Solve integrity crisis first before regulating funding

KUALA LUMPUR: The ‘integrity crisis’ among the politicians in this country need to be addressed first before any mechanism for political funding could be implemented, says president of Transparency International Malaysia (TI-M) Datuk Akhbar Satar.

He said if the integrity crisis was still strong among the politicians, then any mechanism or regulation designed to combat corruption and abuse of power would be difficult to achieve, and would not be able to correct the public perception on the issue.

“This is not a matter of law or mechanism, (but) the integrity among politicians.

“Even with various regulations or mechanisms, there is still the need to address the integrity issue,” he said when contacted by Bernama here yesterday.

He said this in response to Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s statement on Friday that the government was still studying the best mechanism on the funding of political parties in the country.

Dr Mahathir explained that the mechanism was needed to avoid corruption in the management of political parties because the biggest corruption scandals were mostly related to such parties.

According to Akhbar, integrity should be the practice of every politician as they were leaders who would determine the culture and the political struggle of their respective parties.

Meanwhile, political analyst Dr Syed Agil Syed Alsagoff proposed for an independent body to be set up to monitor and regulate the funds allocated to political parties in the country.

He said such body should be placed under the Parliament to enable every financial movement of the parties to be reported and declared to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

“The body could also formulate a code of ethics that must be adhered to by all political parties, especially pertaining to the use of the funding, besides having a section for mediation to handle complaints of any form of power abuse by any particular political party,” he said.

The senior lecturer of Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) also admitted that every political party needs funding, including public donations for their activities, but the details of their financial ledger should be monitored to avoid mismanagement.

“This code of ethics can also ensure that the fund is used in a transparent and beneficial way for the party and its members,” he added.

Meanwhile, PKR vicepresident Tian Chua said apart of the German model of political funding (where the parties were provided with special provisions) that could become the reference for the government to implement a transparent mechanism, he proposed that political parties establish their own foundations.

He said the establishment of such a foundation to manage political funds in accordance with the existing rules and regulations would be easier to implement.

Nevertheless, Tian Chua expressed hope that any mechanism that yet to be decided should be fair to every political party, including the opposition, without favouring the party of the ruling government.

With regard to the German model, he said the mechanism was to allow the government to give out allocation in accordance with the percentage of support received by a political party during an election.

“The allocation is distributed according to the percentage of voter’s support for the party in the election, for instance, if the party gets 30 per cent support, then the allocation for the party should also be 30 per cent.

“Through this method, the people will be the ones who decide the amount of funds received by any particular party,” he said.