Declare your wealth, UMNO's Khairy told

PAS Youth leader Nasrudin Hassan has challenged his UMNO counterpart Khairy Jamaluddin to declare wealth to prove Barisan Nasional's claims of ‘new politics’.

Nasrudin, who made public his income and his personal wealth at the PAS Muktamar last month, was responding to Malaysia’s poor stand in Transparency International's latest Corruption Perception Index, which saw Malaysia's ranking going up to the 54th position compared to 60th last year.

“While I was happy for the improvement, it was short-lived when I saw Malaysia only scored 49 out of 100 points,” he said.

He pointed out that Malaysia was still behind other countries such as Rwanda (50), Botswana (30), Bhutan (33), Taiwan (37), Brunei (46) and Singapore (3).

He said based on Malaysia's score, there was a wide perception among the public that government machinery was prone to corruption.

Nasrudin, who is also Pahang PAS's deputy commissioner, said such a public perception was fuelled by the Auditor General’s annual reports showing leakages in government projects.

Nasrudin also backed TI-M’s call on the government to introduce a Freedom of Information Act that would ensure transparency in governance as well as allowing the public to scrutinise documents on government-linked projects.

“This can prevent leakages and abuse of public funds documents from being classified government secrets,” he said, referring to the Official Secrets Act (OSA).

-Harakahdaily