Call on Prime Minister to announce a blueprint to eradicate leakages from corruption, rent and waste in implementation of RM220 billion 9MP – which could be as high as RM40 billion – RM50 billion in the next five years

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Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang  
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(Parliament, Thursday) :The  Bernama report, used by many print media, about the parliamentary exchange yesterday during the speech by the Barisan Nasional MP for Kinabatangan, Datuk Bung Moktar Radin, over the Prime Minister’s son-in-law, Khairy Jamaluddin, carried a serious mistake.

The following is from the  Bernama report:

Bung Moktar's remark prompted Lim to deny that he had accused Khairy of being a mastermind, saying he had only referred to a recent article by the Umno Youth vice-head in the New Straits Times newspaper.

"I did not mention that he is a mastermind. I just said stop the gravy train. He had talked about a `leakage' of 10 per cent. If the government is going to spend RM220 billion on development under the 9MP, the 10 per cent will amount to RM22 billion. But the `leakage' is actually 30 per cent," he said.

I did not say that Khairy had referred to a “leakage” of 10 per cent from the RM220 billion Ninth Malaysia Plan.  This reference had come  from me.

I had referred to the New Straits Times article by Khairy last Saturday, entitled “From short-term lucre to long-term wealth”, praising the Ninth Malaysia Plan which was presented by the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi  in Parliament the previous day, as “a blueprint not merely for the next five years, but for the next few decades” and which had “set in motion reforms that will reverberate for generations to come”.

Most Malaysians however failed to receive or register any reformist impulse from the Ninth Malaysia Plan. This seismic effect seemed to have passed over all other Malaysians. There was a lot of hype. But a week after its presentation in Parliament last Friday, Malaysians will not be able to say how  the Ninth Malaysia Plan will differ from the previous eight or seven five-year plans to make a difference in their lives.

Khairy wrote in the article that the Ninth Malaysia Plan would not see “the return of the gravy train” but I had posed the question whether the Ninth Malaysia Plan  will end up as  a  RM220 billion “gravy train” for new  UMNOputras, to create a new class of the bumiputra wealthy at the expense of both the bumiputra and non-bumiputra poor.

This was why I had raised the problem of “leakages” from the RM220 billion Ninth Malaysia Plan, whether from corruption, rent or extravagance, in the next five years.

As I mentioned during the parliamentary exchange yesterday, I said that a 10% “leakage” from the RM220 billion Ninth Malaysia Plan would come to a walloping RM22 billion – and there are those who would put the “leakage” to even as high as 30 per cent, which would come to some RM66 billion!

I had asked whether Bung Mohtar and  Barisan Nasional MPs should not be calling for effective measures to prevent such “leakages” in the Ninth Malaysia Plan, assuming the median estimate of some RM40 billion – RM50 billion.  Not surprisingly, there was no response from Bung Mohtar.

I call on the  Prime Minister to announce a blueprint to eradicate leakages from corruption, rent and waste in  the implementation of RM220 billion 9MP – which could be as high as RM40 billion – RM50 billion in the next five years – during the five-day winding-up of the parliamentary debate on the Ninth Malaysia Plan beginning on April 20.

(05/04/2006)