KUALA LUMPUR (July 31): The new Pakatan Harapan government has the prerogative to restructure any government-linked companies (GLCs) by replacing heads of their organisations "in any way they like", according to veteran politician and former Finance Minister Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.

"According to the Prime Minister, this paves the way for them to restructure the organisations that are linked to the government," Tengku Razaleigh told reporters at the parliament lobby today.

Razaleigh was commenting on the recent replacement of the top brass in various GLCs such as Khazanah Nasiomal Bhd, Permodalan Nasional Bhd and Petroliam Nasional Bhd.

Asked if the recent replacements were excessive, Razaleigh only said: "that depends very much on how you see it."

Last week, Khazanah said all its board members, including group managing director Tan Sri Azman Mokhtar, offered to quit the sovereign wealth fund's board, "to facilitate a smooth and orderly transition under the new government".

Apart from Azman, the other directors were: executive committee chairman Tan Sri Md Nor Md Yusof, former banker Tan Sri Mohamed Azman Yahya, Datuk Mohammed Azlan Hashim, former central banker Tan Sri Andrew Sheng, former chairman and senior partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Malaysia Tan Sri Raja Arshad Raja Uda, CIMB group chairman Datuk Seri Nazir Razak, Datuk Nirmala Menon and banker Yeo Kar Peng.

Following the en masse resignation, which Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad accepted, Dr Mahathir named himself as the new Khazanah chairman and appointed four others to the board of the sovereign wealth fund.

The four are: Economics Affairs Minister Datuk Seri Azmin Ali, former president and chief executive officer of Petronas Tan Sri Mohd Hassan Merican, former Bank Negara Malaysia deputy governor Dr Sukhdave Singh and former executive director of strategy and development at the Securities Commission of Malaysia Goh Ching Ying.