Academic: Political funding law will ensure greater transparency

UM's Terence Gomez says the people have a right to know the source of a political party's funds.

Putrajaya is considering tabling political funding laws to curb corruption. (Bloomberg pic)

KUALA LUMPUR: An academic has welcomed the proposal to have laws governing political funding as they will ensure greater transparency in all parties.

Terence Gomez

Universiti Malaya’s Terence Gomez said political parties, whether from the ruling coalition or opposition, should tell their voters where they got their money from.

“The government should first consider issues related to political funding, such as whether it is all right to receive corporate or foreign funds, and if these funds must be capped at a certain amount,” he told FMT in response to the government’s proposal to have laws on political funding.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said the government was considering tabling political funding laws to curb corruption.

He said the government was looking at models from other countries such as Germany, where the government funds political parties.

Gomez also reminded the government of the day not to be “vengeful” or go after private donors who contributed to political parties, especially the opposition.

“Institutions like the IRB and MACC must not be used as tools to go after the opposition’s donors like how it used to be,” he said, referring to the Inland Revenue Board and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission.

Meanwhile Subang MP Wong Chen, a strong supporter of political funding laws, said the government should adopt the proper formula to distribute money accordingly.

“Political parties need a lot of money to run their operations, and every five years we have to spend money for the general election.

“It is important to get funding directly from the government based on our results. Indirectly, we can also slowly reduce dependency on getting money from corporations,” he said.

He said the most basic and fair formula would be the number of votes a party obtained in the election, multiplied by the rate set by the government.

“Parties like PSM should get money from the government too as they contested in the election and received votes,” Wong added.

Before coming into power, Pakatan Harapan (PH) representatives had resisted Barisan Nasional’s (BN) proposal to create political funding laws.

Some expressed distrust and fear that the new laws might be used against the opposition.

Gomez had also criticised PH for its reluctance to support the proposal, saying the coalition was “spending so much time running around looking for money that it might not even have time to actually sit down and draft sound public policies”.

He also said BN had no political will to table the bill on financing parties. -FMT