Its executive director Cynthia Gabriel said the target in PH’s manifesto for the 14th general election (GE14) was a “very big political commitment.”
She said it would mean enabling more checks and balances, and less power for the ruling party.
“This is something no government actually wants,” she said.
It would also entail moves like making key institutions independent, allowing free access to information, requiring elected politicians to declare assets and regulating political financing.
“That is what we need to have. An independent judiciary, police and Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) must be able to take on even the top leader of the country if it comes to that,” she told FMT.
Cynthia said the government must willingly share information with the public, including on matters like trade deals, government budgets and public contracts.
She said such measures were necessary to weed out corruption at the structural level.
She added that local government elections also needed to be revived to prevent appointed “yes men” from implementing policies just because they are favourable to the party in power.
“If they put these mechanisms in place you can avoid grand corruption scandals from occurring, and that would be a very big step forward to keep us from sliding down the CPI (corruption perception index),” she said.
In its election manifesto launched earlier, PH declared its goal to make Malaysia one of the top 10 least corrupt countries in Transparency International’s (TI) CPI by 2030.
Malaysia dropped seven spots in TI’s global corruption index for 2017, ranking 62nd among 180 countries. The country was placed in 55th position in 2016 and in 54th in 2015.
Cynthia also said there was a need to reduce power vested in one leader in government.
She said there should not be overlapping appointments in sensitive portfolios such as when the deputy prime minister is also made home minister and the prime minister takes on the role of finance minister.
In its manifesto, PH also promised to scrap the goods and services tax (GST), have targeted petrol subsidies, eliminate Felda settlers’ debts, enable housewives to contribute to the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and streamline minimum wages.
It also assured restoration of the status of Sabah and Sarawak according to the Malaysia Agreement 1963, suspension of PTPTN higher education fund repayments for those earning below RM4,000 a month, a “healthcare” scheme for all, together with open investigations into scandals and reviews on mega projects.