Integrity pledges were good, he conceded, “but it is an indictment of our moral and ethical decay that the chief minister should require ministers and civil servants to sign such a pledge”.

Integrity, Baru said, was an innate trait that an individual either possessed or did not. “Signing a pledge does not imbue a person with integrity.”

He was commenting on a Borneo Post report which had asked the opinion of several Sarawak leaders if the multi-million ringgit scandal at the Water Department in Sabah would have an impact on Sarawak.

Many of those who had spoken mentioned the civil servants’ integrity pledges as a good sign that Sarawak was on the right track.

Baru, the Ba Kelalan Assemblyman and a senior lawyer, pointed out that numerous reports had been lodged with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) against top government officials in Sarawak but no action had been taken.

“The MACC in Sabah said the wealth of the two officers involved was not commensurate with their salaries,” said Baru who also heads PKR Sarawak.

“Is the reported RM64 billion wealth of the former chief minister (Sarawak) commensurate with his salary?” he asked.

The banned news portal Sarawak Report carried a wealth of information about corruption in Sarawak, he recalled, “before switching focus to the 1MDB scandal”.

“The law must not be applied selectively,” he said.

When people were not treated equally, warned the lawmaker, the public would be sceptical about the action against the four people in Sabah.

“Perhaps the two civil servants in Sabah can also claim they received donations from mysterious benefactors,” he mocked.

Saying the Sabah case had an impact on the people’s perception of the Government, Baru added: “One could say that nobody is surprised anymore about corruption scandals.”