COMMENT | About 20 years ago, DAP MP Tan Kok Wai led a group to The Sun’s office to seek signatures on a campaign calling for local elections.

Most of us on the editorial floor enthusiastically signed it, having been involved in a series of exposés over the preceding months of the many shortcomings of the local governments in Selangor.

Local elections in Malaysia were suspended in the 1960s and later replaced by a system of appointed heads, with the state governments appointing mayors of city councils and presidents of municipal and district councils.

The licence-for-donations scandal related to outdoor billboards and the allocation of low-cost houses for ineligible staff of what was then the Petaling Jaya Municipal Council, the pest control monopoly in Subang Jaya, and much later, the infamous “palace” of former Umno assemblyperson Zakaria Md Deros in Klang were enough reasons to hold councillors responsible for their actions or inaction.