21 November, Kuala Lumpur – Prevention of corruption and exposing unexplained wealth of politicians is serious and is of great public interest. For many years Transparency International Malaysia (TI-M) has called for full public disclosure of assets of elected and public officials. TI-M is encouraged by the actions initiated by the 30 potential GE14 candidates on 19th November as reported in the media. These actions (asset declaration) should be done voluntarily and not seen to be in exchange for any political campaign funds. An effective and useful asset declaration system would allow the public to have access to the information submitted by the politicians as is done in many democratic mature societies to varying degrees. Without such public access to the information in the declaration, any such declaration would be meaningless to serve the public interest. Information on cash savings, valuable movable assets and beneficial ownership of property and businesses should be included in the asset declaration system and be verified by the relevant enforcement agencies.
TI-M urges all other potential candidates of the upcoming GE 14, whether in the ruling party, opposition parties or independents, to make full public disclosure of assets upon assuming office and at regular fixed intervals thereafter and such information disclosed should be accessible by the public. This will go a long way to achieving transparency and integrity in our political world.
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Transparency International-Malaysia is an independent, non-governmental and non-partisan organisation committed to the fight against corruption.
Website: www.transparency.org.my
Note to Editors: For clarification on any and all official statements from Transparency International – Malaysia (TI-M), kindly refer to its President, Dato’ Akhbar Satar (akhbar@transparency.org.my).
