(Petaling Jaya, Wednesday): All Gerakan candidates who stand for party election but at the same time holding government portfolio must apply leave when running their campaigns, in order to avoid misuse of government funding and resources and to uphold the principle of clean leadership in the government.

DAPSY believes that this is a very important matter as it concerns the public interest when all salaries paid to government servants including government ministers, deputy ministers and parliamentary secretaries are from the taxpayers’ money.

Since there is no relation between government matters and party election, therefore Gerakan candidates who take part in the party election who are at the same time holding governmental portfolios should apply for unpaid leave if they wish to have their own campaign during office hour.

Failing so means that these Gerakan candidates are not only misusing public funding for their own survival in their party but such acts are also regarded as malpractices in the private sector.

When Gerakan President Datuk Seri Lim Keng Yaik announced his manifesto a few days ago, he mentioned that he will “turn Gerakan to be a role model and be the lead in political reform”. DAPSY believes that the first thing Keng Yaik should do is to direct all Gerakan candidates to apply leave when running their campaign “in line with his vision”.

DAPSY understands that this has not been fully implemented during the last MCA election. Even though MCA claimed that this is the most democratic party election that they ever had in their history, but none of the MCA candidates applied leaves when they ran their own campaign during election time.

This is a clear violation of political ethics as no government staff should be allowed to spend times on personal matters (which include running campaign for their party election) when they should be sitting in their own office handling governmental issues during office hours. Failing to abide to this basic political ethics is a great irony to a political party like Gerakan which wants to “turn Gerakan to be a role model and be the lead in political reform”.

Such act is also no indirectly sacrificing the interests of the public, to some extent, this is no difference with power abuse, and this can also be regarded as violating laws and regulations. Taxpayers of course have the right to urge ACA to investigate this matter so as to avoid the abuse of taxpayers’ money.

Therefore, DAPSY urges the current leadership of Gerakan to direct all its candidates, regardless of which faction they stand for to apply leave from their respective governmental position if they want to utilize their office hour to run their own campaign. Else, they can only be allowed to do so after office hour.

Taxpayers do not have the responsibility to fund their campaigns for their own party election.