Is the failure of a candidate to pay for election campaign paraphernalia constitutes an election offence?

According to subsection 16 (3) and (4) of the Election Offences Act 1954, all expenses incurred by or on behalf of a candidate for an election, have to be paid within 28 days after the election results have been gazetted.

This means that all election candidates for the recent general election needed to settle their outstanding bills from suppliers by May 29. The results were gazetted on April 29.

In an exclusive malaysiakini report on Wednesday, several companies which supplied BN's campaign materials such as posters, banners, caps, T-shirts and mineral water, said that a middle man - claiming to act on behalf of BN - had promised payment for the materials on March 20, a day before polling.

However, they say the payments never arrived, and another deadline on June 15 also passed with no money forthcoming from the middle man's company, Elegant Advisory, based in Setapak, Kuala Lumpur.

One foreign supplier involved said she would resort to obtaining help from her country's embassy in settling the outstanding debt, after her letters to Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi were ignored.

Written consent

In a new development, Elegant Advisory's ex-chairman, Hasan Ayuob yesterday claimed that the company had not received formal approval from state Umno leaders but had gone ahead with the placing of the orders with the suppliers.

If this is true, then Elegant Advisory could have breached another clause under the Election Offences Act which states that all third parties must obtain written permission from a candidate or election agent before supplying campaign goods.

Under the Act, no one else other than a candidate, election agent, or an authorised person is allowed to 'promote or procure the election of a candidate by printing and issuing advertisements, circulars, or publications'.

However, under subsection 15A(1) of the Act, third parties may supply campaign material to an election candidate with written consent and must submit details of their contribution to the election agent within 14 days of the election results being gazetted.

This would mean that Elegant Advisory needed to have written consent for all the BN election candidates it supplied campaign paraphernalia to.

'No comment'

A number of other questions now arise from the scandal, the first is whether the BN candidates who benefited from these materials had included them in their expense declaration forms.

Election candidates have to file details of their election expenses within 31 days after publication of the election gazette.

Failure of candidates or their agents to submit true returns of election expenses would constitute an 'illegal practice' under the Election Offences Act and they run the risk of being barred from standing as a candidate for five years if convicted.

Assuming election candidates had included Elegant Advisory's consignments in their expense declaration forms, this would mean that the latter had been paid which, in turn, raises the question of why the materials suppliers and manufacturers have not.

Another poser is Elegant Advisory's position in supplying campaign material without being granted the right to do so by the candidates of their election agents.

Election Commission chairperson Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman, when contacted today, declined to comment on the above issues and requested that EC secretary Wan Ahmad Wan Omar be contacted instead. Wan Ahmad could not be reached as he was outstation.

Investigate call

Meanwhile, Transparency International deputy president Param Cumaraswamy in statement today said that while BN had gone to the polls with the promise to battle corruption, its leaders were now ignoring the fiasco about the payment for the campaign material they consumed.

"A simple process would be for the BN secretary-general to investigate and ascertain how such a magnitude of merchandise was acquired for its campaign and whether they have been paid for," said Param.

"If not legally, then at least morally, Barisan component parties are responsible for settling this debt and restoring, not only their integrity, but also that of the government."

The former United Nations special rapporteur also called for a formal and transparent Anti-Corruption Agency investigation into the debacle.

Opposition Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) also echoed the need for BN to explain itself.

In a statement, its youth wing's deputy information chief Badrul Hisham Shaharin called on the EC to investigate the controversy as it '... could just be the tip of the iceberg'.

There could be more undisclosed contributions to BN's coffers during the recent general election through such middle man companies, he said.