Deputy Speaker Datuk Lim Si Cheng should not under any circumstances “protect” the government from embarrassing Opposition questions about high-profile corruption

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Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang  
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(Parliament, Tuesday) I protested in Parliament this morning at not being given the chance to ask a supplementary question on the third question by the Barisan Nasional MP for Penampang Donald Peter Mojuntin on government actions to make the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) more effective  and “customer-friendly” in dealing with complaints.

This was denied by the Deputy Speraker, Datuk Lim Si Cheng who was in the Chair.

I had wanted to ask in my supplementary question to the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz the ACA failure deal effectively with the five-year-old report by over one thousand people, comprising opposition leaders, NGO representatives and concerned citizens, on January 27, 2001 over the RM1.8 billion MAS acquisition of Tajudin Ramli’s MAS stake by the government at RM8 per share when the market price was RM3.68 per share.

I had wanted to ask Nazri whether he would agree that one criteria on the effectiveness of ACA is its ability to deal with high-profile cases like the RM1.8 billion Tajudin-MAS sell-back scandal, whether it is a case of “national service” or “national betrayal”.

I had also wanted to know why the ACA had backtracked on its new transparent policy announced in July 2003 on three measures  to  address public concern for more transparency, viz:  

·         The ACA will from now on keep all complainants informed on the status of investigations into their reports if they want it.

·         Heads of government departments will be  informed of the decision of the Attorney-General on investigations involving their subordinates. 

·         The ACA  will issue statements about cases that are still under investigation if it feels necessary, including those already decided by the Attorney-General. 

This is because this new ACA transparency had been a “dead letter” from the very outset and had never been implemented in the past three years, including on the Tajudin-MAS sell-back scandal, raising the question whether this is another case of betrayal of the present government’s pledge of an all-out war against corruption, without fear or favour and regardless of office or rank – another failure to implement the  2004 general election promise that  Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi will become a modern-day “Justice Bao”.

(11/07/2006)