KUALA LUMPUR: Petaling Jaya Utara MP Tony Pua has conceded that the Parliamentary Standing Orders do state that information provided by the relevant parties privy to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) could not be publicly disclosed before they are tabled in Parliament.
However, he added, it does not at any point state that a member of the PAC must gag himself on information which was already in the public domain. “I have spoken in the past on the National Feedlot Corporation, KLIA2 and even the 1MDB scandals even as the PAC investigated them. There were no issues.”
“I have never breached the Standing Orders by disclosing information privy only to the PAC.”
Even former PAC Chairman Nur Jazlan Mohamed put it on record that he (Pua) had been very disciplined when issuing statements, claimed Pua, also DAP National Publicity Secretary. “My latest statement was no different when I criticised Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak for claiming that the 1MDB scandal was settled, when it was far from resolved.”
“I argued that the recently announced sale of Bandar Malaysia land to a China-led consortium was an indirect bailout by the Federal Government.”
The Federal Government sold the former Sungai Besi airbase to 1MDB for only RM1.6 billion in 2012, recalled Pua. “1MDB then sold 60 per cent of the Bandar Malaysia venture to the China-led consortium for RM7.4 billion, raking in huge profits to pare down some of its enormous debt.”
Hence, said Pua, 1MDB remains alive today because the taxpayers and government related funds bailed out the excesses of the company. ” In fact, the above proved that 1MDB had borrowed billions of ringgit, lost the money and had to rely almost entirely on prime government assets to pare down the debts.”
All of the above are public information, pointed out Pua. Hence, he would like to ask Gerakan Secretary-General Liang Teck Meng, what was wrong then for him to resolve to “expose the crooks behind the multi-billion ringgit scam at 1MDB which has resulted in tens of billions of ringgit of taxpayers losses?”
Unless of course, the normally reticent Simpang Renggam MP Liang was only interested to do the opposite, that is to cover up the entire scandal, charged Pua.
Or perhaps, Liang, who was overlooked in the recent promotion of 4 BN PAC members to the Cabinet wants to demonstrate that he is working hard as an apple-polisher?” chuckled Pua.
Pua, continuing, recalled that this was not the first time, Liang leaped to castigate him for speaking out on the 1MDB scandal. “Liang, who has never been heard raising issues which matter to the man-on-the-street, has been impressively first-off-the-mark of late to criticise me whenever I comment on 1MDB.”
Pua noted that Liang had not only accused him of being biased, he claimed that he (Pua) was deliberately trying to get suspended from the PAC by speaking up on the issue.
Pua wants to assure Liang that he has no intention of getting thrown out from the PAC. “It is my sworn duty to Malaysians, as their elected representative, to get to the bottom of scandals by questioning the officers involved in them”.
Pua reiterated that he sees nothing wrong with wanting to “expose the crooks behind the multi-billion ringgit scam behind 1MDB which has resulted in tens of billions of ringgit in losses to taxpayers”.-FMT
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