The end to ‘Cash is King’?
Now that the cat is out of the bag on the enormous sum available for UMNO’s president to disburse, he can expect a lot more hands holding out for even larger sums of monies for services rendered to keep UMNO and BN in power.
Lim Teck Ghee, The Heat Malaysia
The latest UMNO General Assembly meeting will go down in our history as one of the most ignominious examples of political whitewashing the country has seen.
Quite apart from the failure of the party leadership to respond to the numerous allegations of corruption, mismanagement, ineptitude, and abuse of power associated with the operations of 1MDB, it appears – according to accounts from the blogging world close to UMNO’s corridors of power – that participants in the assembly meeting may have witnessed an admission of non-transparent and non-accountable political funding on a scale quite unprecedented anywhere in the world.
The occasion of that extraordinary display of political candour was the presidential briefing to party delegates prior to the official opening of the GA meeting. During the closed door meeting, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, party president, repeated his defence of the RM2.6 billion ringgit deposited into his personal bank account with Arab Malaysia Merchant Bank in 2013 as a political donation by donors who did not ask for anything in return.
Especially noteworthy was the way the President justified the existence and use of the personal account. Here is one summarised version of it:
Cerita 2.6 billion, sy nk tanya mana KB KP KW KPU3 boleh hidup tanpa dana, parti pembangkang pun dia nak dana, jd jgn nk bangkitkan soal dana ini kerana sy cari dana ini utk pastikan parti kita ini berjaya. Cerita tentang dana ini, ramai yg datang pd sy buat muka sedih, ada yg bawa pelan. Sy bantu semua bhg, igtkan negeri kalah sj sy perlu bantu, negeri menang pun sy pun kena bantu.
(On the RM2.6 billion issue, I want to ask how the division chiefs, Puteri chiefs, Wanita chiefs, Youth chiefs can survive without a fund. Even the opposition needed a fund. So, don’t raise this issue of fund because I look for this fund to ensure our party’s success. On this fund issue, there are many who come to me with a sad face and some even brought a plan (which needed to be funded). I help all the divisions. It’s not just in the state that we lost I have to help them but also in the states which we won.)
Aftermath of ‘Cash is King’
For now, Najib has had his way with the great majority of the delegates closing ranks behind him. Apart from the lonely voices of Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin (right)and Datuk Shafie Abdal, there have been few public expressions of concern or dissent raised against the party president’s explanation of the infamous personal account.
In the public arena, however, questions will continue to be raised if it is true that the donation has come with no strings attached; the propriety of such a massive donation; whether this particular deposit has crossed the lines of even our deformed political norms; whether it has undermined the integrity and legitimacy of the electoral process; whether it could lead to a permanent unequal playing field in Malaysian politics; etc.
Also as pointed out by more than one observer, the sum of RM2.6 billion is 26 times more than what was legally permissible to be spent by all the 222 Parliamentary candidates and 505 State Assembly candidates of Barisan Nasional in the 13th General Elections. The maximum expenditure which is legally permissible for a parliamentary candidate is RM200,000 while the maximum legal expenditure for a State Assembly candidate is RM100,000.
None of these questions and issues related to this particular case may ever be satisfactorily answered, especially since most observers agree that the major investigative agencies, the MACC, Bank Negara and the Attorney General’s Office, have been effectively castrated.
A pyrrhic victory
But the PM has won a pyrrhic victory and the aftermath of this battle may yet yield bitter fruit for him, UMNO and the Barisan coalition.
Thus the revelation of the secret account has led to an outcry for reform in political funding and for transparency and accountability.
Proposals for reform include:
- Prohibiting secret funds
- Banning foreign funding
- Setting contribution and expenditure limits
- Establishing reporting and disclosure requirements
It is certain that the present government will resist efforts at reform of such funding in view of its dependence on an open cheque book to win elections and stay in power. And even if reforms do take place, attempts will be made by the parties in power to water them down or circumvent them.
As Najib apparently (and somewhat crudely) put it to the assembled members in his closed door meeting:
“The fund is okay so long as we do not steal it from the people…. What is RM2.6 billion in comparison with being the ruling party?”
