PETALING JAYA, Aug 7 — PKR today launched birthday greeting postcards for its imprisoned leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in a bid to encourage the public to make a habit of political donations, amid an ongoing debate over political funding in the country.

The party’s strategic director Sim Tze Tzin said it has printed out 1,000 birthday greeting cards to celebrate Anwar’s 68th birthday this Monday, and will deliver each card to Sungai Buloh prison where the PKR de-facto chief is incarcerated at a minimum donation of RM50.

“We call on the public to donate at least RM 50. We want to get them used to making political funding in small ways so the can be kept abreast of the political developments,” he said at a news conference here.

“So far, we have received RM 3,000 only and to hit RM 2.6 billion, we need another 52 million donors,” Sim added, in a swipe at confirmed reports of a RM2.6 billion “donation” made to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s personal bank account.

The opposition and the Barisan Nasional (BN) ruling coalition have been needling each other over the past week after the Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission (MACC) confirmed that the money deposited in Najib’s account was a donation.

Both sides of the divide have since goaded each other to reveal the identities of their political funders, leading to the Election Commission suggesting a political financing law to make it compulsory for parties to reveal their sources of funding and make for a more transparent electoral process.

On Monday, the MACC said in a statement that the the RM 2.6 billion in funds had come from donors and not from troubled state-owned firm 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) as previously claimed.

The anti-graft agency did not, however, reveal the identities of the donors or the purpose of the donation, triggering a flurry of protests from opposition lawmakers who demanded that the details be publicly disclosed.

The MACC yesterday said that it has identified and interviewed the donors but could not reveal their identities. It also said that Najib will be called in to explain the donation.

On July 2, international business daily Wall Street Journal first made the expose that the fund, a whooping US$700 million (RM2.6 billion) was funnelled into Najib’s Ambank account through SRC International, a former 1MDB subsidiary.

It was previously alleged that the funds were used for BN campaigns but detractors have since pointed out that this would be illegal as RM2.6 billion far surpasses the legal limit allowed by Malaysia’s election laws.