LETTERS: We, the members of G25, would like to issue an urgent appeal to all political parties to call upon the government to introduce the much awaited reform on political financing in order to reduce money politics that has plagued our political system.
Money politics lies at the root of all the big corruption scandals in the country.
The urgency for the reform of political financing was triggered by former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak's statement that there was no law in Malaysia against foreign donations to political parties. At the same time, he agreed that there should be a law to regulate political financing and to make it illegal for politicians to receive foreign donations. He followed up by appointing a cabinet minister to head a committee to study the matter. Unfortunately, when the report was submitted to cabinet, there was no consensus on accepting its recommendations for reform.
The Pakatan Harapan government won the May 2018 General Election (GE 14) on the strength of a reform manifesto that included introducing a law to regulate political financing and to make it clean and accountable. However, the PH government too got side tracked into other issues resulting in the practice of money politics being side-lined, hoping perhaps the public will forget it altogether.
G25 will not allow the issue to be forgotten. We would like to bring it up again because our group has worked hard to produce a report with recommendations on specific measures to prohibit foreign funding for political parties to set limits on the amount that private individuals and corporate organisations can donate and to suggest the procedures by which political parties should publish their accounts, without disclosing the names of the donors. Our recommendations also included institutional changes to ensure an independent system of regulating political financing.
The G25 report was among the documents that were studied by the cabinet committee under the Najib government. Although its recommendations differed from ours and were more accommodating and liberal on the amount of each donation, the committee, however, did agree that foreign donations must be prohibited. It also agreed that there should be transparency in reporting the donations for public information.
As regards the institutional changes recommended in the G25 report to ensure the independence of the regulating mechanism, the cabinet committee felt that these could be taken up at a later stage because they require major amendments to the legislation. We were told to be patient as reforms should evolve gradually, one step at a time. But patience has its limits as we see the country is sliding back into the bad old days.
G25 would like to propose that as the groundwork for the reform on political financing has already been laid, there is no reason for the present government to ignore it altogether. All it needs to do is to appoint a committee to review the previous cabinet committee report and make the necessary refinements.
In the G25 report, we have looked into the electoral practices of other countries and their legislations. In making our recommendations for regulating the system of political financing in our country, we have identified the best practices around the world.
There is enough study available to make the change. We would like to see the government taking the leap into making the change happen. G25 therefore calls upon this government to table a bill this year to Parliament to pass a law on regulating political financing and making the elections free from the evils of money politics.
G25 MALAYSIA
KUALA LUMPUR
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times