Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Have Clear Rules On How Much Candidates Can Spend, On What - Syed Hamid

BAGAN SERAI, Oct 28 (Bernama) -- The time has come for Umno to introduce clear rules on how much a candidate in the party elections could spend, said Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar.
He said the rules should, among others, also state what a candidate could spend on and the contributors to the fund for the candidate to spend.
"You cannot say that a candidate cannot spend in facing the party elections. You can't live without money. Now, everything costs money but there must be rules that state clearly what tantamounts to corruption and what does not," he said after attending a briefing on the floods in and around Alor Pongsu, at the penghulu's office, near here, Tuesday.
Also present at the briefing were the Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan, director of Internal Security and Public Order Datuk Husin Ismail and Perak police chief Datuk Zulkefli Abdullah.
Syed Hamid, who is Kota Tinggi Umno division chief, said the method of choosing the United States president could be used as a guideline.
He said the US presidential campaign allowed the candidates to collect funds and this was public knowledge, while all the expenses were declared so that they would not come under dispute by any quarters.
"In politics here, we sometimes receive contibutions from companies, inviduals and others, and there is a thin line between what is acceptable and what is corruption.
"If we have clear rules on such matters, it will be easier... the people will know where the money comes from and for what and those involved will know what they can and cannot do," he said.
Syed Hamid, whose nominations have exceeded the quota required to contest a party vice-president post, said the systems in Umno which were no longer in tune with the current times should be abolished, and cited the nomination quota as one.
He said a new formula should also be introduced to replace the voting through the party delegates at the divisional level, so as to enable more grassroot members to be involved in the decision making at the national level.
"We need to look at new approaches to enable us to move towards what is called participative democracy, for greater overall involvement of the grassroots in party affairs and also to prevent money politics," he proposed.

tunku : we can't simply follow usa style for umno's election. just imagine for a post of youth chief, one is very popular and the other one is not, for sure the popular one will receive more donation/contribution.he will then spend more and for sure will win the election.i agree that they be given some space where they can spend money but it should only stricly be for campaign materials and gathering functions and not for bribing the delegates.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Syed Hamid have a point and Tunku also have a point.a decent proposal pointed out by Syed but like what Tunku said that the more popular will get more donation than the less popular.thus making the more popular candidate to win the election.

but UMNO and other political parties are supposedly to have guidelines as to where to draw line between donation and corruption.there's a very thin line between both of them.

Unknown said...

bahaya betul bila orang-orang berpangkat dan berkedudukan menerima hadiah atau saguhati.bolehjadi hadiah itu adalah satu bentuk sogokan ataupun memang ikhlas diberi sebagai hadiah.

Anonymous said...

If we have such crystal clear rules pun tapi kalau hati dan kehendak masih nak juga buat salah, memang akan cari jalan juga nak buat salah.

Kerel Bort said...

declared and investigate all source of income for all who want to be nominated. I believe 75% of the candidate will withdraw themselves rather than have this scrutiny check onto them.
and I also believe that some of them will tell me that will be consider as privacy, well... if you have a successful company, why not share the success story? either with the press or with the ACA, your choice brother.

Anonymous said...

Kalau semua orang sendiri tak mahu elakkan dari benda tu, susah juga, susah nak tahan benda macam ni. Ni perlu kan kesedaran dari pihak yang bagi dan jugak pihak yang menerima. Dua2 sama je.

Anonymous said...

Sorry la pak syed ni tak tahu atau dah lupa TDM punya slogan Malaysia Bolih! UmNO election is about winning and not about leadership. In order to win rules aside and winning does not mean to be fair play.
Ah ya ini macam pun tatak tahu, Politik la.