Kuala Lumpur mayor Mohamad Amin Nordin Abd Aziz has labeled electoral reform movement Bersih as "stubborn" for wanting to go ahead with the Bersih 5 rally despite not getting permission from City Hall to use Dataran Merdeka.

"They are stubborn people, we have rejected (their application) but they still want to come, so we will inform the police. Police shall guard the venue," said the mayor.

Amin said this when met after chairing the DBKL Budget 2017 dialogue with parliamentarians and community leaders at the DBKL Training Institute today.

Yesterday, Bersih chief Maria Chin said that it respected the decision by the Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) not to allow the use of Dataran Merdeka, but said that they would go ahead with plans to gather on Nov 19 in the vicinity of the iconic public square.

Maria said that based on the results of their meeting with police to notify cops of the rally today, Bersih had decided to go on with the rally, but clarified that they will not enter Dataran Merdeka proper.

At the same event, Amin also said that DBKL will now have to drastically improve its tax collection and look for more revenue-generation opportunities around the city as it needs to make up for the shortfall in federal funding.

"The federal allocations channeled to DBKL in the past five years have drastically shrunk, and DBKL can no longer depend on federal funds to finance ongoing projects and will have to utilise its own monies.

"As such DBKL will increase efforts to recover assay tax, rental payments and development charges, rather than look out for new sources of revenue," he said.

Amin said that from its normal budget of half a billion ringgit, it now received just around RM20 to RM40 million.

For Bersih 5 as well as previous rallies, Bersih has always applied to use Dataran Merdeka, although DBKL had always denied their requests for various reasons.

However, Bersih continued to use the venue despite being told they cannot do so.