Finally, the proposed High Performance Training Centre (HPTC) in Brickendonbury outside London, originally slated to cost RM490 million but later scaled down and projected to cost RM70 million, has been laid to rest.
The reasons given by the new Youth and Sports Minister Datuk Ismail Sabri Yaakob scrapping the HPTC project is exactly what critics and opponents of the project had said both in and out of Parliament – that it is an extravagant and unnecessary expenditure which had nothing to do with raising the standards of Malaysian sports!
A special tribute must be given to crusading journalists like R. Nadeswaran of The Sun who had persevered in their high-quality investigative journalism under the most difficult of circumstances to expose the series of lies, half-truths and misinformation which proponents of the project had been spinning in the country in support of the folly.
Although Ismail said he was checking on the amount incurred on consultants, travel and other expenses in pursuing the project, giving an undertaking that they will be made public, it is most extraordinary that the new Sports Minister has difficulty in getting the latest update of the total expenditures incurred in the project.
There is no reason why Ismail could not have got these figures as he had been appointed Sports Minister for more than four weeks, with three intervening Cabinet meetings. Furthermore, there is only a change of a Minister and no change of government with consequential disappearance of files, as happened in some of the states where the Barisan Nasional had lost state power in the March 8 politicial tsunami.
The end of the HTPC folly is one direct consequence of the March 8 political tsunami, removing not only the Barisan Nasional’s two-thirds parliamentary majority and control in five state governments but also its “high-and-mighty” attitude that it could do no wrong and could do what it liked with its electoral mandate from the people.
There should be a public inquiry into the folly of the RM70 million HPTC in Brickendonbury outside London as an object lesson to all Ministers, MPs and civil servants on the do’s and don’ts if the government is serious about accountability, transparency and good governance – to establish how many millions of ringgit have actually been wasted and misspent as well as to pin down the lies, half-truths and misinformation which had been spouted in the past two years by government officials and committees – representing one of the worst examples of bad governance of the Abdullah premiership.