Declaring assets with God's will

We don’t give PAS deputy president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man enough credit. Although we remember him for saying that the declaration of assets is unIslamic, that wasn’t the only thing he said. He said many more confusing things that only the highest among us would be able to decipher.

I couldn’t, but I could raise my confusion.

First, the quick change in position. As Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail recalls, Tuan Ibrahim was a staunch advocate for asset declaration in 2015. After The Wall Street Journal exposed the billions that were transferred to the former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak’s accounts, Tuan Ibrahim asked Najib and his wife Rosmah Mansor to declare their assets.

He said that asset declaration is the only effective response against the allegations. But now it’s different.

2015 Tuan Ibrahim vs 2019 Tuan Ibrahim

When it’s his turn to declare assets, Tuan Ibrahim calls it unIslamic, since asset declaration is tantamount to the flaunting of wealth. The deliberate misinterpretation here is stark.

Asset declaration is not an opportunity to flaunt your wealth; asset declaration is a curtailment of opportunity to obtain illicit wealth. Tuan Ibrahim understood this in 2015, but he refuses to extend the same logical reasoning to 2019.

Everyone knows that asset declaration matters at this juncture because of what happened the past few years. Corruption was systemic and endemic; it was normalised and made a culture.

Whenever we see a politician, we immediately assume they have “taken some money” from somewhere. We don’t trust them to be clean and upright - they are the number one enemies of integrity.

To uproot this, the starting point is an asset declaration. We need every politician to put their cards on the table so that we could have an explanation on any suspicious wealth, and to track any disproportionate increase or decrease in wealth in the future.

Asset declaration is not to find out whether a politician is rich or poor, asset declaration is to find out if our money in government is secure.

But I sense that the Tuan Ibrahim (photo) of 2015 is not lost. Because after saying that asset declaration is unIslamic, he said that PAS politicians were still ready to declare their assets.

Legislation vs special motion

The only problem, he said, was the manner of declaration. He supported his colleague, PAS secretary-general Takiyuddin Hassan, who said he wouldn’t declare his assets because there was no force of law to compel such declaration.

What they are suggesting is that they would only support a full legislative measure to compel asset declaration, rather than a halfway house of a special parliamentary motion.

This is strange.

If they are, in principle, in agreement to asset declaration, why would a lesser measure disincentivise them to declare their assets? Regardless of which measure compels them to declare their assets, they have to do the same thing: To state how much they and their family own in total, and to make a statutory declaration claiming it is true and valid.

It doesn’t matter whether it is a law or a special motion, the presentation of the asset declaration is the same for every politician. The fundamental principle also doesn’t alter.

That is why the opposition to asset declaration by Tuan Ibrahim and Takiyuddin (photo), based on the manner of the declaration, is confusing.

Security risk

To a certain extent, Tuan Ibrahim did relay his concern: He was worried that the asset declaration exercise would expose him to security risks. This is a common excuse used by many BN politicians in the past.

The question of security risk is overblown because most people could estimate how much a politician is worth based on what he has done in the past, and their salary now – information that is publicly available. This typically worries politicians who have enormous wealth, or wealth levels that are disproportionate to what people expect.

Additionally, the argument is flawed because politicians who have declared their assets previously did not face any additional security risk. Public figures already receive additional protection from the authorities, and a mere asset declaration wouldn’t put them to grave risk. Their public profile cancels off security risks.

However, I wouldn’t pretend to know what Tuan Ibrahim truly believes in. Because he also said that the entire practice is pointless as politicians, like the common people, would have declared their assets to the Inland Revenue Board (IRB) every year.

'Pointless'

That means it is unlikely that these politicians are corrupt. This is highly confusing because our experience has shown us that such declaration by no means guarantees that politicians are all clean and incorruptible. In fact, the behind-closed-doors nature of declaring to IRB adds more layers of secrecy to the wealth of a public figure who’s in charge of public funds.

More important is the explicit denial of the principle of asset declaration. Tuan Ibrahim seems to overturn once and for all his old beliefs that accountability and integrity matters among politicians.

By saying that a principled practice of asset declaration is “pointless”, Tuan Ibrahim meant that the right time for such implementation is “never”.

That is disappointing – and confusing.

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JAMES CHAI is a legal consultant and researcher working for Invoke, among others. You may reach him at jameschai.mpuk@gail.com. - Mkini