“WITH the rising sun, my heart warmed. As we approached Port Dickson I was aglow with excitement. There before me was the sea, pearl-coloured and calm till it lost itself in the horizon.” So wrote the British spy Bruce Lockhart in his 1936 memoir Return to Malaya, in which he retraced his controversial footsteps in Negeri Sembilan from 25 years prior. My heart warms every time I go to PD too: fond memories of childhood trips coalesce when I visit today whether for sports outings, seafood binges or cosmic inspiration at Southeast Asia’s finest observatory at Teluk Kemang.
Unfortunately, PD will now forever be associated with a political event which culminates this Saturday when polling day arrives for the seven candidates vying to represent the fine people of Negeri Sembilan’s only coastal district. The result may well play a crucial part in determining the course of Malaysian political history, but regardless of which individuals / factions / parties claim victory, the event has resulted in many important questions being asked about the ethics and rules of political campaigning.
These questions relate to the many accusations of possible election offences throughout this by-election (the fourth since the 9 May general election), centring around improper use of government machinery seen to benefit one candidate, the very eligibility of one candidate, and the making of promises that some consider to be bribes. Conspiracies about the motivations or sponsors of some of the candidates also abound.
For sure, these aspects are considered part-and-parcel of elections in Malaysia, but if we are vying to become a better democracy, they shouldn’t be. If parties and regulatory institutions were strong enough, no one would question the eligibility of any candidate, the electorate would know how each individual was funded, and campaign promises that strayed beyond the law would be definitively punished.
Getting to that point will be messy. Some in the new government seem gleeful in abusing the very same advantages they once decried when they were in opposition, though they are constrained by colleagues who abhor them doing so. And they are of course subject to unprecedented scrutiny from civil society and the new Election Commission chairman.
There are plenty of grey areas on either side of the line between ethics and legality too, beginning with the trigger for the by-election itself: the early resignation of an MP who had campaigned to serve a full term and swore an oath to ‘faithfully discharge my duties’ as a member of the Dewan Rakyat.
And while most would find it unacceptable for a candidate to travel in an official ministerial car for the purposes of campaigning, what if a candidate joins a party colleague who happens to be a minister who happens to be on government business who happens to be going from the same location and happens to be travelling to the same destination? And what happens if that colleague also happens to be a spouse? Is it overly pedantic to insist that there are no circumstances in which the candidate can travel with such a colleague during a campaign? In fact, would insisting on separate travel create further inefficiencies and extra cost? Or are these ‘coincidences’ implausible in the first place?
Is there a substantial difference between a ‘free’ and ‘sponsored’ dinner? What constitutes a minister’s ‘working hours’ when across many sectors traditional hours are becoming obsolete, with employers more concerned about delivery than the allocation of time? (And I think the Malaysian public are also more concerned about delivery.) But then how then do you divide a politician’s multiple roles? Is this an argument to completely separate the executive branch from the legislature? I had some personal experience of this distinction when I was working for an MP in the British House of Commons, when I got told off for attending a political party event during office hours, because I was employed out of parliamentary, rather than party, allowances.
So these questions should be viewed as part of political financing and structural reform more generally, and not just about election procedures. In 2016 IDEAS released a paper proposing five key principles to ensure a just system of political finance: the presence of the rule of law, fairness for voters and political parties, transparency and accountability, checks and balances, and the exercise of political and civil liberties by the electorate.
I hope the government bases its reforms to political finance, election procedures and possibly the voting system itself on these principles and our Federal Constitution, rather than the minimum standard of just being better than the previous situation. Pearl-coloured calm is impossible in politics, but reforms based on defined principles is enough to make democrats a glow with excitement.
Tunku Zain Al-‘Abidin is Founding President of IDEAS