Political donations are 'mother of all corruption': C4
Political donations are the “mother of all corruption”, said Center to Combat Corruption and Cronyism (C4) founding director Cynthia Gabriel, who also urged the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government to prioritise a political donations law to deal with the issue.
This comes after former Sabah chief minister Musa Aman was acquitted of 46 charges of corruption and money, aided by an affidavit by former attorney-general Abdul Gani Patail, who said the monies involved were for political funding.
“We have worked diligently with several institutions on this (a political donations bill) in previous years, right from the 1MDB scandal days.
“We have also submitted a full proposal for a political donations bill to the National Centre for Governance, Integrity and Anti-Corruption (GIACC) for further consideration.
“There was supposed to be a bill drafted and tabled in Parliament last December, but things remain very uncertain with the change of government.
“It (political donations) is the mother of all corruption. We urge the government of Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin to place the bill as a top priority,” Cynthia told Malaysiakini when contacted today.
Previously, Attorney-General Idrus Harun had said that prosecutors had withdrawn the 46 charges against Musa due to Gani’s affidavit defending his decision in 2012 not to take further action against Musa as investigations had revealed the monies involved were political funding.
In view of this, and a representation made by Musa to have the charges struck out, Idrus said the Attorney-General's Chambers was duty-bound to review the whole evidence of the case.
It was then found that some evidence could not be obtained and that some witnesses could no longer testify, he said.
"Having studied the whole available evidence and upon discussions held with the prosecution and investigation team, I decided to withdraw all the charges against Musa,” Idrus had said.
Electoral watchdog Bersih told Malaysiakini that Musa’s defence that it was all political donations should be proven in court and not “arbitrarily decided” by the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC).
“If it was proven without a shadow of doubt in an open and fair trial that it was indeed political donations and the money belonged to the party, then it would quell public disquiet over this matter,” Bersih chairperson Thomas Fann said.
Musa’s acquittal also underlined the urgent need to separate the office of the attorney-general from that of the public prosecutor, he said.
The attorney-general’s primary role is to act as legal counsel to the government, and for the attorney-general to decide on charges against a member of a party in government would be a conflict of interest, he explained.
“We also called for reforms to political funding, for it to be publicly funded and for an end to elected politicians sitting in government-linked companies.
“We need a political financing law in force to plug loopholes in the law that allows corrupt public officials to claim what they received were anonymous political donations,” Fann said.
Similarly, Transparency International-Malaysia (TI-M) president Muhammad Mohan said Malaysia needs a political funding law immediately to compel lawmakers and political parties to transparently declare any donations they receive.
TI-M has worked on this for the past 10 years, he said, and had proposed recommendations to the previous BN government to introduce the law with the launching of the publication Political Funding in Malaysia.
Though some lawmakers within Pakatan Harapan were opposed to a political funding law, Muhammad said the Harapan government did show an interest in introducing the bill in Parliament.
“As it stands now, the draft bill is ready and was supposed to be tabled during the last March sitting - but that did not happen.
“TI-M would urge the PN government under the leadership of the prime minister to table this bill in the coming July sitting and to convince lawmakers to support this bill,” he added. - Mkini
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