COMMENT | How elected local councils can combat corruption

COMMENT | One excellent reason for reviving the local council polls, suspended since 1965 for dubious reasons, is the power that it has to reduce corruption substantially, especially land-related corruption, which is large and has hardly been dealt with.

The individual states determine land matters for state land and the federal authorities for land owned by the federal government, such as in Kuala Lumpur and Labuan. They approve land alienation, land use and ownership, the major point of corruption here.

I explained in this article titled “Curbing Malaysia's land corruption could save trillions” how much money can be saved by changes in the way land is alienated.

One of the measures would be to...