In a clear sign of malice and intimidation, the Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission has sent out feelers that it is considering pulling in DAP MP for PJ Utara Tony Pua because he had accused Prime Minister Najib Razak’s federal government of proposing to buy 6 Littoral Combat ships at a cost far higher than existing market valuation.
National news agency Bernama reported an un-named MACC source as saying the commission was waiting for Tony to explain how he arrived at such a conclusion.
“We require clear and basic facts to investigate any allegation, including from Tony Pua,” the MACC source told Bernama.
“The commission cannot carry out an investigation based on wild allegations,” the source added.
Bernama also reported that if Tony “did not come forward, the commission would get in touch with him to get ‘valid facts’ to start investigations”.
Penalized for sounding the alarm
Tony had written in his blog that the RM6bil approved by the government to buy 6 vessels was 870 per cent more than what other countries paid for similar vessels.
But Navy chief Admiral Abdul Aziz Jaafar claimed that the ships to be built by Boustead Naval Shipyard in collaboration with six leading foreign shipyards would be far superior to the offshore patrol ships that RMN now used.
BN-friendly MP for Bayan Baru Zahrain Hashim also challenged Tony to lodge a complaint with the MACC instead of “making a lot of noise about it in an irresponsible way on the Internet”.
However, Tony’s Pakatan colleagues came to his defence. They condemned the BN government and the MACC for trying to silence him over a deal that reeked of massive corruption.
The boats were ordered without open tender and the huge cost has angered taxpayers, who are increasingly worried about the way Najib was splurging on big-ticket items while they suffered from round after round of subsidy cuts and price hikes.
“We are thoroughly disgusted by such behavior that I think only BN and Umno are capable of. Tony is an MP and it is his duty to raise a hue and cry when he sees what he believes are improper pricing at taxpayers’ expense. To try and penalize him is spiteful and wrong, it will boomerang,” PKR vice president Tian Chua told Malaysia Chronicle.
Prime minister Najib Abdul Razak warned Malaysians that regime change in Malaysia through mass demonstrations, like those in Egypt, will not be tolerated by his government.
In that case, will he demonstrate leadership and have the political will, to move this country forward instead of using threats to silence us and cow us into submission? Will he listen when we tell him that the country needs urgent reforms? Or will he relinquish his responsibility?
Last month, investigations into the collapse of the roof of the Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin Stadium in Gong Badak two years ago, blamed one man for the disaster. He was the consulting engineer for the project, Wan Manan Wan Ali.
Wan Manan was charged with “acting like an approved checker in issuing a document on the main roof truss system and its associated works, dated Jan 15, 2009, for the proposal to build the main stadium, known as the Terengganu sports complex.”
Apart from charging Wan Manan for posing as someone else to defraud the system, we still do not know what actually caused the stadium to collapse.
If that is the extent of the investigation, then it appears that more money has been wasted.
What caused the collapse? Was it the stadium design? Or shoddy work practices? Or inferior materials? Was there a lack of supervision? Or was it incompetent management? Did the project run out of money? Were the contractors unreliable?
The only thing that is certain is that hundreds of millions of public funds have been wasted and that we are no nearer to the truth.
So is Wan Manan a qualified engineer, belonging to the professional body of Chartered Engineers? Was he the engineer appointed by the authorities?
An accredited engineer has to be insured. Was he?
Nevertheless Wan Manan is not a one-man outfit. Who were his superiors and what about the company he was attached to? Every major work has a system of checks and balances. Did this?
Did the investigation look at the Standard Operating Procedures? Maybe someone took short cuts? What about the specifications of the materials to be used in this project? Concrete and sand are graded, mixing times are relevant and work schedules for each stage of construction is critical.
It is difficult to believe that this investigation was detailed and thorough. Was the investigation itself independent of interfering government bodies with vested interests? Is this a cover-up to cover-up the previous cover-ups.
This investigation would have taken on a different complexion if lives had been lost or serious injuries sustained.
A project of this size, magnitude and cost can only attract a handful of companies with relevant expertise and experience. Perhaps this is another cosy arrangement of the government whereby only cronies of those in power won the bid, if there had had been an open tender in the first place.
The main contractors for this stadium were Bina Struktur Sdn Bhd, Emarcon Sdn Bhd and Genggam Mercu. The project cost RM292 million.
We know that this project is not the first, nor the last building to collapse. We have seen several leakages and cracks in buildings in the showcase village of Putrajaya.
Besides that we have seen cracks on the Kepong MRR2 highway and the flood mitigation project in Jinjang, Kepong.
How do governments react? They call upon more contractors, some of them foreign ones, to do a patch-up job. More money down the drain.
At the end of the day, it is the government which is guilty of encouraging shoddy work practices by condoning institutional corruption.
The collapse in Terengganu, Putrajaya and elsewhere are simply a manifestation of the cancer of corruption. At the very least, the Minister for Works should have shouldered some of the blame.
Najib must do something about corruption, and overhaul the government and how it works. Otherwise what happened in Egypt becomes a viable alternative for the rakyat. We are tired of living with incompetence at inflated costs besides risking our lives and limbs. At some point our patience will ‘crack’.
Reform is better than revolution. So is Najib willing to listen?
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| A woman walks past graffiti reading “Democracy - Proud to be Tunisian” in central Tunis [AFP] |
Perhaps the most striking finding in the United Nations’ recent 20th anniversary Human Development Report is the outstanding performance of the Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Here was Tunisia, ranked sixth among 135 countries in terms of improvement in its Human Development Index (HDI) over the previous four decades – ahead of Malaysia, Hong Kong, Mexico, and India. Not far behind was Egypt, ranked 14th.
The HDI is a measure of development that captures achievements in health and education, alongside economic growth. Egypt and Tunisia did well enough on the growth front – but where they really shone was on these broader indicators. At 74, Tunisia’s life expectancy edges out Hungary’s and Estonia’s, countries that are more than twice as wealthy. Some 69 per cent of Egypt’s children are in school – a ratio that matches much richer Malaysia’s. Clearly, these were states that did not fail in providing social services or distributing the benefits of economic growth widely.
The HDI is a measure of development that captures achievements in health and education, alongside economic growth. Egypt and Tunisia did well enough on the growth front – but where they really shone was on these broader indicators. At 74, Tunisia’s life expectancy edges out Hungary’s and Estonia’s, countries that are more than twice as wealthy. Some 69 per cent of Egypt’s children are in school – a ratio that matches much richer Malaysia’s. Clearly, these were states that did not fail in providing social services or distributing the benefits of economic growth widely.
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