Ong: DAP has never objected to political financing reform

Ong Kian Ming says he is aghast that Idris Jala would write as if the proposal for political financing was only accepted by Barisan Nasional but not Pakatan.

KUALA LUMPUR: Serdang MP Ong Kian Ming feels compelled to come forward and repeat “what my other colleagues have said, i.e. that the DAP has never been consulted or asked by PEMANDU or any other government agency to agree to any proposal or legislation on political financing in Malaysia”.

“The DAP has never objected to any political financing reform or bill.

Ong said that he would like to remind Idris that the Opposition MPs were much more open to working with PEMANDU on the anti-corruption NKRA initiatives compared with the BN MPs. “As far as I know, this has not been previously reported.”

So, he added, “I am aghast that Idris Jala would write as if the proposal for political financing was only accepted by one side i.e. the Barisan Nasional (BN) but not by the other side i.e. Pakatan”.

“How could we reject what was never offered to us in the first place?” he asked.

Ong cites the statement which showed that Idris was either political naïve or purposefully ignorant:

“In retrospect, I believe if both parties had accepted the recommendations back in 2010, we would not be in the current conundrum, with the entire nation suffering a protracted political battle.”

“Does the good Senator really think that the whole 1MBD scandal would not have taken place if the BN and Pakatan had agreed to the political financing agreement proposed by PEMANDU?” asked Ong.

“Should I remind Idris of the fact that Najib signed the Transparency International’s Electoral Integrity Pact in February 2013 and one month later, in March 2013, almost USD700 million made its way into his private AmBank account?”

With “these kinds of statements”, Ong said that he has to question the credibility of Idris to play an effective role as the deputy chairman of the recently announced “National Consultative Committee on Political Funding”.

Will Idris and the chairman of this committee, Paul Low, use this as a means of distracting the public from the larger problems affecting Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak and the source of the money which went into his personal AmBank accounts in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

Ong said that he was shocked to read Idris’s latest blog post in the Economic Transformation Program (ETP) website entitled, “Throwing Down the Gauntlet,” where he not only sounded like a BN apologist but also made it sound as if the Opposition were the main stumbling blocks towards undertaking reforms on political financing.

Instead of speaking up for MACC officers who were being investigated and questioned by the police and the two MACC officers who were initially transferred to the Prime Minister’s Department (PMD) a day after meeting Opposition politicians, said Ong, Idris tried to defend the RM2.6 billion “donation” to the Prime Minister.

Idris’s deafening silence vis-à-vis the attacks on MACC’s independence was even starker given that strengthening the MACC was one of the cornerstones of the anti-corruption NKRA (National Key Result Area), said Ong.

So while the independence of the MACC was under severe attack, lamented Ong, Idris has decided to defend his boss and leave the MACC officials to fend for themselves. “But perhaps worse than this was the classless attempt by Idris to write as if BN was in favour of political financing reform while Pakatan was against it.”