Declaring assets with God's will

COMMENT | We don’t give PAS deputy president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man enough credit. Although we remember him for saying that the declaration of assets is unIslamic, that wasn’t the only thing he said. He said many more confusing things that only the highest among us would be able to decipher.

I couldn’t, but I could raise my confusion.

First, the quick change in position. As Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail recalls, Tuan Ibrahim was a staunch advocate for asset declaration in 2015. After The Wall Street Journal exposed the billions that were transferred to the former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak’s accounts, Tuan Ibrahim asked Najib and his wife Rosmah Mansor to declare their assets.

He said that asset declaration is the only effective response against the allegations. But now it’s different.

2015 Tuan Ibrahim vs 2019 Tuan Ibrahim

When it’s his turn to declare assets, Tuan Ibrahim calls it unIslamic, since asset declaration is tantamount to the flaunting of wealth. The deliberate misinterpretation here is stark.

Asset declaration is not an opportunity to flaunt your wealth; asset declaration is a curtailment of opportunity to obtain illicit wealth. Tuan Ibrahim understood this in 2015, but he refuses to extend the same logical reasoning to 2019.

Everyone knows that asset declaration matters at this juncture because of what happened the past few years. Corruption was systemic and endemic; it was normalised and made a culture...