COMMENT | It appears that the next 14th general election (GE14) is around the corner. Given this, Transparency International Malaysia (TI-M) would like to urge all political parties to engage in clean and fair election campaigns. Integrity and fairness in electoral campaigns are crucial to ensure that corruption does not damage the credibility of the entire election and its outcome, thereby undermining the due democratic process enshrined in the Federal Constitution.

Possible corruption risks in the electoral process include voters’ registration manipulation, ballot-box stuffing and vote buying. An opaque, non-transparent voting process can also affect voter lists and vote counting. There should be zero tolerance to ‘money politics’ practiced by both sides of the political divide.

Political patronage, abuse of power involving favouritism, nepotism and conflict of interest in the award of government concessions, disbursement of contracts, adhoc projects, licences, shares development funds and other benefits must stop.

Political party financing is another big area surrounding electoral campaigns. As the recommendations by the National Consultative Committee on Political Financing have already been given last September, Malaysians are eager to see these recommendations accepted by the Malaysian cabinet, resulting in the full implementation of a new law to govern and regulate the financing of political parties in the upcoming general election.

Having a set of laws to regulate political funding will have a positive impact on Malaysia as it will improve the country’s image in terms of transparency, integrity and accountability.

Campaign financing enforcement is also necessary. Election campaigns are increasingly expensive - politicians require large sums of money to run their campaigns and this raises serious integrity concerns. The sources of these funds, the amounts that may be accepted and the lack of equal resources may present potential threats that can affect the election.

As stated in the Election Offences Act 1958, the limits on campaign spending for each candidate is RM200,000 for federal elections and RM100,000 for state election, and only expenditure incurred between the date of publication of the notice of election and the day of election is subject to these financial limitation.

As such there is no duty on the candidate to disclose any income or expenditure outside this campaign period. The question we ask is - where does this campaign money come from and how much is actually spent by each candidate?...