KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 15 ― DAP’s Ong Kian Ming accused today Senator Datuk Seri Idris Jala of attempting to mislead Malaysians on the war against corruption by claiming the opposition were reluctant to buy into the Barisan Nasional (BN) government’s push for a political financing law.

The opposition MP insisted that his party had never been consulted nor asked by any agency for support on any political financing legislation, contrary to the recent allegation by the minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of government reforms.

“And the DAP has never objected to any political financing reform or bill. How could be reject what was never offered to us in the first place?” he asked in a statement.

The Serdang MP also reminded Idris that opposition lawmakers had turned out en masse for a 2013 integrity workshop on corruption malpractice awareness conducted by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) which their peers from the ruling coalition had skipped.

“To emphasize, NOT A SINGLE BN MP showed up for this training which was conducted in Majestic Hotel by Tan Sri Abu Kassim, the head the MACC as well as Tan Sri Ambrin Buang, the Auditor General,” Ong wrote in his statement, with the words in capital letters for emphasis.

He added that a picture published in the 2013 annual report of the Government Transformation Programme proved his claim with Idris’ fellow minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of governance and integrity, Datuk Paul Low, photographed surrounded only by opposition MPs.

Idris, who is also chief executive of the government’s efficiency unit PEMANDU, had taken to its website Monday saying the opposition lacked the “appetite” for reforms.

“In 2014, when for the second time our Prime Minister had called for the regulation of political financing, senior Barisan party members argued that to be fair, it should be implemented in tandem with Pakatan.

“We felt positive about this because at least one side (Barisan) accepted our proposal and the other side, Pakatan may perhaps have been keen to jump on this bandwagon given their stance on governance and transparency.

“Again, we ended up with no voluntary takers. Clearly, there was no appetite for such a reform at the time,” Idris wrote in an August 10 article on the PEMANDU website titled “Throwing down the gauntlet”.

Ong hit out at Idris, saying the remarks showed the minister to be either “political naïve or purposefully ignorant” if the latter believes the controversy over debt-laden state investor 1Malaysia Development Berhad would not have erupted if “BN and Pakatan had agreed to the political financing agreement proposed by PEMANDU”.

“Should I remind Idris Jala of the fact that Prime Minister Najib signed the Transparency International’s Electoral Integrity Pact in February 2013 and one month later, in March 2013, almost US$700 million (RM2.6 billion) made its way into PM Najib’s private AMBank account?” he asked.

He also questioned Idris’ ability to lead the new National Consultative Committee on Political Funding announced yesterday by Prime Minister Datuk Najib Razak as the government’s initiative to make political funding more transparent in the wake of public uproar over a US$2.6 billion “donation” to Umno from the Middle East.