Media Statement by Lim Kit Siang in Petaling Jaya on Tuesday, 8^th September 2009: 

Can Tsu Koon do what Tee Keat has failed – getting Cabinet approval for a RCI into the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal to ensure that it will not go down in history as Barisan Nasional and the nation’s most “heinous crime without criminals”?

I welcome the support given by the Gerakan President and Minister for KPI, Tan Sri Koh Tsu Koon for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the “mother” of all scandals - RM12.5 billion Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal.

This is the first time since the long sorry saga of the PKFZ scandal, which ballooned from a RM1.08 billion scandal in 2002 under Tun Dr. Ling Liong Sik as Transport Minister to a RM4.6 billion scandal in 2006 under Tan Sri Chan Kong Choy as Transport Minister and is now set to mushroom to become a RM12.5 billion scandal under Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat as Transport Minister that a Federal Minister has acknowledged its gravity as to support the establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry.

Can Tsu Koon do what Tee Keat has failed – getting Cabinet approval for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal to ensure that it will not go down in history as Barisan Nasional and the nation’s most “heinous crime without criminals”?

Or is Tsu Koon taking the easy way out from the mounting public pressure for “the whole truth and nothing but the truth” about the PKFZ scandal to be told, by publicly giving lip-service support to the establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry, without doing his utmost as KPI Minister to get the Cabinet to make the crucial decision to set it up?

At present, the PKFZ scandal has become a political football in the Ong Tee Keat-Chua Soi Lek MCA power struggle but neither Ong nor Chua has evinced any full commitment to support the establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry to go far beyond the present limited inquiries which are restricted to the Port Klang Authority (PKA) and PKFZ levels instead of a no-holds-barred investigation going as high as necessary, even Ministerial and Cabinet levels.

Not only the former Transport Ministers Liong Sik and Kong Choy and former MCA PKA chairmen should be summoned as witnesses in the public inquiry, even former Prime Ministers Tun Mahathir and Tun Abdullah should be sub-poenaed too.

The Singapore Straits Times reported today that a confidential report by the government task force on the PKFZ scandal which had been handed over to the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak and will be on the agenda of the Cabinet tomorrow, had identified serious breaches on the part of several government officials, including former Transport Minister, Tan Sri Chong Kong Choy.

This has made a Cabinet decision tomorrow to establish a Royal Commission of Inquiry even more imperative or the present Cabinet would be guilty of the biggest cover-up of the biggest financial scandal in the nation’s history.

Tsu Koon, Tee Keat and all the other Ministers of the Najib Cabinet are facing their first and greatest test of integrity since April – whether they are prepared to send out a clear and unmistakable message that there will be no more cover-up of financial scandals in the country, particularly one which is five times bigger than the first big financial scandal of the Mahathir administration – the RM2.5 billion Bumiputra Malaysia Finance Scandal!

*Lim Kit Siang, DAP Parliamentary leader & MP for Ipoh Timor