From Miss Lim Sian See at https://www.facebook.com/lim.siansee/posts/1704208903131230
Terence Gomez of Transparency International confirms what Najib and Rahman Dahlan said as he was part of the team to regulate political funding.
Yes, Terence confirms that DAP and opposition were the ones who objected to full transparency of political funding.
This means that Lim Guan Eng was telling a white lie again by saying PM never approached DAP to ask them about regulating political funding.
Lim Guan Eng conveniently forgot to mention that it was the Transparency International team that led this initiative which they rejected and not PM Najib.
Tokong or Tokong… always telling little white lies.
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In his letter, published in Malaysia’s leading newspapers on 1 August 2015, Rahman, a minister in Najib’s cabinet – offering his views in his capacity as the BN’s Director of Strategic Communication – drew attention to a meeting held between Transparency International (TI) and members of the opposition parties in Parliament on 1 December 2010.
TI had initiated a project to review the financing of politics and to prepare relevant recommendations to eradicate processes that were hindering the conduct of fair elections. I had been appointed by TI to help implement this project.
At that time, the president of TI was Paul Low, now a minister in the Prime Minister’s Department. Abdul Rahman disclosed, at this meeting with TI, that opposition parliamentarians were not in favour of mandatory full disclosure of all funding sources as this would deter their contributors from financing their parties.
The views held by the opposition, as outlined by Abdul Rahman in his letter, are in my recollection accurate.
Only one person showed up for this meeting: Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz, in his capacity as Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department.
At this meeting, Nazri acknowledged that Malaysia’s general elections were free but not fair as political parties did not have equal access to funds. He asserted that donors to Umno were registered, but some of them preferred to remain anonymous.
Nazri agreed with some of TI’s recommendations, including direct state funding of parties to reduce, even halt, the latter’s dependence on business for money to run their campaigns; to prohibit ownership of the media by parties; and to institute full disclosure of political donations.
However, Nazri did not agree to all of TI’s recommendations. Nazri’s primary concern was TI’s recommendation that power be devolved to oversight agencies such as the Election Commission (EC), as well as the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and the Attorney General’s Chambers – but this one is a completely different subject and not related to disclosure of political funding.
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