PN will not hold local govt elections, but Zuraida still advocating merits
PARLIAMENT | It's final. The Perikatan Nasional government will not hold local government elections, said Local Government and Housing Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin.
However, Zuraida is still advocating its merits, including how it can improve the quality of local councillors.
PARLIAMENT | It's final. The Perikatan Nasional government will not hold local government elections, said Local Government and Housing Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin.
However, Zuraida is still advocating its merits, including how it can improve the quality of local councillors.
Speaking in the Dewan Rakyat, the minister said both society and local governments were not ready for council elections.
"The PN government will not implement local government elections, which I see as something drastic that our society and local councils are not ready for local government elections," she said during Ministers' Question Time.
Last month, she had told the Dewan Rakyat that a paper on local government elections would be presented mid-2021 for cabinet approval.
At present, a policy and an operations committee are studying the idea. A pilot study is also in the works.
However, PN government allies from Umno, PAS, and GPS voiced opposition towards the idea, and Zuraida later conceded that she would drop the idea if Putrajaya said no.
Critics of local government elections claimed that it would create racial tensions, especially in urban areas, allegedly because there are more Chinese than Malays in the cities.
Zuraida in her remarks today, however, argued that local council elections are already being held in "third-world countries" such as Rwanda and Uganda, which created very capable councillors.
"We don't have to follow their model, but when there are local government elections, the councillors standards are equal to that of ministers, and they can speak at international forums," she said.
However, under the present system where councillors are political appointees, Zuraida believed that less than 10 percent of 3,000 councillors are of that quality.
She said the ministry has set conditions that councillors must be locals with qualifications.
"But even this can't be implemented," she said.
In lieu of local council elections, Zuraida said her ministry would seek to amend the Local Government Act to allow local councils to implement policies being championed by the ministry.
However, she said these policies must be endorsed by the respective state governments through the local government council meetings attended by the menteri besar and chief ministers.
But, she lamented that at times there is a lack of political will by the state governments to implement new policies.
One example she said is raising assessment tax, which on average has not been raised for 20 years across the country.
This she said, meant the local governments were losing millions in revenue they could otherwise get if the assessment tax rates were revised.
This, in turn, makes local governments reliant on state and federal funding, instead of being self-sustaining and able to carry out their own improvement works.
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