{"id":12231,"date":"2015-02-26T15:00:12","date_gmt":"2015-02-26T07:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/?p=12231"},"modified":"2015-02-26T15:13:25","modified_gmt":"2015-02-26T07:13:25","slug":"time-for-public-asset-declaration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/time-for-public-asset-declaration\/","title":{"rendered":"Time for public asset declaration"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Pauline Wong<\/strong><\/p>\n

For someone in public office, every ringgit spent would come under scrutiny, entrusted as they are in spending public money effectively and for the good of the people.<\/p>\n

From what they spend on themselves to the lifestyles they lead, every ringgit has to be accounted for in the interest of transparency and accountability. <\/span><\/p>\n

In 2012, graft watchdog Transparency International Malaysia (TI-M) urged<\/a> all elected and public officials to make a full and public disclosure of assets upon assuming office. Then-president Paul Low had said the call is something TI-M has repeated for many years \u2014 the full public disclosure of assets to improve the confidence of both Malaysians and foreign investors.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the time, TI-M had issued the statement after Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng and members of the Penang state executive council (exco) had made public declarations of their assets, which they posted on the state government\u2019s website.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"guan<\/a><\/p>\n

In August 2013, Lim continued to make good on his promise and all assets of the 11 exco members and 19 state assemblymen were again declared on the website. <\/span><\/p>\n

Penang was not the first to declare their assets, however \u2014 in 2011, four Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) representatives also made public declarations of their assets. <\/span><\/p>\n

The four\u2014Sungai Siput MP Michael Jeyakumar Devaraj, Kota Damansara assemblyman Nasir Hashim, Shah Alam councillor A. Sivarajan and Kajang councillor S. Arutchelvan handed out statutory declarations listing their salaries and assets such as cars and houses to a townhall meeting at the time; they have continued to do so since. <\/span><\/p>\n

However, the same could not be said for Cabinet ministers, deputy ministers and their family members, who when asked to declare their assets publicly merely said that at best, they would declare their assets to the Prime Minister \u2014 not even to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission as judges are supposed to do. <\/span><\/p>\n

In 2012, then-Minister in the Prime Minister\u2019s Department Nazri Aziz had said public declaration of assets was \u201cdangerous\u201d, since it will also include personal details and it would endanger all involved as outsiders would know how much the ministers are worth.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nazri\u2019s comments at the time invited derision from all, and rightly so \u2014 an individual in public office is exactly that: they are beholden to the public and the trust given to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

As such, when recent articles surfaced that Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak\u2019s allegedly \u2018large\u2019 inheritance from his late father, Malaysia\u2019s second Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak Hussein was responsible for the seemingly \u2018lavish\u2019 lifestyle of Najib\u2019s wife Rosmah Mansor, the need for public declarations of assets have never been so important.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Prime Minister\u2019s Office had, according to <\/span>reports<\/span><\/a>, \u00a0replied to queries from the New York Times on the source of Najib\u2019s wealth and the wealth of those related to him. <\/span><\/p>\n

The paper had been seeking responses to its article on February 8 that highlighted the wealth of businessman Low Taek Jho and his role as a property investor, whose transactions involved various parties including Riza Aziz, Najib’s stepson.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, to newsportal The Malaysian Insider, Najib\u2019s siblings had said that their father was known for his frugality and integrity, dismissing talk of a large inheritance. “We wish to put on record that Tun Abdul Razak was a highly principled man, well-known to all who knew him for his frugality and utmost integrity and any statement or inference to the contrary would be totally false and misleading to his memory and to his service and sacrifices for the nation,\u201d they said in a statement. <\/span><\/p>\n

This, however, is not the first time a sibling of Najib\u2019s had come out to talk of their father\u2019s thriftiness: Last year, on the anniversary of Tun Razak\u2019s death, Nazir Razak wrote a column where he highlighted his fathers\u2019 frugality and modest lifestyle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In response, DAP lawmaker Tony Pua had questioned Najib’s source of wealth and urged the prime minister to declare his assets. <\/span><\/p>\n

DAP leader Lim Kit Siang urged the same \u2014 asking Najib to break his silence on his office\u2019s statement attributing his expenditure to an inheritance in light of his family\u2019s statement.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cElegant silence is no option for the Prime Minister,\u201d Lim said, \u201cI can vouch that Tun Razak was known for his frugality and utmost integrity as I had on no occasion in my years in Parliament from 1971 \u2013 1976 when Razak was the Prime Minister to raise any issue casting any doubt on his integrity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

There is no doubt that Malaysia\u2019s continuing slow ascent up the Corruption Perception Indexes needs a boost, and public declaration of assets may just be that boost. The question now is: Is there enough political will to do so?<\/span><\/p>\n

-The Rocket<\/p>\n

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By Pauline Wong For someone in public office, every ringgit spent would come under scrutiny, entrusted as they are in spending public money effectively and for the good of the people. From what they spend on themselves to the lifestyles they lead, every ringgit has to be accounted for in the interest of transparency and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[274],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12232,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12231\/revisions\/12232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}