The time has come to revive the practice of electing councilors for the city, municipal and district councils. With the very much publicized issues and controversies in the media lately pertaining to municipal councilors, in particular the Datuk Zakaria case, it is time to relook into the current practice of appointing councilors into all local authorities.

Many suggestions have been put forward, particularly in reviving elections and appointing professionals instead of politicians into the councils. In my opinion, it is best to combine the best of both the above suggestions. Have both elected and appointed councilors in. A municipal election can be conducted, say every three to five years to elect councilors from among political parties while at the same time, professionals and community leaders not belonged to any political parties may be appointed too.

Perhaps, we can start of with the city councils, namely Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, Kuching North, Kuching South, Johor Bahru, Kota Kinabalu, Shah Alam, Melaka, Alor Star, Miri and Petaling Jaya. After some fine tuning, we can then expand this practice to the municipal councils and finally the district councils. It is hoped that local governments can function more effectively if these proposals are implemented.