More than a week after Hanif Omar, the country's longest serving police chief, dropped a bombshell alleging systematic corruption in the force, there has been a deafening silence.

Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang is baffled.

He said today that the government's failure to respond to the "unprecedented allegation of police corruption by a pillar of the establishment" like Hanif is "eloquent testimony" that Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's anti-corruption campaign has grounded to a halt.

Hanif has the distinction of being the youngest police chief when he was appointed to the post at the age of 35 and he served as the country's top cop for 20 years from 1974 to 1994.

In his Sunday Star column on Aug 12, Hanif argued that 40 percent of senior police officers could be arrested for corruption strictly on based on their lifestyles alone.

Inspector General of Police Musa Hassan has yesterday reacted to the his predecessor's allegation by challenging him to show proof.

Musa also urged the public to lodge reports if they have information on corrupt cops and vowed to investigate the complaints.

Lim is not impressed by Musa's response.

"It has taken the IGP more than a week to respond to Hanif's serious allegation, and it was a most anaemic, perfunctory and unimpressive response totally lacking in credibility," thundered Lim.

"What Hanif exposed was not about individual cases of corruption but systemic corruption of the police force and the public service."

Not on cabinet agenda?

The veteran opposition leader added in other countries where such a revelation made by a former top cop on high-level corruption, it would have merited the issue being placed on top of the cabinet meeting's agenda.

Instead, Lim lamented that the cabinet meeting last week was preoccupied by the involving 24-year-old student Wee Meng Chee and his Negarakuku rap parody of the national anthem.

"When in the past three years there had not been a single case of arrest of a senior police officer out of the 1,400 who could be arrested for corruption, it speaks of a rotten system of national integrity which will see Malaysia's international corruption perception index on a downward plunge," said Lim.

He called on the cabinet at its weekly meeting tomorrow to give top priority to Hanif's allegations.