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The forum, which began at 8:00 pm, was moderated by Shanmuga Kanesalingam (Malaysian Centre for Constitutionalism and Human Rights).  It featured Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman (Former Chairman of the Election Commission), Anthony Loke Siew Fook (Member of Parliament for Rasah) and Professor Edmund Terence Gomez (University of Malaya).  Unfortunately, none of the Barisan Nasional parliamentarians invited by BCCLC was available for the event. 

During the forum, Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman pointed out that political parties in any democracy required funds to run their day-to-day operations and court votes.  Given his experience of conducting six general elections, Tan Sri Abdul Rashid stated that Malaysia was a very young democracy, and research on mature democracies had shown that such democracies required over 65 to 100 years of nationhood to build.  He defended our electoral system as one that had all the necessary laws to ensure that the elections conducted were free and fair.  However, he conceded that the Election Commission did not have the power to control the full conduct on elections, in matters such as media coverage and public rallies.  Rather, these fell under the prerogative of the police and respective ministries. 

On this point, Anthony Loke Siew Fook, who was present at the forum to provide an opposition Parliamentarian’s perspective on the matter, noted that vernacular papers (ie Chinese-language newspapers) were the only papers that carried advertorials of political parties.  He continued by explaining that, even so, the newspapers could not criticise the ruling parties directly.  He also highlighted that the Election Offences Act 1954 governed the conduct for elections.  An interesting point that was revealed during his speech was the fact that, during election campaigning, candidates for state seats were limited to spending RM100,000, while candidates for Parliament were limited to RM200,000.  

Anthony Loke Siew Fook discussed that Parliamentarians received RM13,108.50 per month, including all allowances.  He revealed that Parliamentarians who were elected beyond two terms, on the other hand, would receive a pension worth half that amount for the rest of their lives.  He also shared his and his party’s experience in raising funds through fundraising dinners and public rallies.  He admitted that there was a lack of disclosure regarding their funders – mainly individuals and small businesses – as the funders were afraid of repercussions if they were revealed to be supporters, on record, of his party.

Professor Edmund Terence Gomez, who has written extensively on the subject of parliamentary and elections funding, stated that the Malaysian funding process was in great need of reform.  The gist of his presentation was that there was a blurring of lines between sources of funding, be they donations from Government-linked companies, anonymous funders or even foreign funders.  Funding from these sources posed the very real question of whether they would affect our politicians’ policies to favour other interests, instead of the people’s.  He suggested that strengthening public institutions with sweeping reforms with regards to funding – such as fixing the allocation from the government’s coffers for each party’s campaign and operational activities – was required.  He concluded by arguing that it would not only create a fair playing field, but also enable our Members of Parliament and State Assemblypersons to spend more time prioritising policy issues instead of looking for funds.  

All in all, it was a very engaging forum with eager questions from the floor to wrap up the session!