Can Local Government be more accountable?

For many who are living in Klang Valley , it seemed that there lives an entity that can be bigger than the federal or state government . For those who are not familiar with Malaysia's political system , we are governed through a combination of roles clearly divided among the federal government and 16 state governments. It is like a mixture of centralized and decentralised matrix.

Anyway , these 2 instintutions are supposedly 'strong' in which representative are mostly voted through election mechanism. However , over the years there is a trend of a 3rd entity - the municipal council. Municipal councils are under purview of the Federal government yet they are associated closely with the State government . Basically , the best of both worlds. And yet , their power is growing stronger which may come from the ever increasing wealth from tax and services. As the money grew , so are ambitions. Now , some even managed to fund a team of profesionnal players for local football league.

The latest controversy is related to the raping of trees in a supposedly protected forest. Then we have the case of development of Kelana Jaya park / pond in a highly congested area. Of course , before that would be the development of a multimillion Immigration department , the LDP Giant hypermarket. And who can forget the case of one municipal council who thought so highly of themselves that the councillors were each given a RM10,000 batik and the biggest guy have a Cokmar. A cokmar is something a king or prince would use in an official procession. And he used a lot of money to get this cokmar done with all the precious gems etc.

How rude it is to be paying so much money to a municipal council who are presumely doing the best they could with their income by dissing us with mediocre sanitation , planning etc. service? And we tot that it is becoz they don't have enough money to spend but in fact , the money is spend elsewhere. I won't be surprised if their financial state is much worst than they would like to say and ended up needing extra funds. Good planning indeed.