A law to regulate political financing may be legislated before the next general election, says de facto deputy law minister Hanipa Maidin.

"I do not want to speculate, but I believe we are going to present it within this term," he told reporters at the sidelines of the Anti-Corruption Summit 2018 in Kuala Lumpur today.

Hanipa stressed, however, that the plan is still under discussion by Putrajaya.

"It is still in the process of discussion. We have agreed in principle to have this legislated, but the details have not been discussed yet.

"A committee has been set up to study (the Political Financing Act), but in order to present it, we must have cabinet approval first," he said.

Hanipa was among the panellists of the 'Political financing legislation – The way forward' forum session. 

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During the forum, he was grilled by his fellow panellists – as well as former chief justice Zaki Azmi who was in the audience – for not committing to a date to introduce political financing legislation. 

The panellists, economist Terence Gomez and Bersih's Yap Swee Seng, were unsatisfied when Hanipa seemed to brush off the former's remark that the rakyat had been waiting for years for the act to be legislated.

Hanipa had said that the former opposition had waited six decades to see a change in government and that Putrajaya currently had over 100 laws to look into. 

"So many laws, so many culprits to be detained, to be charged.

"(This) has to take the queue. This is the reality we are facing," he said, adding that the government was saddled with other priorities.

Although Yap responded by saying that the Harapan government should be given time, he nevertheless stressed that a political financing law should be one of its priorities as well. 

"In the previous four by-elections (Sungai Kandis, Seri Setia, Balakong and Port Dickson), and the (ongoing) PKR internal election, we have seen symptoms of money politics slipping into Harapan.

"If this reform takes too long to be in place, I am afraid that Harapan might soon become 'BN 2.0'," he said.

Following this, Zaki noted from the floor that the government should at least start moving towards implementation if they are not ready for the law to be implemented in full.