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Johor Pakatan heading towards a slippery slope

LETTER | Johor's local government, science and technology exco member Tan Hong Pin said that Johor is striving to ensure a more democratic process in the local council.

In the same breath, he insisted that all representatives will be from component parties in Pakatan Harapan and the council will not include representatives from NGOs.

Tan further stated: "We are pushing local government elections as this is one of the promises in the Pakatan Harapan manifestos".

A perfect oxymoron!

A democratic process demands inclusiveness and participation from stakeholders. Excluding the voice of the NGOs is most undemocratic and can only mean that the council represents the voice of the politicians and Johor Harapan intends to silence the voice of the residents. It goes against the principle of “No taxation without representation”.

It is also hypocritical to say that one is pushing for local government elections, and on the other hand, covet all the councillor positions as a reward for their political supporters.

The considerations to take in political appointees adversely affect the quality of councillors that are chosen to serve the people. In fact, why serve the people when the “boss” is their political masters who will decide on their reappointment?

The above points are not abstract notions but are clearly obvious to politicians, that it is detrimental to society when you have undeserving cronies serving the people. It reflects a lack of political will and a weakness to stand up against the demands for rewards from political supporters.

On the one hand, we have politicians like Teresa Kok who is calling for the abolishment of the Federal Territory Ministry even though she is highly touted to be appointed as the FT minister.

Tan Hong Pin is heading to a slippery slope towards GE15. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Harapan politicians attaining power would be wise to put checks and balance in place so that when temptation comes their way, the possibility that they will be found out will discourage them from unethical practices.

Our Prime Minister Dr Mahathir is now getting the Institutional Reform Committee to bring back all the checks and balances that will prevent a government from going kleptocratic again.

Removing NGO councillors is equivalent to removing checks and balances. We must avoid planting seeds of kleptocracy as we move into a New Malaysia.

The GE14 has been declared a people’s victory by all political parties. Should not the people be empowered with the third vote as soon as possible?

Tan Hong Pin needs to explain to the people why he is going against the spirit of implementing local council elections which were even announced by the minister.

Words cannot be played around to justify bad decisions. The people are more discerning about baseless statements, Thanks to the countless BN politicians, we can now recognise such statements when we see one.

Perhaps the federal minister needs to step in with guidelines to rein in state excos that do not have the political will to stand up against political patronage.


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

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