[EAI Online Seminar] Democracy Cooperation Series 8. Examining Systems of Political Finance in Asian Democracies

YouTube 링크 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V1IcO0hO5E

Inadequate political finance systems pave the way for corruption and abuse – What are viable ways to enhance transparency and integrity?

The East Asia Institute (President Yul Sohn), as a secretariat of the Asia Democracy Research Network (ADRN), invited you to the eight online seminar of the [Democarcy Cooperation] series, titled "Examining Systems of Political Finance in Asian Democracies." During this seminar, ADRN members from Pakistan, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Malaysia discussed various systems in place on political finance across these countries. The panelists further shared their thoughts on what key reforms are required across each country and the region.

• Time and Date: April 20, 2021 15:30 – 17:00 (KST)
• Presenters: Aira Azhari(Manager of Democracy and Governance Unit, IDEAS), Ahmed Bilal Mehbob (Founder and CEO, PILDAT), Sri Nuryanti(Researcher, Indonesian Institute of Sciences), Chin-en Wu(Associate Research Fellow, Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica)
• Moderator: Aasiya Riaz(Joint Director, PILDAT)

영상 스크립트

hello and welcome uh to this adrn online webinar on the system of political finance in asian democracies my name is asiya ryaz i am from pakistan and i work with pakistan institute of legislative development and transparency on behalf of adrn and east asia institute it is my pleasure to welcome you all in this very important conversation on the role of money or the system of political finance that we have across asian democracies that we are discussing today the term of political finance is used to describe all funds that are

raised and spent for political purposes they're not just what candidates spend in electoral campaigns but it's also funds that political parties spend um in running electoral campaigns uh these are uh funds that political parties have in their annual budgets these are the this is money which which they raise for different purposes to to run political activity which is why there's a sort of a larger term than just the campaign finance what we're trying to do today is trying to understand what kind of a system of political

finance um is is necessary uh to use um to make sure that there is level playing field for citizens in every democracy that there is money available uh which is um which is transparent which is uh which is effectively regulated um and that does not result in any kind of um influencing or sabotaging public agenda and democratic governance i'm joined today by experts from pakistan mr ahmed bilal mahboob who's the president of pildat from indonesia shri nuriyanti she's she's joined us from she's a researcher at center for

political studies at indonesian institute of sciences jakarta mr chen and wu he's associate research fellow at institute of political science um in taiwan and with ira azeri who's managing democracy and governance unit ideas in malaysia together with these panelists we'll we'll try and understand what is the system of political finance in each one of these countries how does this how does it differ from you know between country to country how effective is it on what kind of reforms are actually needed in the

system of political finance in each of these countries that we're discussing what we would like to focus on through this particular webinar is that we talk about not just the legal framework which is regulating political finance or rule of money in politics and and how effectively it's implemented but what kind of oversight mechanism exists uh whether there's compliance whether there's transparency and if there are any required reforms in each country that these panelists and these experts believe should be carried out um

with this i would like to request um our first presenter the panelist from pakistan ahmed bilal mehboob who's who's who's been working in this area who's president of pildat he's the one who created the organization which has been working in the era of democracy and improving democratic governance in pakistan for nearly two decades uh over to you amit bilal my boobs what is the system of political finance in pakistan thank you very much asia and thank you very much east asia institute and adrn for organizing a discussion on a subject

which is so important to all democracies but especially asian democracies some of whom are struggling to improve their democratic system as you very rightly said political finance is a very important element in keeping the democratic systems safe from vested interests especially the decision making in democracy safe from big money and vested interests so therefore i look forward to sharing some thoughts uh some features of political finance system in pakistan and learning from my co-panelists from

other countries and hopefully this will help us in improving our respective political finance systems in pakistan political finance system is basically enshrined in our constitution and in more detail in our elections act which was passed in 2017 in its present form so these are the two legal documents uh which describe the political finance system of pakistan election commission of pakistan is the focal institution which has the responsibility and which has basically the powers to monitor the political finance in the country

and to take actions uh wherever there is a violation of the electoral laws of the political finance laws in the country so basically it's the election commission an election commission is an independent uh institution it's a five-membered body and all five members are appointed for a five-year term it is appointed by a bipartisan process the prime minister and leader of the opposition in the national assembly they have to agree on appointment of the election commission and this particular feature has further enhanced the

independence of election commission our political finance system uh basically if i look at it that it's a three-pronged political finance system first entity on which political finance is focused and focused in a big way is the candidates for the national and provincial legislatures and also of the local government officials those elected officials all of them they are the focus of a political finance system and probably the most elaborate provisions of the political finance system are related to the candidates each

candidate has to submit its statement of assets and liabilities for the past one year to the election commission at the time of submitting its nomination papers so that is the first financial statements which it is making public through the election commission and then along with this statement it has to submit a very elaborate affidavit it's a 23-point affidavit but all of them do not relate to the political finance but those elements which relate to political finance which each candidate has to declare for

example they have to declare what is the tax which they have paid over the past three years so they have to give details of all the taxes whether it is income tax or it is agriculture income tax or whatever tax what has been submitted it has to give details for the past three years it has to also give details of the outstanding loans if any which it has to pay to financial institutions it has also to declare if it has defaulted on any government dues or utility bills it has to also declare that if it has

any businesses if it owns any businesses any companies it must give details a list of those companies and it also must give details of its foreign travel in the past three years so this detail is probably needed that how much money that person has been spending so it's a very elaborate uh affidavit which provides a lot of information about the financial dealings of financial standing of the candidate and one more thing they have to also declare that how much money if that candidate has paid to the

political party as a donation or anything else and how much money if he has received ever received from that political party of which he's a candidate so these are the elaborate information which a candidate has to declare then there's a spending limit for each candidate for example a candidate for the national assembly which is the our popularly elected house of parliament now recently we have enhanced the spending limit to 4 million pakistani rupees which roughly converts into 26 000 us dollars so they

this is the spending limit they cannot spend more than that and for the provincial assembly half of it which is the 13 000 us dollars so that is spending limit and this spending includes all the money which whether the candidate himself spends herself spends or some supporters or political party or anyone spends but lately this spending limit law has been somewhat diluted if somebody spends money to favor the candidate without his permission her permission then that money will not be counted towards the

spending limit it's a kind of a i think loophole which provides uh opportunity for people to spend more than the spending limit the second important focus and by the way each candidate has to open a separate bank account through which only through that account the candidate has can spend or receive donations and each candidate after the election within 30 days of the election has to spend the details of the election expenses to the election commission and foreign funding to the candidates are not allowed

foreign funding is defined very elaborately in our laws whether you receive money from a foreign individual or you receive from a foreign corporate entity or from a foreign government it is not allowed to be received by a candidate for any political office the second area of focus for our political finance system is the legislator and here legislators members of the provincial assembly our national assembly are senate they have to submit every year a statement of assets and liabilities which is again

a very elaborate document and it not only gives assets of the cap of the legislator himself or herself but spouse and the dependents and the children immediate family whatever assets and liabilities they have they have to be put together in that document and this has to be declared every year by the election commission an election commission declares it through a government notification and if the legislators do not submit this statement in time then the election commission can suspend and it does suspend the

membership of these legislators third element of our political finance system is political parties and again a very elaborate system of political finance has been put in place each political party has to submit its annual statement of its audited accounts to the election commission and that statement of accounts carries the income sources of income the donations which it has received and the list of the donors and the spending which it has entered and the assets which the political party has accumulated so

foreign funding to political parties is not allowed not in any form and it's again very in detail elaborated in the election laws you cannot receive even a single dollar from a foreign source but pakistanis who are living abroad whom we call overseas pakistanis they are not considered a foreign source of funding if that person has pakistani nationality has a pakistani identification card that person even if that person is living abroad as a dual nationality can still fund political parties and there's no upper

limit on donations to political parties and political parties do not have any election spending limit unlike individual candidates political parties can spend any amount and corporate funding is allowed in election law but corporate laws the company act does not allow funding to political parties so there's a kind of contradiction in our laws which needs to be resolved lastly i would like to just very quickly mention some important reforms which we think are needed in political reform system of pakistan

as you might have noticed we have a very robust and quite detailed legal framework of political finance system in pakistan but unfortunately the system of enforcement of these laws is not as robust so therefore i think the system of enforcement needs to be improved and improved drastically and first point in that is that the election commission of pakistan which is the entity responsible for monitoring political finance for enforcement of political finance laws political election commission must

enhance its capacity especially that capacity which deals with political finance it must have financial professionals it must have auditors it must have accountants chartered accountants and it has sufficient number of people who can at least a small portion of these statements which are submitted every year should be able to securitize so i think first important point is that election commission which has a very i think weak capacity at the moment it must improve its capacity by enhancing its uh human resource

and uh not only in terms of quantity but in terms of quality also another important uh thing is that the uh like we have the spending limit of uh candidates i think political parties spending limit should also be fixed political parties now are every year we are saying that they are spending much more money than they used to spend in the past and most of this money is spent on the electronic media individual candidates do not spend so much money on electronic media so if you leave give a carter blanchett

to political party to spend as much as they can and as much they want that will probably defeat the purpose of political finance checks and balances so i think there must be a political there must be a gap on the spending of political uh parties and legislators statements which they submit every year although government of pakistan election commission issues that in the form of a in the form of a government circular but i think it doesn't reach people the spirit of the declarations it that people it should be

very transparent anyone should be able to see it should be easily uh access that so i think election commission should put this document on their website so that everybody can reach it and lastly i think we should find some way when we are putting so many restrictions on political parties and on their finance and campaign funding i think we should give some serious thought about legitimate funding of political parties and i think we should look at the possibility of public funding of political parties

so that political parties are not dependent on vested interest for their funds and i think that's an area which we can see look at the example of germany for example which has probably a very elaborate public funding system and i think developing countries like ours should look into the possibility of public funding thank you very much thank you very much mr mehboob uh mr mabu was presenting the case of pakistan um and he mainly said that we have a very robust law or a legal framework for political

finance which is there in the country but um how effectively it is managed is where we need more and more support and that political parties must also have some kind of a limit um according to which they can spend money um and also that pakistan should consider a system of public funding of political parties as well um with that i'll i'll now move to indonesia and i'd like to invite sri nuriyanthi who i already introduced research researcher at center for political studies at the indonesian institute of sciences

she just also told us that she's served as the commissioner election commissioner of indonesia as well over to you sri nuriyanthi um good afternoon to everyone i would like to uh thanks uh aie and also adrn for for the uh for hosting this webinar i am very thankful and i'm from the indonesian institute of sciences today i would like to talk about the system and governance of the political party finance in indonesia hang on so um to be the political party actually in indonesia the law stipulated that which the political

party should have the uh legal entity so it they have to show that they have a legal status and should be registered at the ministry of law and human right they supposed to have branches of the committees they have to have memberships offices and also they have to uh to set up an account number so this account number is specifically under the name of political parties so not on behalf of political party uh this account number uh can be cannot be in the name of uh someone's or the leader of political parties so it

should be under name of the political party and they have also to show the first default deposit so the uh the there are three main research concerns of this study first forces on provisions of the regulation second will be on supervisions and reporting the third will be on evaluations and proposal for reform on provisions of the regulations on financial sources actually all political party can have three sources of political uh political party finance first they could come from internal sources of political party

finance the uh secondly they have they also can have the external sources of political party finance and the third one they could also get the government assistance of the political party finance on the governance of the political party finance uh in our law regulates that the organizations and politic and office operation need should be spirited from campaign finance and reports of the campaign finance especially scrutinized by public accountant on internal sources of political party finance it can be in the form of money coming

from the membership fee and it could be in kind of goods any kind of goods that can be converted into amounts of money and also in terms of services include our time advertisement etc the external sources of finance it could be in the form of donation in this case the individual and business entity donation stipulated at versus number 35 of the law number two 2011 on political party finance stipulated that political party may obtain donation from the following categories first they could come from individual

members of a political party where the membership is regulated uh in the political party manifesto second uh it coming uh from uh the individual who are not members of a political party but uh it has limitation at most uh 1 billion rupiah or roughly equal to 770 thousand nine point nine nineteen as per 22nd february where uh the report is made uh per person within one year budget and then uh if coming from companies or business entities they have limitation that the political party can have at most

7 billion 500 million rupiah or roughly equal to 531 000.9 as per 22nd february conversion rate per company or per business entity within one year fiscal there are also three interconnectedness uh interconnected regulation to make better accountability of the political party finance therefore in indonesia we do have at least three uh two laws and one government regulation law number two 2017 on election is also regulates that all political parties should establish their own account for political party finance law number

two 2011 on political party also similarly regulates the same thing and government regulation number one 2018 on managing political party finance actually stipulated that all political party finance governance should be managed through a mechanism that shows the accountability and responsiveness of the use of the money there are at least problems that we face in indonesia in terms of funding sources that political party is hard to collect membership fee because of a membership fee something that have to

be paid by each person who is the member of the political party but political party complained that they could uh could not collect the membership fee from their members other sources of political party atms can be found by asking the legislators who are in in power or elites of the political party who are in power to give some amount of money to political party this is something that should also comply with the regulation but there is also a tendency where uh it also uh due to the organizing the political parties

needs a lot of money therefore they have enterpreneur ties that happening in organizing the political party and because of that tendency it's also becoming that political party sometimes showing that it is more personalistic based in in term of access towards the report of the political party finance sometimes people or public have uneasy access towards it unless you have to contact and to contact some person or you contact the election commission office and in terms of this we do have uh money disclosure but

to some of the democratic how to say uh democratic intellectuals activists they say it as more in a formal way rather than in showing the uh the real money that or the real financial that operated by political party so in the regulation we also have the supervisions and reporting in supervision uh it in term of the using of political party finance it should be 60 percent allocated for political education and 40 percent should be allocated for operational activities in reporting uh it should be separated between

organizational operational needs on an office supply and should be separated from campaign finance therefore we can see that uh how much money allocated for organization operational activities and how much money that uh used for campaign finance on political education political education as in the law article number 2034 of law number two 2011 uh is referred to depending the value of the four pillars of the nation and state which are five pillars uh the constitution uh year 1945 bine katung or united diversity

principles and the unitary state of indonesia and secondly political education is also has to understand the rights and obligations of the citizens of indonesia in developing ethnic and political culture and the third political education is should be relating with recruitment of together or political party members that then by entire uh structured and the sustainability plan on government assistance as i said earlier on uh it is based on the law number two 2011 and law number seven 2017.

this uh the government assistance is should be accounted should be accounted and it is based on the number of votes they gain during the election but again the government assistant is considered too small so therefore later on i can show you that this is something that arising the reform on reporting uh the operational needs and office supply must be separated from campaign and on scrutinizing the financial of the political party if the your political party got a government assistant therefore it will be scrutinized by

state financial scrutiny and campaign finance scrutinized by public accountant offices on evaluation and proposal for reform as i said earlier on in terms of effectivity of the regular regulations implementation it should be enforced by independent body otherwise it will be in more informal way formalistic way rather than in more substantial way and on government assistance it needs to be increased and in term of usage of the funding campaign activists should be closely related to political education therefore

in campaign activities though you need to ask people to vote for your political party but it's supposed to have political education sense and also value in it so in term of reporting it must be spirited and it must be a balance in terms of portions allocated for political education and of his need therefore as i said earlier it regulates that 60 percent is for political education and office need only allocated up to 40 percent and also it should be balanced in terms of public and uh pre-heart sources i think

uh that's all uh that i can share for uh today we can have discussion later thank you very much thank you very much sri nuriyanthi i'll now go to mr shin and woo who's an associate research fellow at the institute of political science at academia seneca taiwan over to you chin and woo for the for the system of political finance in taiwan mr chenonvu as if we can start your presentation maybe he needs to unmute himself uh he is unmuted uh can you hear us we can actually see your screen we can see your presentation

or we can't hear you yeah we're unable to hear you so can you hear me now yes we can okay i'm sorry uh so i'm going to share the file with you again okay so i'm delighted to share my observation about the political finance in taiwan and basically there is a single law political donation act that regulate the political finance system in taiwan it's passed in 2004 before that is a chaotic situation there's no regulation and in this law individual and the pilot political party civil organization and

company can make contribution but they must go through the designated accounts after being approved by the control union which is the ambush men in taiwan and there is a period that can people can make contribution for press for presidential candidate is one year before their 10-year end and for legislative years it's only 10 months so it's not a long period in taiwan not like in the united states you can receive a donation anytime and there is a contribution limit just like in other country and we have

a cap on the amount of money individual and business and the civil association can contribute to individual candidate party and the political association and also we have another upper limit on the total amount of duration a donation contributed to individual candidate different party or political association so a single like a single company he can only donate certain amount of money to all the candidates he wants to contribute so to reduce their a single person or single company's influence on

politics and politics and of course there are some types of enterprise that are not allowed to make donation the first is public enterprises and the manufacturer that have uh contract with government and those prof uh business they are in accumulative deficit and business operated by political party those companies are not allowed to make donation and also there's a punishment most of violations are subject to fine but only a small fraction of violation will be sentenced to prison like accepting money from china

under receiving money not through and destinated account and but the consultant in taiwan do not have enough manpower to check so almost no politician resigned because of forced declaration and also the the controverian has a website and he need to publish the older political donation all the information and so it can easily look at it online for foreign donations we have a special regulation on this uh um like so people and the jurisdiction per judicial person association companies in foreign country

people's republic of china hong kong and macau are not allowed to make uh make contribution and also although we have upper limit on the spent on the contribution but we have no upper limit on expenditure so there's no upper limit on the total amount that the candidate party or political group can receive and also there is no limit on the total amount candidate or parties can spend in elections the unspent contribution can be kept by candidates for four years if they they can and they can use it for

the re-election and if they do not use it and the remaining need to return to the government but uh you mentioned they have a there's a limit on how much money people and the company can donate but in the in some cases the big corporation they have multiple subsidiaries so they will make a contribution by individual subsidiary and each with different name so you if you look at the name of the company you saw there are different companies but actually they belong to the same group so the big corporation they will do this

and they try to usually try to contribute to different party and different candidates to to make friends with everybody so they use this way to donate money and for incorrect decoration there is a punishment if you make false decoration you will be fine such amount of new talent dollars if you receive donation without registering a designated account and you will be put in jail up to three three years in prison and the reason in last year we passed the anti-infiltration law that was especially and

at preventing the infiltration from mainland china and we increased the punishment on people from outside taiwan to make political contribution campaign contribution so in this law anyone who receive money from china will make and to make political contribution uh will be punished for up to five years in prison and fine up to 10 million new talent dollars so it increase the punishment for people who receive or help to help to donate the money to domestic candidate and their punishment increase and but another thing is that there's

always the issue that people receive money and then they will do something for the people who donate the money and there's always a possibility of the until the benefits of the it become the donation become a bribery so there's a real punishment for anti-corruption act and also but the providing cryptocurrency is hard especially for member of parliament because member parliament is always right has the right to question official pass law and budget but they do not directly enforce the law so in practice it's some sometimes hard

for judge to to say that the member of parliament who advocated something to say that they are doing special favor for a particular company so there are several cases in taiwan after democratization and they involve the occupational association donation the judicial process takes years and almost all end up not guilty so there are still cases in last year there are several legislators involved in a in a case but they are still under judicial review still in the legal process also there is a problem because today we

are talking about the campaign finance law actually is related to several other law that should be extension to make the campaign finance really really working the the one is the lobbying law the lobby law in taiwan is another very robust and so many people who lobby the government do not register so so far from its is passed to until now they are only like 400 something lobby in taiwan so there's a most of people who make who contact the legislator who to uh to ask for something they just don't

register and so but nobody knows uh and the government do not issue any fine on those people who lobby but do not register and that's slightly this last slide i want to mention is the this still issue of candy party asset kent is the old authoritarian regime authoritarian party and he still survived as one of the main party now but canty in the past they have huge party asset so they gave so it make the the playing field not level and the county can donate in each election donate a lot of money or gave a lot of money to its own

candidate and even he do not risk he feel he'd receive fewer donations from the general public but overall he can spend more than its political components because of its party assets and after the party turnover in 2016 almost all county's assets are frozen because the the dbp chest believe they are not legal and uh because the candidates get get those essence in another legal way and but the lawsuit are still going on so i we have to wait and to see the result thank you thank you very much mr chin and woo who

was presenting the case of the system of political finance in taiwan um how effectively it is utilized um and and how effective the legal system in fact is um i'd now like to move to our um speaker from malaysia who will discuss with us the case of you know what kind of system of political finance exists in malaysia how is it different from other countries misaira azeri who is managing ideas democracy and governance unit um over to you mr zari thank you asiya and also to eai for hosting this webinar

today um i don't have slides but i will share with you the draft paper that my colleague and i have authored and i will share some points from there so let's see okay i think um y'all can see my screen um so the malaysia case for political financing i think uh probably slightly different from some of our other neighbors and also some other countries in the world mainly because malaysia does not have a legislation that regulates political funding and the only legislation that exists in malaysia that has to do with

um money and politics is uh limits on how much a candidate can spend at the state and also at the federal level during a campaign but there is nothing regulating where political parties can get money from or how they can or cannot spend it so uh so that's the situation in malaysia so i chose to look at four points which are the four bullet points on the screen here which is the nexus between business and politics in malaysia particularly through government-linked companies the role of elected representatives

within our democratic system the current political financing ecosystem and its consequences and also i will look at some recommendations to improve the current system that we have so uh the nexus between business and politics in malaysia is uh i mean i don't think malaysia is uh alone in having a uh inextricable links between business and politics and uh in malaysia there is a long history of um political involvement and also interference in business uh when uh the the party that ruled malaysia for 60

years until 2018 which is the united malay national organization which is amno has a vast network of businesses and also companies that it controls and malaysia also has a a company sorry malaysia also has uh this thing called government link companies where they these companies are meant to actually serve important social objectives and should be run independently transparently and with accountability but many of these companies have been used or co-opted by political parties for their own financing and also there

have been cases of corruption that have happened um previously and what has happened in the last few years is there have been appointments of politicians and also politically linked persons into the boards and also the management of glc's which have greatly compromised their independence and political appointments have also been used as means to reward party members uh won in elections so this political interference has caused monetization of politics and corporations and businesses who support the ruling party gain

easier access to government grants and contracts so um i will elaborate some more on some of the recommendations to try and improve the situation a bit later uh secondly i would like to highlight the role of elected representatives within malaysia's democratic system so in malaysia we have uh both we have parliaments both at the state level and also at the national level and uh usually in an election a malaysian voter would pass his or her vote for your representative within the state assembly and also their representative in the

national assembly and similar to many other countries and i highlight this point of the role of elected reps mainly because many politicians in malaysia uh feel that they need to raise a lot of money and also have a lot of uh huge huge amounts of cash with them because it is expected by their voters in their constituents so for example uh you know if if you want to remain electorally viable in your constituent you need to be able to provide cash and also many other kind of in-kind contributions to your constituents and

this exacerbates the problem of political financing because many politicians feel pressured to uh to raise uh huge amounts of money because of this clientelist relationship between uh voter and also elected representative so um and there are several reasons for this firstly i think the state welfare system in malaysia has broken down to some extent and many malaysians cannot rely on the state anymore to provide welfare and also basic goods so that duty gets transferred to their member of parliament or their

state assemblyman uh which then which actually is not their role they're supposed to be policymakers who enact laws and debate policies in parliament right so uh so that is one one reason another reason is i think malaysia society is still largely quite feudalistic and um many malaysians still look to their elected representatives to solve problems to provide uh aid when they are in trouble so this uh this coupled with a lack of legislation um means that a lot of uh mps and a lot of uh state assembly persons um

try to gain money from uh from questionable sources to cater to some of these needs so um and so there is very little um accountability and also transparency in the in the entire system and uh i'll elaborate a bit now on the current political financing ecosystem uh and its consequences so i chose to highlight six key issues with the current system in malaysia monetization of politics unequal access to funds factionalism covert funds inadequate law enforcement and also weak institutions so um i think many of you here might be

familiar with uh our former prime minister najib raza who and uh the the 1mdb scandal that broke in 2016 if i'm not mistaken and actually led to his downfall in the 2018 elections and this scandal is a perfect example of how uh political financing in malaysia has become a very a very corrupt system because uh the 2.6 billion that was found in his personal bank account allegedly came from a prince in saudi arabia which was used uh for the 2018 elections so that's just one example of how the system has been abused

and uh just now i mentioned that there is a law that regulates political uh campaign spending so that's in the election offenses act of 1954 uh 200 000 ringgit in the case of an election to the federal parliament 100 000 ringgit to the state legislative assembly uh 10 000 ringgit for local authority and three thousand for local council and um many argue that these limits are actually quite unrealistic because no one actually spends only two hundred thousand ringgit for a national level election so some of

the reforms proposed uh you know has said that this amount actually needs to be raised um and you know putting caps putting such low caps actually doesn't solve the problem it means that money will just go underground and you know people are actually just going to spend a lot more and not declare it so um so some of the reforms actually mentioned that this needs to be changed there is also an imbalance of funding for political parties um because the uh just just because of the nature of political parties in malaysia where

there are huge parties that dominate business networks and then there are smaller parties that do not have access to it so there is a problem of inequality in accessing funds as well which is why an act is important uh so that there can be a more level playing field so some of the recommendations uh that i have put here is to have a political financing act firstly so uh we should start from there because malaysia doesn't even have any legislation at the moment so um what goes into the act is something that

academics and civil society have been talking about uh for the last few years so for example there should be a requirement for party accounts to be audited and financial report to be made available to the public there should be clear punishment mechanisms and also limits on funding and also a ban on foreign funding as i think some of our other panelists have mentioned secondly introduction of vote-based and seed-based direct public funding so i think some of our other panelists also mentioned a public funding model

which can increase transparency and also promote good governance within political parties so there are several mechanisms in which public funding can be done so there's also direct and indirect so indirect for example is where the state provides funding for the parties to conduct policy research for example and direct public funding is where it's for general election campaigns and and such um i will just go straight to the third one uh so the third one is indirect public funding as i mentioned uh for policy research uh and other

purposes so uh so this is just some of the uh issues that i've picked up from the malaysia case um it is uh the situation is not ideal at the moment uh there is a draft bill that is has actually been um being written for political financing but it's currently still with the cabinet and there seems to be no political will to actually table it in parliament so i would say that's the main beauty of civil society in malaysia at the moment right now is to get this law table thank you thank you very much thank you

very much this was a very useful account of where malaysia is at thank you also for identifying uh some of the reforms that you think malaysia needs and and you rightly pointed out some of these things that what other asian democracies also feel they should have um i don't really have questions from um attendees or sort of list of online questions so maybe i'll go back to the panel one by one um and ask them if they have questions or comments from each other um and i'd i'd go in the same order um

in the order in which i invited everyone to speak so mr maybe if i can go to you first and if you have any questions or comments for any of the other panelists um and then we can uh you know we can go to others uh thank you yes i have some questions especially i found the indonesian presentation very fascinating at least this aspect of political parties required to spend 60 percent of its funds on political education i think it's a very if i understood it correctly that they are required to spend 40 percent on

their operational activities and 60 on political education so i would like to know if this is correct uh if i understood it correctly secondly what are they doing for this political education is there a is there a curriculum for political education are there political academies like germans have affiliated to political parties how is it done because 60 is a lot of money a lot of percentage i must say if if it is part of the law and if she has the english translation of the law i would request her to send her a copy

because that is something we would like to really follow in our country because we really need political education but sadly we do not have any such provision in the law okay then you had also mentioned that there's a government assistance to political parties based on the votes secured by a political party but you also mentioned that it's a very small amount so what is the formula for such a government assistance and why you think it is a small amount and what you need you would like to improve it

how you would like to improve it so this is my question uh from indonesia if there's a more chance to ask questions in the next round i may have questions for others but primarily i have this question from my indonesian colleague thank you sri if i can invite you to answer that and also if you have any other questions okay thank you um ahmed bilal mehboob sir so uh in indonesia yes uh you are correct that the regulation stipulated that 60 percent of uh financial of the political party should be spent

for a political uh education therefore um it is uh include how political uh party can recruit the best the best members for uh for their release to be the candidate to fill up the candidacy for a legislator and also to fill up the candidacy for politic for public elites therefore the political education is in the form of having uh regulation having a regular training having uh having a regular uh curriculum that applies for uh their training uh in-house training so in this regular in this curriculum

actually they have to to deepen the the five pillars the value of five pillars and also to deepen the knowledge on how political parties should works and then other than that it also includes the to fund the activities for a campaign in terms of not not campaign but a social relations process socialization uh process for uh their political ideology so like for example one political party they have to uh to set up the meetings the national meeting and in the national meeting they have to spare some

time for uh making their ideology to be uh understood well by their all of uh members and in term of reforms uh these days uh all of political party who has who who can place their their members in mps they they have um and they are entitled to get the financial assistance from government and this time the value is very small as as i said earlier on because of it is only one thousand per foot one thousand per volt is equal to uh zero point zero fourteen i guess zero point zero fourteen uh dollars u.s dollars and then

um according to our study um me and also my friend in in the center for political studies we actually we we conducted a study we're conducting a research together with the commission for anti-corruption for eradicating corruption and then we formulate to that the government can increase their government assistance to up to uh 10 000 up to 0.14 per foot therefore a political party is very happy if the government could increase their assistance but uh in uh having the the assistant increased then the political parties should obey some

rules for example they have to have a good and structural recruitment process for their memberships they have to have a regular training implemented in their institution and we also propose that they have to obey the political party ethic maybe i forget to mention that we have the we have to we already conduct the research and one of the research that we have is we are formulating the political party ethic in this case we are trying to help political party to have a better recruitment process and better

socialization process therefore this is what we mean by political education so not in terms of you know uh only casting the ballot but in term of deepening the value of becoming political party unfortunately we do not have uh the political party law translated into english but uh later on if i could find one i will share with you um with uh asia and also with user so that's uh for my response for my boobs and then can i ask one question yes yes please i have just one question from a pan panelist from one of

the participants also okay so we have about 23 minutes mentions about the the role of ombudsman ombudsman will you uh mention more on how ambushmen can be involved in scrutinizing or in overseeing the political party finance in your country and to iran i also have one question ira uh because you mentioned that up to nowadays the the role of uh ngo uh for overseeing the political uh party finance in your country is weak um well is that any regulation that um entitled for political party to to give report to to have a money

disclosure of all activities thank you um if if i can also add to this and i'll i'll first come to chennai to answer that mr niranjan sahu also asked a relevant question um he if you can also talk when you're answering the question chenin wu house how weak or how strong is the election commission or election management body um in taiwan um how independent is it um if you if you can talk about that because uh his question really is and i'll go to ira a bit later also that why is it why is it taken so long especially for

malaysia and pakistan to have a political finance law but also why is the sort of this implementation so weak is it because the election commissions are weak or is is there some other reason for that so first chin and woo um and then ira and i'll then go to mr mehboob to answer the question about pakistan at the end okay uh thank you for the question uh for the ombudsman's part because taiwan's political structure we do not only have three power we have five power government so and we have uh executive

legislator judicial and we also have a control union and another there's another one the control yen countries actually is responsible for responsible for investigate the misconduct of the government so the campaign finance law was the account was regulated by the control union and the the countries has actually has the power if they don't they think there's a big policy mistake they can the controllers the investigator can invest investigate the issue but for the registration or to investigate individual

candidates report whether it's correct or not i i think we still have room to improve because it's a it's not a very a very big organization i don't think they have the power to do a very good job and uh and we we do have a election commission par commission election commission but uh it's uh it's responsible for the running of the election so for deciding the day the location or polling station something like that and it does not involved in the the campaign finance law i think it's good because we separated separate the

power from because let me say that because the election commission was under the the executive branch it's one of the department so even is is nominated by different party but istio can be subject to political influence and now we put that power in an independent another independent and the parallel government organization i think they can better perform their uh function i have a question for uh can i have a question for ira yes please i think that i can answer all of them in one go yeah i have do you uh you mentioned you

do not have restriction on foreign donation is that right even if someone donates from china thank you over to you ara you have a few questions now uh okay um hi thanks for the questions so i'll answer children's question uh first um so because we don't have a legislation yet uh that regulates uh political funding so there is currently no restriction actually uh for anyone to donate to political parties including uh foreign entities uh including china so um i think uh what happened what has happened uh

with our former prime minister najib raza has actually shown how uh important it is for us to have this restriction um because he has claimed that uh the money that came into his own personal bank account uh was from a foreign entity which is from saudi arabia and he claimed that the money is actually for um for electoral purposes and under the current law i mean he can be charged with money laundering but it is not a uh it is not against political funding rules so um he has indeed been charged with uh money laundering fraud and

various other charges uh but uh not uh for um not for political finding purposes because there is currently no law uh on that uh secondly on uh on question from uh string oriente about whether there is an obligation for political parties to disclose their activities and their accounts um so political parties in malaysia are registered under the registrar of societies ros and this is also not ideal uh one of the proposals by civil society is actually to change this registration system for political parties because uh the

registrar of societies also handles registration of all sorts of associations in malaysia so for example uh you know if you are an association of the association of basketball players in a certain neighborhood you are also registered under the same body which is the registrar of societies so um this makes it uh very difficult for the ros to monitor the uh monitor the governance and also accounts of political parties because naturally political parties are quite different entities than just regular societies

so one of the proposals is actually to create to actually separate the registration of political parties to another independent body so that would improve the accountability and transparency of political parties so on the obligation to disclose there is currently no obligation to disclose to the public the only obligation political parties have is to disclose to the registrar of societies which is actually a government entity essentially right so uh so what they have to do is to publish their audited accounts and

do all their annual general meetings the ro and and declare it to the ros but not to the public so so that is another reason why the system needs to be reformed so that the public gets um the public gets more transparency and accountability and know exactly where political parties get their money from i'll just take the other question as well on uh the independence of elect election commission on the electoral management body so uh in malaysia this has also been a problem in the past uh where uh because we had

one party ruling for 60 years so um the election commission uh was has also compromised its independence uh and uh in malaysia we have uh the constitution says that um the election commission can redraw electoral boundaries only um only within a certain number of years so i think it's like five or six years where they can redraw electoral boundaries so the election commission has had a history of read or redrawing electoral boundaries to suit the then incumbent uh political party so this has happened and uh there has

been calls from uh civil society to improve the independence of the election commission uh and also to make the appointment of election commissioners uh more transparent and more merit based than it is now yeah thank you thank you very much um mr maboob one of the um one of the people who've joined us mr niranjan sahu he's also um him and his organization are also part of um adrn and his question is that why has it taken so long to have some concrete movements on political finance law and whether there's is it because it's

it's a weak law or is it weak regulatory mechanism and he's also asked a question about the independence of election commission in pakistan now i completely understand that even though ira has answered that question partly and so has chin and woo this is a different subject altogether in pakistan perhaps not like other countries maybe in indonesia this comes under our political finance laws are really under the authority of the election commission but largely the question of the independence of election commission is perhaps requires

another detailed conversation around asian democracies on how these bodies are functioning how effective they are how independent they are but over to you if you can briefly answer bilalsa thank you for the question but i think this is a misunderstanding that pakistan has taken a long time in passing the political finance laws a political this election act 2017 uh might be creating the misunderstanding we had laws before uh since a long time but in 2017 we decided to consolidate them into one elections act

uh we had a separate law and political parties a separate law on the uh on various other aspects of the political finance dealing with the uh with the elections itself so therefore it is not a correct assessment that pakistan had a delayed laws i think it was only put together in a one volume of laws which happened in 2017 and secondly to answer your question yeah election commission of pakistan is a very independent institute and before that to answer your question i still insist that we have some very effective robust

laws on we can have better but we have some robust laws on political finance a major problem in our country is their enforcement it is not the law itself which is weak it is the enforcement which is weak and that's why we think the election commission as an institution need to increase its it has enhanced its capacity in a big way in terms of other aspects of the elections but political finance is an area which has been left i think out and they need to work on that and election commission is a very

independent entity we have the good fortune of having election commissioners appointed through bipartisan consultation and then endorsed by the parliamentary committee uh so that is a very i think improved law uh but again we have some very peculiar issues relating to elections which might sometime drown out the independence of election commission but as asia said that's a subject totally different and a very vast one so we can discuss it at some other time oh well thank you very much uh mr beboob

you're absolutely right this is um this is only one aspect of uh this issue of political finance that we're discussing but how you know how well our electoral bodies or electoral management systems work as as do our other systems of democratic democratic governance from time to time under adrn new subjects new issues and new comparative studies are actually taken out even though we have a bit of time i understand that all the questions that the panel had asked and all the questions that we received from the audience are

answered this has been certainly a very useful and a very interesting conversation for me personally and i'm sure i can say that on behalf of all the panelists that this has been very useful to discuss what kind of a system of political finance each one of these four countries have how does it differ from each other where reforms are required and and you know i think that we will soon we have each country has prepared papers um adren will soon be publishing those papers as well so that more detailed analysis is

available to audiences um and to the members of the um asia democracy and research network before i sign off and i thank each and every panelist individually um i would want to remind the audience that at the end of this webinar there will be a pop-up survey and we'd request that you can give your opinion on the on the survey and some of the other questions that um ei will actually be putting out let me with that uh thank you very much uh miss arazeri from malaysia this was very useful to to listen to the stage that malaysia

is at and some of the very important questions and concerns and reform areas that you have highlighted um that i think many of us can can actually um relate to in our countries thank you very much in and woo for sharing the case of taiwan where the system is at the role that ombudsman plays um the role of of course electoral management bodies something that we we need to discuss on a separate area the the uh you know the very interesting that you have quite a clear um sort of stance the country has a

quite a clear legal stance on foreign funding much like in pakistan and thank you very much uh nuruti for uh for this very wonderful uh analysis of where indonesian uh system of political finances and and the um and the various systems or the various reform areas that that indonesia would like to or the civil society in indonesia and citizens would like to bring in thank you very much mr maboob um for sharing the case of pakistan and also highlighting that this is not something that we've only just embarked

upon in in 2017 we've had these laws and these things were followed but it is in a quest to further improve how well these are effectively operationalized and implemented that pakistan joins the struggle in having more and more a transparent sort of system and a more more effective system on of political finance with that i i thank you very much um for on behalf of adrn and on behalf of ei um i will this would be a good buy from my side thank you very much