By Queville To
Free Malaysia Today
21 November 2010

KOTA KINABALU: Chief Minister Musa Aman’s ‘timely’ announcement of a special allocation of RM1 million to each Barisan Nasional representatives in Sabah next year has been described as a “form of political corruption”.

DAP stalwart Lim Kit Siang said Musa’s announcement – under the state budget – warrants Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission’s (MACC) attention and investigation.

“It is a political corruption to allocate RM1 million public funds to the BN constituencies alone. It is clearly an election budget to boost the winning chances of BN in the next general election and not for the benefit of the people. It is to be used to buy votes,” Lim charged.

Musa announced the special allocation under the state Budget 2011 on Friday. He said the allocation was to enable BN elected representatives to provide assistance to the people in their areas. The BN holds 57 out of 60 state seats in the state.

His announcement is viewed by many as ‘timely’ since Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak is expected to call for the general election anytime next year. Opposition parties are speculating that Najib will call for the polls anytime between March and Novemebr 2011.

Crony programme

Meanwhile Lim noted that one of the National Key Result Area (NKRA) in the Government Transformation Program (GTP) is fighting corruption and one of the main aspects identified is to fight ‘grand corruption’ which is political corruption.

“The MACC should investigate and wipe out such political corruption to show the government is serious about fighting corruption.

“The Auditor-General too should conduct a special audit on all these (past) years of spending of such allocations by Sabah BN assemblymen and give a detailed audit report on abuses.

“This (abuse) must be exposed and stopped if Malaysia is going to be developed to become a modern, democratic nation. Public funds must not be abused for political purposes,” he stressed.

Speaking to reporters here on Saturday before returning to Kuala Lumpur, Lim said the allocation was against the United Nation’s report on “inclusive growth”, asserting that inclusive growth is supposed to mean for the benefit of everyone regardless of one’s political affiliation or support.

“How can you talk about giving RM1 million for each BN constituency and on the other hand you’re talking about ‘inclusive growth’?” he asked.

Touching on the RM162 million allocated in the budget for poverty eradication, he was both puzzled and distraught by the fact that despite hundreds of millions of ringgit spent on poverty eradication programmes over the years since BN took over the state in 1994, Sabah has become the poorest state in the country.

“I think instead of calling it poverty eradication programme, it should be correctly termed as ‘BN Cronies Enrichment Programme’ in view of the fact that poverty remains high in Sabah,” he remarked.

Also present were assistant DAP national publicity Secretary cum MP for Serdang Teo Nie Ching, Sabah DAP chief cum MP for Kota Kinabalu Hiew King Cheu, his deputy cum Sri Tanjung assemblyman Jimmy Wong, its vice chairman Edward Mujie and its publicity secretary Edwin Bosi.