If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.
– MICK MULVANEY, AMERICAN POLITICIAN SERVING AS ACTING WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF
Want to make a fast buck? No, I am not taking about pyramid schemes, love scams, foreign exchange frauds or the notorious Macau scams.
All these are illegal and if you managed to pull one over on your victims you wouldn’t get to enjoy the ill-gotten loot for long. For it will be only a matter of time before the long arm of the law catches up with you.
I am looking at elections. Yes, elections!
The quickest way to make money fast — legally and without having to ever feel guilty about it — is to be an election candidate.
A now-retired state assemblyman (from the former state Barisan Nasional) from Sibu whom I met up over lunch last Saturday at the Mamak’s in Kuching posed an interesting question.
“Do you know what’s the easiest way to make fast money without being caught?”
“Stocks and shares?” I asked innocently.
“You must be joking, brother! You also will get your fingers burned equally fast. I said fast money without running foul of the law,” he said.
The former YB then went on to reveal that the coming state polls would be a good avenue to make some money.
“How YB (I still address him as one out of respect)? I don’t understand.”
“Be an election candidate,” he replied with a broad smile.
Over the next one hour or so, he let me into a lot of things. Wow! What a surprise! I didn’t think being a candidate can be lucrative; I thought being one was risky business.
Being a veteran of several elections, my friend was able to give me a rundown on several state and general elections where he claimed to know of people who made a small fortune out of offering themselves as candidates.
But to be fair, he was quick to clarify that they were mainly independents.
“Not possible for candidates of ruling parties to make money. In fact, some from the ruling coalition had to dig deep into their own pockets to finance their campaigns,” my friend said.
Back in the 60s, 70s and 80s, independents were quite common. For example, an astonishing number of 66 independents out of the total 218 candidates contested in the 1969 state elections. All of them except one lost, with some obtaining hardly 100 votes.
But I guess money was far from their minds. They were genuinely interested in representing the rakyat. Half a century ago, money politics was unheard of, I believe. But not now. Money makes the political world go round.
In the 1974 polls, 11 independents contested. The figure increased to 51 in 1979. The 1983 elections saw 79 independents; 16 in 1987; 19 in 1991; 60 in 1996; 63 in 2001; 20 in 2006; 41 in 2011 and 36 in 2016.
My friend claimed some of these independents were planted by the ruling coalition to force multi-cornered fights to split votes, thus increasing the coalition’s chances of victory.
Of course, the opposition was also guilty of resorting to the same tactic.
These independents were said to have received anything from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of ringgit, depending on their popularity.
While there were independents being paid to stand in elections, we also had those paid off to withdraw their candidacy.
“In one particular state election, the ruling coalition paid off an independent to withdraw so as to ensure the seat was uncontested. But sorry-lah, I rather not say which particular election or which seat. You go and do your homework,” my ex-assemblyman friend said.
This independent went home with a cool “few hundred thousand ringgit”, claimed my friend.
He also revealed a hilarious incident during one election when an independent who was waiting for his turn to file his nomination papers for a constituency was whisked off to a nearby loo.
A few minutes later he emerged from the washroom with a Samsonite (popularly referred to as ‘James Bond’ bag in those days) briefcase.
“No one knows till this day how much cash the briefcase contained,” the friend said.
But one thing was for certain. The independent didn’t go back to the nomination centre to file his papers.
According to my friend, that constituency saw a straight fight between the ruling coalition and the opposition party, with the former winning handsomely. Again, he declined to reveal the election year or the constituency.
Now I understand why elections are an easy platform to make quick money.
My ‘YB’ friend has now kept me wondering why I am still at my present job as a journalist. Now that the state polls are expected to be called at any time, I better think of being a candidate. What do you think?
