Day: August 13, 2007

Transport Minister, Datuk Seri Chan Kong Choy should resign as Transport Minister if he is not prepared to break his four-year silence on the RM4.6 billionh Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal or secure Cabinet approval on Wednesday to establish a Royal Commission of Inquiry to bare all the facts about the scandal.

Since becoming Transport Minister 2003, Chan had studiously ignored queries about the multi-billion ringgit malpractices and cost overruns at the Port Klang Free Zone, which had ballooned from a RM1.1 billion “self-financing” project which did not require a single sen of public funds to a RM4.6 billion scandal requiring government bail out using taxpayers’ monies.

As the latest Sun expose on the PKFZ scandal revealed today, “red tape, political meddling, inaccurate minutes and attempted tax evasion real reasons Port Klang Free Zone deal collapsed”.

Sun reporter R. Nadeswaran said in his commentary, “Bring PKFZ culprits to book”:

It was then the biggest financial fiasco in the country’s history — the Bumiputra Malaysia Finance (BMF) scandal of the Eighties which prompted the government to set up a Royal Commission of Inquiry. The amount involved was less than RM2 billion.

Today, we have on our hands a scandal that would put the BMF affair in the shadows. More than RM4.6 billion has been spent on the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ), and behind the massive expenditure is an intrigue of family deals, demands, interference by politicians and government officers with vested interests, attempts at tax evasion, gigantic cost over-runs, unauthorized payments, influence peddling, cloak-and-dagger operations, and above all, a total lack of transparency and accountability and care-a-damn attitude by the key personalities involved.

When Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi became Prime Minister, he had promised an end to such scandals of corruption, abuses of power, malpractices and total unaccountability. Continue reading “Chan Kong Choy and RM4.6b Port Klang Free Zone scandal – explain, Royal Commission of Inquiry or resign as Transport Minister”

The extreme over-reaction and concentrated attacks by UMNO Ministers and leaders against Wee Meng Chee for the “Negarakuku” rap video-clip should immediately end before further dampening and damaging the national mood for 50th Merdeka anniversary celebrations.

There were many among Chinese-speaking Malaysians, including youths, who did not agree with some of his rough language and irreverent expressions when they saw Meng Chee’s rap for the first time, although his articulation of the ordinary rakyat’s dissatisfactions and frustrations at police corruption, civil service bureaucracy, discrimination against Chinese education and insensitivity of the authorities struck a deep chord and found great resonance.

However, when Meng Chee became the target of a systematic attack of Umno and media demonisation, with one UMNO Minister after another including the Education Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister jumping on the bandwagon to paint as an ogre and “traitor” as if he single-handedly threatens the very fabric, stability and integrity of plural Malaysia, there is full rally of support for Meng Chee for nobody buys the canard that Meng Chee was unpatriotic, disloyal, anti-national, anti-Islam, anti-Malay or was attempting to be seditious to incite hatred and ill-will between the races or religions.

I just did a search on youtube where the Negarakuku rap had been put up by dozens of various people although Meng Chee had removed it on his website. There had been over 1.2 million access on the youtube, with the top two sites registering 768,231 and 164,849 visits respectively.

Is anybody suggesting that the overwhelming majority of the Malaysian visitors of youtube for the Negarakuku rap are unpatriotic and seditious in wanting to incite inter-racial and inter-religious ill-will and hatred in our country?
If so, then there is nothing to celebrate the 50th Merdeka anniversary as the nation would have failed dismally in the five decades of nation-building.

In fact, Meng Chee’s rap was his expression of his patriotism and love for the country, to make it a better country for all Malaysians.

Meng Chee may be faulted for his rough language or irreverent expressions but these cannot be equated with being unpatriotic, disloyal or seditious. Continue reading “Demonisation of Wee Meng Chee dampening national mood for 50th Merdeka anniversary”

The verdict is now in 27 months after the Royal Police Commission Report in May 2005 to create an incorruptible, efficient, professional and world-class police service to reduce crime, eradicate corruption and respect human rights — a police force which is not only more rotten than before Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi became Prime Minister, but with the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) and the Attorney-General’s Chambers equally tarnished for “Harap Pagar, Pagar Makan Padi”!

This harsh judgment was not made by Opposition leaders and NGO critics of government, but by a venerable pillar of the establishment, the former and longest-serving Inspector-General of Police and Deputy Chairman of the Royal Police Commission, Tun Hanif Omar in his Sunday Star column with a title which is an indictment on all the three “vital institutions” — “THE FENCE THAT EATS THE RICE”!

Hanif’s article is even more condemnatory of the rot in the police force than the Royal Police Commission report when everyone should be singing praises for a reformed police after the implementation of the Commission’s 125 recommendations to create an incorruptible, efficient and professional world-class police service.

Instead this is what Hanif wrote yesterday:

I briefed the Royal Commission that police corruption was so extensive that a very senior ACA officer had confided in me and another top retired police officer that 40% of the senior officers could be arrested without further investigations — strictly on the basis of their lifestyles. One state police chief had a net worth of RM18mil. My friend and I had watched the force getting deeper and deeper into the morass of corruption. ..

“I could not help telling the ACA officer that he really had his work cut out for him and that his fight against corruption was the most important fight facing the country but I hoped that he could effectively stamp out this corruption without destroying our PDRM which had done such yeomen service to the nation.

But what has the police to show in the follow-up to the Royal Police Commission Report?

Hanif lamented that although the Police Royal Commission Report was made public two-and-a-quarter years ago, “yet PDRM has still not burnished its image”.

He wrote: Continue reading “Hanif’s “pagar makan padi” indictment – 50th Merdeka anniversary only meaningful if IPCMC announced before August 31″