DAP’s Kluang MP Liew Chin Tong is calling for politicians to be appointed to head local councils, so that the third tier of government can be more effective.

Liew said a political agenda is necessary to push for local government elections in all levels, from city mayor, municipality head to local councillors.

Local councils need leaders and not merely bureaucrats, he added.

Liew proposed that the new opposition coalition of DAP, PKR and Parti Amanah Negara promotes local council elections as an agenda in the coming national elections, which will be called by 2018.

“We need to empower politicians to deal with politics in councils as we currently have a bureaucrat-driven culture, where orders are taken from the state authority (chief minister/menteri besar).

“This is where local councillors feel disempowered,” Liew ( photo ) said at the Local Government Roundtable Discussion in Penang yesterday.

Concurring with Liew, former municpal councillor Goh Ban Cheng said civil servants should not be appointed as mayors or presidents of local councils as they would continue with their civil service mindset.

“Civil servants as mayors or presidents may be good for the chief minister or menteri besar because they are trained to listen to the authorities,” Goh said.

Not enough done to restore local polls

Centre to Combat Corruption and Corruption Cynthia head Gabriel said Pakatan Rakyat, which won Penang and Selangor in 2008, has not done enough to restore local government elections.

Cynthia said the states must ensure that the next batch of councillors to be apppointed have an element of a vote.

“There should be some form of allowing people to choose, then the state governments can filter out and appoint the councillor,” said the Petaling Jaya City councillor.

While acknowledging Penang’s effort to restore local government elections through legal means, Cynthis said more must be done to have people’s representatives in the local councils.

She lamented that without more people’s representatives, the state governments would eventually try to control the councils.

“This happened in Selangor, where the NGO quota for councillors has shrunk from six to three, where two out of three are political appointees,” she added.

Penang has been urged to conduct mock elections for its local councils so that the people chosen by the public can then be appointed to the posts.

However, the state government has argued that this exercise may be ultra vires federal laws, or “illegal” and the legitimacy of those appointed via this route may be challenged by Putrajaya.

Penang Institute fellow Wong Chin Huat ( photo ) said mock elections were legal as the recommendations for councillors are by voters, instead of them being recommended by political parties or NGOs.

Wong said the real problems would be more technical as it involves infrastructure and mobilising voters to vote on a specific date.

“The real obstacles we face in conducting such polls are more political, not legal. If there is political will, those involved will find a way,” he added.

PKR Machang Bubok assemblyperson Lee Khai Loon offered his constituency to carry out mock local council election as a test case.

Lee said the constituency was already practising people’s participatory and gender budgeting, where the voters decide how allocations are to be spend.

“We thought that after 2008, Pakatan could implement the necessary changes like conducting local council elections. We have the political will, but there is political reality too that we need to address,” he added.

“Although we are often demotivated as the campaign and efforts to bring back local polls cannot become a reality yet, we realise that we need to empower people on the ground and encourage more people to support local polls.”

The four-hour session was organised by human rights NGO Suaram, and supported by the Penang government as part of the state’s Local Democracy Festival which starts today.

Moderated by Suaram's Jeffrey Pang, the event was also attended by state executive councillor Chow Kon Yeow, constitutional law expert Abdul Aziz Bari, human rights lawyer Andrew Khoo, Aliran president Francis Loh and former civil servant and Malaysiakini columnist KJ John.