FEB 1 – Recently the Penang State government made public the declaration of assets of its Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng and the other 10 members of the State Executive Committee on January 12, 2012. This is audited by an independent accountancy firm and is made accessible to all on the website of the state government.
But Datuk Seri Nazri Abdul Aziz, the minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, shot back that he is firmly against the idea of Federal Cabinet ministers declaring their assets publicly. He reasoned that revealing details about the amount of money and properties owned by ministers and their families would expose them to “danger” and make them a target for robbers.
Interestingly making public asset declaration of public officials to combat corruption is a rising trend in governments of the world. Preventing and combating corruption is a well known international issue and effort. International bodies such as OECD have come out with studies and recommendations in how to better overcome this corruption disease by using Asset Declaration as a tool.
Attached is the link to a detail paper done by the OECD explaining and analyzing the way to use Asset Declaration for public officials as an effective tool in the fight against corruption; http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/40/6/ 47489446.pdf
OECD is a well known international body with 34 member countries with members from countries such as USA, France, South Korea, Australia, Canada, Japan, UK & Turkey.
In its paper “Asset Declarations For Public Officials – A Tool To Prevent Corruption” page 12, 3 main aims are cited in asset declarations:
• to increase transparency and the trust of citizens in public administration, by disclosing information about assets of politicians and civil servants that shows they have nothing to hide;
• to help heads of public institutions prevent conflicts of interest among their employees and to resolve such situations when they arise, in order to promote integrity within their institutions;
• to monitor wealth variations of individual politicians and civil servants, in order to dissuade them from misconduct and protect them from false accusations, and to help clarify the full scope of illicit enrichment or other illegal activity by providing additional evidence.
Instead of bringing harm to our public officials asset declarations will actually protect them from false accusations of corruption and abuse of power for economic gains. So, our Law Minister should be the first to support this idea for the good name of the BN government and take away all the ammunitions from the opposition and its critics that there is massive corruption in our public civil systems.
Below is an excerpt from the mentioned paper by OECD on some countries that have introduced the declaration of assets for public officials in its fight against corruption.
Table 1.1. The year of introduction of declarations for public officials in transition and selected other countries
Year of introduction/Country
1974 United Kingdom
1978 United States
1982 Spain, Italy
1992 Slovenia
1993 Belarus, Ukraine
1994 Latvia
1995 Albania, Estonia
1996 Kazakhstan, Romania
1998 Georgia, Lithuania
2000 Bulgaria
2001 Bosnia and Herzegovina
2002 Macedonia
2003 Croatia
2004 Kyrgyzstan, Montenegro
2005 Azerbaijan, Kosovo
2006 Tajikistan
(Pg. 23 “Asset Declarations for Public Officials – A Tool To Prevent Corruption”)
If you note the year of introduction, Malaysia has a lot of catching up to do.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication. The Malaysian Insider does not endorse the view unless specified.
