Political funding law must come with other reforms – Maria

The government needs to pursue other proper reforms if it wants to establish a political funding law as the two come hand in hand, stressed a PKR lawmaker.

Petaling Jaya MP Maria Chin Abdullah said doing this cannot be a “piecemeal” reform, as that would render the political financing law meaningless.

“We also have to link (the political finance law) with a few other reforms. It is not good enough just to have a Political Financing Act,” she added.

Maria was speaking at a session titled ‘Challenges of a Political Financing Act’ during a joint conference on the proposed political financing law, which was organised by the Malaysian Bar and the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas) in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

The necessary reforms she mentioned include the anti-hopping law, an asset declaration law and electoral reforms, among others.

The former Bersih chairperson explained that electoral reform is crucial because it is pointless to have a law to control candidates without free and fair elections.

Maria pointed out that the election offences in the previous Johor polls have not been resolved, even though they were reported to the police and to the Election Commission (EC).

Full commitment, public feedback

“If we say we don’t want another 1MDB… then we need to commit to a fuller reform package. It cannot be piecemeal, but we have to really be very angry and forceful about this,” she said.

Otherwise, it will be like the tabling of the anti-hopping law, which has been postponed multiple times, she added.

Maria said the anti-hopping law is now expected to be tabled in the July parliamentary sitting, but with three weeks to go before the sitting, she has still not seen the draft bill yet.

A bill should not be brought to Parliament the day before or the day of the debate as it defeats the purpose of the debate as the lawmakers have not been given enough time to scrutinise the bill, she added.

The parliamentarian also suggested that if the prime minister is truly sincere about a political financing law, there should be a public discussion on it.

Maria cited the sexual harassment bill as an example, where the relevant ministry sought public feedback on the bill via a radio announcement.

“If you have the draft bill (for political financing), put it out on the public domain and let people comment on it. Then, bring it to the select committee to fine-tune the bill and then bring it to Parliament,” she said. - Mkini