MARANG: While claiming that Pas will give its full cooperation into Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission investigation on the source of its political funds, party president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang wants the commission to exercise fairness by giving similar treatment to other political parties, especially DAP and Parti Amanah Rakyat (PAN).
He said Pas did not fear MACC investigations because most of its activities were funded by donations from its more than one million members.
“We are active in 190 divisions and have opened thousands of Pasti kindergartens, and hundreds of schools.
“We give back what we have collected to the people through party activities. In this respect, we will use the donations collected to fight the aborted defamation suits (against Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle-Brown) to fund future party activities in the country.
“Whatever activities that we have conducted came from our own pockets. The people were willing to donate because they trusted the party and this was reflected when we captured Terengganu, retained Kelantan, nearly won Kedah and won a lot more parliamentary and state seats in Pahang in the last general election,” he said after his weekly usrah at the Rhusila mosque here today.
He added that the success also proved that all slanders thrown at Pas failed to influence voters.
“We want to continue with our work and put this (out-of-court settlement of the defamation suit) behind us. The recent statement from my political secretary (Syahir Sulaiman) is sufficient.
“But in all fairness, MACC should also investigate the source of political funds from other political parties, especially DAP and Pan,” he told reporters.
When asked to comment on the out-of-court settlement against Rewcastle-Brown through an order of consent, dated Feb 1 at the London High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division, he said: “We feel that there is no need to waste the court’s time and we acted on the advice from our lawyers because we wanted to carry on with other things.
“More so, the laws in Britain were different from our laws where the case must be brought by individuals and not a party, but the allegations were made against the party.
“We cannot file the case under the party’s name. This in itself is already something different. When we view this we saw that this was already a moral victory for us. As such, we did not proceed with the defamation suit.”
Hadi added that the MACC should question other political parties on the number of branches and where the funds for political activities were sourced from.
“PAN has no branches. The DAP don’t have many branches. So where did the party get its funds? This needs to be investigated,” he said.
Pas on the other hand, welcomed MACC investigations because it wanted to make sure that it is clean.
“In Parliament, there was a question on how many parliamentarians were investigated by MACC and the reply from a minister showed that politicians investigated were from Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Harapan but not a single lawmaker from Pas,” he added.