KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 26 — The federal government today reaffirmed its pledge to make political funding more transparent, but said the Political Financing Bill is still being refined and could be finalised soon although no exact timeline was given.
Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reform) M. Kulasegaran said the government is continuing to collect public feedback, while a bipartisan parliamentary committee is reviewing the Bill amid growing calls from the Opposition to table it.
“If you ask about commitment I can say this government is committed beyond than 100 per cent,” Kulasegaran said during Question Time in the Dewan Rakyat, responding to an Opposition MP’s question on whether or not the government would follow through on its pledge to regulate political donations.
The push for the Bill gained momentum following the 1MDB corruption scandal, which highlighted the lack of oversight regarding large-scale donations to political parties and personalities.
The first formal move was the formation of the National Consultative Committee on Political Financing in 2015, which proposed 32 recommendations.
Past administrations have expressed their intent to table the Bill, but legislation has been deferred due to changes to the government.
Kulasegaran today suggested that the Bill would have been tabled earlier by the first Pakatan Harapan administration if not for the power grab that ousted it just two years into power.
“The commitment is there, but you have to take cognisance of the fact that when the first PH government was in power it only had two years; we could have actually tabled the Bill, but we missed a golden opportunity to give the country something,” he said.
Among the key aims of the Bill is the mandatory disclosure of donors, especially from business owners or companies, as a way to curtail the use of government procurement to reward them, the deputy minister said.
