LETTER | MACC’s plans for the next elections are what Malaysia sorely deserves, but steps need to be taken to ensure that civil society can fully utilise the planned 24-hour operation centres for the next general election.

On Tuesday, MACC chief commissioner Dzulkifli Ahmad revealed plans to establish round-the-clock operation rooms in each state to monitor corruption and abuse of power in the 14th general election, and will be ready to take in reports of violations of the Elections Act and the MACC Act.

The operation rooms are an extremely welcome move by the MACC towards building institutions that prevent electoral malpractice.

However, we are concerned that if the centres are poorly publicised and underutilised by the public, the efforts may be in danger of turning into a mere publicity stunt.

Such centres catering towards electoral malpractice will be useful to groups like Pemantau, who were themselves formed because of the lack of institutional support for monitoring corrupt practices during elections.

C4 Centre firmly adds that for MACC’s efforts to be utilised to its full potential, civil society groups and the public at large must be engaged in a meaningful way to act as their eyes and ears.

This includes coming up with a list of what constitute as malpractice for the public to easily identify violations, and for MACC to proactively investigate digitally published videos of corruption violations —rather than just waiting for formal reports.

If MACC acts proactively, corrupt electoral practices can be seriously deterred.

MACC stands to gain further confidence with the public and demonstrate its genuine motivations to rid Malaysia of corruption, whether during elections or otherwise.

Before this, there was hardly any directly cooperation with existing good governance civil society groups to programmatically observe, document or report abuse of power and money politics during elections.

We see this as a key opportunity to engage as a whole-of-systems approach in the fight against corruption.

Part of the reason why C4 Centre had published its report, "The Roles and Functions of the EC and MACC in Addressing Corrupt Practices at Elections" in Nov 2017 was because civil society groups were having difficulty finding the correct agency to report electoral malpractice.

It is imperative that corrupt practices during elections cannot be allowed to repeat—and many were observed in the previous elections.

In the same C4 Centre report, we highlighted that there were clearly documented cases of money politics being used to win votes. These are considered bribery and treating, which are in violation of the Election Offences Act 1954.

Such corrupt practices are likely to be rife in the crucial 14th general election, and as much as possible needs to be done to prevent it.

Civil society and the wider public should also prepare themselves with an action plan to engage MACC as much as possible, by reporting corrupt practices to such operational rooms in the soon approaching election.

C4 Centre reminds the public that they can take advantage of widely available technology in mobile phones to snap photos and take videos of suspected violations which will be useful as evidence to ensure that violations can successfully be prosecuted.

In the meantime, C4 Centre has reached out to several state MACC offices, and hope to receive a positive reply soon on further cooperation.

C4 Centre calls on the MACC to reach out and cooperate with good governance groups, such as ourselves, to ensure that abuse of power and money politics are stopped in its tracks.

We hope to see that such efforts to increase the operational capacity will have extremely real and lasting effects in Malaysian public life.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.