Political financing in Malaysia: The weakest link in Malaysian politics

Political financing is relatively a new discipline in political science. But in Malaysia, political financing has actually been employed to promote leaders in the election and image of the state locally and internationally since Malaysia independence in 1957. But there is no attempt to reform the practices of political financing which involve the funding and spending of political parties especially in the election. This paper tries to see the discourse on political financing in current literatures. Importantly, this paper will look on the idea of political financing in current context in Malaysia including the use and abuse of the implementation. This paper will analyze the current issues involving political financing and the legal dilemma in regulating political financing. In finding clearly shows that there are weaknesses in implementation and regulation of political financing in Malaysia which can easily abuse by the politicians and political parties. Therefore, this paper urges the need for the introduction of a new on political financing in Malaysia like being practices in many democratic countries. This will strengthen Malaysia in ensuring political processes like the election would not be tarnished by ‘money politics’ that corrupts the society. This paper definitely will also help citizens of Malaysia to understand the importance of political financing to be transparent and free from graft that can be practised in Malaysia.