In a video he posted on his Facebook page, Wong Chen revealed that after he had first publicly disclosed an audit conducted on his office by the state government on May 23, the state government had sent a letter to his office on May 30 saying that it was looking into the matter.
“However, in a surprising turn of events, on June 9, we received another letter from the Selangor government stating that it had frozen all our community spending,” he said.
The PKR lawmaker said what was even more “shocking” was that one part of his office’s community spending had apparently been frozen since July 12, 2016.
“The audit was only completed in February 2017. Therefore, basically, the Selangor government froze one part of our community spending even before they made any findings.”
In his expose in May, Wong Chen criticised the Selangor government over what he said was a lack of transparent, fair and proper handling of an audit on the spending of the annual RM250,000 budget allocation to his office. This had also later led to the suspension of his Monthly Welfare programme.
Explaining the facts and chronology of events, Wong Chen said the state treasury informed him it had audited his office accounts in May 2016 but only completed the audit 11 months later in February.
In today’s video, Wong Chen claimed he had no idea why his office’s accounts had been frozen.
“It is our opinion that the freezing of all our community spending is absurd, irrational, and without basis. Our opinion is based on the simple fact that the Selangor government’s own audit in February did not recommend the freezing of our community spending.
“Therefore, to freeze our community spending four months later in June 2017 is absolutely perplexing, bordering on vindictive.”
He also said he had chosen to go public regarding the issue in the spirit of transparency and accountability.
“My office champions a lot of public policies. Transparency and accountability are the most basic principles reflected in all the public policies that we write and unlike some politicians, I have nothing to hide.
“I want to take the opportunity presented by this quarrel, to set a new standard on what it means to be transparent and accountable in Malaysian politics.”
To those who had asked why he had not asked PKR to intervene, Wong Chen said that to ask the party to intervene was not only “morally wrong”, it was also an “illegal abuse of power”.
“This matter involves official actions of the Selangor government, and these actions are of public interest. If the Selangor government feels that their actions are justifiable, then let them defend their actions.
“I am not here to cover up anything for anyone. I am here to clear the good name of my office and staff, and to ensure that Kelana Jaya constituents receive their community allocations.
“It is my hope that the Selangor government will take note from this episode to improve itself on how future internal audits should be conducted with due process. The Selangor government will also do well to implement more checks and balances so that arbitrary and vindictive executive decisions are eliminated.
“No MP or assemblyman should be made to feel they can be subjected to arbitrary executive decisions. No MP or assemblyman in Selangor should suffer the same hardship that my office had to go through in the last five months.”