Pakatan Harapan is set to launch its 14th general election (GE14) manifesto this Thursday and has challenged the BN manifesto team to a debate.

Bersatu policy and strategy bureau chief Rais Hussin (in photo above, centre), who leads Harapan’s manifesto team, said the opposition coalition was ready to provide a “humble venue” for the debate.

“We would like to invite the BN manifesto team to debate us. We will have our team of manifesto debaters ready.

“We are very confident (because) our manifesto came about not due to the whims and fancies of one person but through hardcore research and a contestation of ideas.

“And we also engaged with the various stakeholders (for our manifesto),” Rais told reporters at the Bersatu headquarters in Petaling Jaya today.

BN chairperson and Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak had previously touted the ruling coalition's GE14 manifesto as being the "best ever" and promised to put the rakyat's interests first.

BN has yet to unveil its GE14 manifesto.

Rais was coy on details but hinted that Harapan’s manifesto would address political funding and assets declaration in a “pragmatic” way.

“At the end of the day, we do not want to promise something that cannot be delivered.

“Every promise we have in our manifesto has to be realistic, pragmatic and deliverable,” he said when asked if political funding and assets declaration laws would be included.

Opposition politicians previously expressed concern that the government’s Political Donations and Expenditure Bill, which is a work in progress, would be used to suppress opposition parties.

Rais also let on that the manifesto will address cost of living, unemployment, healthcare and the need to reform democratic institutions.

The document will further include Harapan’s 10 promises for its first 100 days in power and a further 60 promises for the next five years, he added.

The Bersatu supreme council member was speaking after promising to consider a good governance agenda from a coalition of NGOs called Governance, Integrity, Accountability and Transparency (Giat).

Five-point agenda

At the agenda handover earlier, Giat spokesperson Cynthia Gabriel congratulated Bersatu for being the first political party to welcome their proposal and hoped all other parties would follow suit.

The five demands in the agenda are for political parties to:

  • Endorse legislation that will affirm the independence of institutions, most importantly the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and the Attorney-General’s Chambers.
     
  • Enact a national Freedom of Information (FOI) law, review the Official Secrets Act 1972 (OSA) and adopt open data principles.
     
  • Require by law that all cabinet ministers, members of parliament, elected officials and senior public officials to publicly declare their assets.
     
  • Implement the practice of budget and expenditure transparency at all levels of government, including participatory budgeting and monitoring mechanisms, and
     
  • Require by law that all political parties publicly declare all forms of income and expenditure.

Calling these demands “norms”, Rais said the agenda was in line with the party’s struggle for reform and justice and promised to study it before Harapan’s GE14 manifesto was finalised tonight.

Giat is made up of Transparency International-Malaysia, the Institute of Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas), Sinar Project, the Centre to Combat Corruption and Cronyism (C4), Friends of Kota Damansara, the Society for the Protection of Human Rights (Proham) and an umbrella group of residential associations called MyPJ.