KUCHING: Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) is all for election funding transparency and hoped the Election Act would be amended to compel all political parties to declare their donors.
Its president, Tan Sri Datuk Amar Dr James Masing, said he hoped the opposition would support such an amendment if it were ever tabled in Parliament.
“We are interested to know who gives to the DAP. If we had a law, EC must be aware of who donates to which party.
“In countries like the United States, they do it publicly to get sponsorships,” he told a news conference after chairing PRS’s Supreme Council meeting here yesterday.
Masing, who is also Minister of Land Development, said if the transparency policy was put in place, a tycoon who was going to donate to a political party merely had to declare his sponsorship to the EC.
“If you are going to donate RM10 million to a political party, you just need to declare to EC that you are going to donate. That is not a crime.
“We will then know who gives to whom … ‘jangan main belakang’ (do not go through hidden channels).”
Masing said since such an amendment needed a two-thirds majority in Parliament before it can be passed, it needed the opposition to vote for it.
Earlier, PRS deputy president Datuk Joseph Entulu, also Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, said the prime minister once proposed to have a law to create transparency for the funding system.
“But it was opposed by the opposition, in particular the DAP.
“That is why the act was never introduced because we did not have enough majority to vote for it.”
Under the proposed amendment, Entulu said political parties were supposed to reveal their sources and amounts. He added that the DAP did not want it.
“Because the opposition opposed to the proposed amendment of the Election Act, now there is nothing wrong with receiving funding from anywhere without having had to reveal it.”