the first quarter were civil servants, or 52.7 per cent.

“This is not even 0.1 per cent as it represented a mere 0.06 per cent of the civil servants deemed corrupt by the Cuepacs president,” said Lim in a statement.

“What has MACC got to say for such shocking failure in the discharge of its statutory duty to combat corruption, that it could only target 0.06 per cent of those deemed corrupt in the civil service last year?”

Lim also demanded that Cuepacs, MACC and Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Nazri Razak explain the apparently high corruption rate.

Malaysian’s corruption rate worsened last year according to an analysis by Transparency International (TI). The country’s standing in TI’s Corruption Perception Index slipped to No. 56 from 47 in 2008.