Friday 29 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on September 20, 2019

KUALA LUMPUR: Economist Professor Dr Jomo Kwame Sundaram said it is not too late to cancel the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) project in the wake of the testimony by a key witness in the ongoing 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) trial that the megaproject was mooted to bail out 1MDB.

He said the government is now presented with a huge opportunity to reopen the question of whether to proceed with the project, which he claims would be a “white elephant”.

“All my position [against the ECRL] in the past has been based on publicly available information. But now we have a very important disclosure about the circumstances under which the ECRL was hashed out,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a public forum held by the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs yesterday.

Jomo was referring to statements made by former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s former special officer Datuk Amhari Efendi Nazaruddin in the High Court last week that the ECRL and two other projects that sought investments from China — Trans-Sabah Gas Pipeline and Multi-Product Pipeline — were proposed to bail out 1MDB and its former subsidiary SRC International Sdn Bhd.

“Nobody has refuted that and certainly [Najib’s lead defence counsel] Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, in interrogating the witness, did not fundamentally challenge the statements he made,” said Jomo, who has been a strong critic of the ECRL project that was originally slated to cost RM81 billion.

Following renegotiations by the Pakatan Harapan government, the cost has now been revised to RM44 billion.

“The whole project was intended basically for fundraising, to cover up. Datuk Amhari’s testimony was quite clear,” said Jomo.

“It was very clear what the whole scam was about. I think that forces this country to take very seriously what the ECRL was about. It is still not too late to cancel it or to have a thorough investigation,” he added.

Jomo, who is research adviser at Khazanah Research Institute, said Putrajaya must therefore not be complicit in continuing to cover up what the previous government, or at least its leaders, were trying to do with public funds.

This is especially so as he believes there will be a “permanent albatross” on the Malaysian economy, as the government will have to continue subsidising the railway, unless it is built to be left unused, which defeats the purpose.

Jomo said money should be put into infrastructure projects that will ensure an effective and viable public transportation system in the country, rather than a railway system that is going to be tremendously underutilised, and heavily subsidised not just in construction but also in its maintenance.

He said the east coast states of Peninsular Malaysia have other pressing matters related to the people’s well-being, such as water and sanitation issues, that require more attention.

“I think we now have a huge opportunity to reopen the whole question. I do believe this is the time when we should not commit ourselves. It is not a trivial amount.

“I am sure President Xi Jinping, who has been very tight, strict about corruption in China, will not want to be associated with any kind of corruption — international corruption — which will also destroy the reputation of the Belt and Road Initiative,” he added.

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