Transportation – Silly PR Stunt and PKFZ Scandal Revisit

Isn’t it both funny and laughable to read how the prime minister opted the cheap-skate method of doing their PR stunt? The sleepy former PM may have left us for good to enjoy his forever honey-moon period but I bet everyone can still recall how he took a ride on LRT in an attempt to score some political and PR points. Now you’ve the new PM who did the same thing and it would be foolish to think such a stunt would do him any good. The next question that comes to your mind – doesn’t the PM has a better PR team to rebuild his public approval rating? The fact remains that no matter how many times the PM took the ride on public transportation systems and how hard the government-controlled media spinned the story as if the PM was a superhero Superman, the people are simply too sick and tired of the silliness of the whole stunt.

People still remember how the PM (was deputy PM then) took the easy way out by telling the average-Joes to bite the bullet and change their lifestyle when the government increased the fuel hike not many moons ago. Frankly do you really need to show how silly you are by taking public transport just to conclude that the system sucks? Didn’t the new PM promised to deliver a better public transportation from billions of ringgit of savings resulting from the fuel hike back then? Stop beating around the bush and put the right people to study and improve the public transportation once and for all.

Sure, the new PM’s latest attempt to bring back the lost confidence in the business sector by abolishing the 30% bumiputra equity policy from 27 sub-sector were on the right path but why stop there? What’s holding back from abolishing the controversial and obsolete NEP (New Economic Policy)? Of course people are still wondering if this is another short-term political ploy as the present government is known for flip-flop in its policies. There’s no guarantee that one fine day they would suddenly reinstate the 30% bumiputra equity again and you can’t do a single damn thing about it, not with the judicial pillar totally under executive’s control.

It’s too early to say if the new administration’s intention is genuine but besides giving away the carrot in the form of increasing foreign ownership, the government should probably look into the cancerous corruption at its backyard. You can only do so much for so long by sweeping all the corruptions accusations under the carpet. And why did the Transport Minister Ong Tee Keat suddenly burst into anger that TheEdge Weekly published the infamous PKFZ (Port Klang Free Zone) scandal revealing that the cost has just ballooned to RM8 billion from its original RM2.3 billion. People were puzzling why a person (Ong Tee Keat) who was seen as a clean politician is trying to prolong the release of the audit findings by independent auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) on the scandal.

Like it or not the perception is that the PKFZ scandal was tainted with corruption from the very beginning – from former MCA President Ling Liong Sik to Ong’s predecessor Chan Kong Choy. Ong may have thought that the PKFZ was quite a straight-forward project without much hanky-panky elements and hence his big promise to reveal all but soon after he became the President of MCA he began to realize how huge the scandal is. He must be kicking himself for opened his big mouth with the promise to tell all about the PKFZ scandal. And since Ong Tee Keat refused to acknowledge or deny that the scandal is now costing RM8 billion, people would think what was reported by TheEdge is correct. Unless Ong is serious about suing the weekly publisher the MCA President would be seen as tainted as well. It seems Ong is buying time hoping the PKFZ could attract more investment and as such could neutralize the irregularities in the scandal.