Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR: Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed holds the unenviable position of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman. The Pulai MP and BN Backbenchers Club finance committee chairman talks in a lingo that critics of Umno are unaccustomed to hear from its leaders. He tells Terence Fernandez and Azril Annuar why it is imperative for Umno’s own survival that his voice against corruption and mismanagement of public funds must not be in the minority.

T: The only way Umno can reform is if it is voted out, inculcates its old values and comes back rejuvenated.

Just get a fresh group who love the party and the country. I’m not saying the folks up there now aren’t doing that, they don’t display enough evidence of it.

T: Have you spoken about this in Umno?

Yes. I said it in my own Pulai Divisional Annual General Meeting: we need to press the reset button. My branch also hancur. I know that myself. The ones who are really active are few. The rest are active in meetings only.

I take responsibility for the actions of my own division. But they are getting too old. And some are lower level government staff, class F contractors, lower level education… I admit that because I also blame the good Malays. They talk so much and then never offer their services. Cakap aje…

A: But Datuk, when I tried to join Umno in Perak, the leadership tried to “kill” me almost immediately. So if Malays like me want to do something for the country through politics, we end up joining the Opposition because Umno itself doesn’t welcome us.

The problem is those who want to stop the young from coming in. Those like you, urban guys, don’t want to join Umno.

T: Maybe their profile doesn’t fit their vision of what Umno should be?

That’s another thing. Those that join Umno are chasing after something. In my case, I bring up youth issues. My Youth Chief now is one of the National Excos. I’ve already lined up my successor to take over for me.

A: That’s refreshing… never heard of any Umno guys doing this before.

I tend to do whatever I say in my articles. Where can you find (an Umno) Division Chief willingly train his Youth Chief to become one of the National Youth Excos? Most of the Division Chiefs are not on good terms with their Youth Chiefs.  Look at the General Exco of Pemuda Malaysia… how many of them are (Youth) Division Chiefs in their own right and how many of them get along with their bosses if they are the local Youth Chief.

A: Are you saying that there is a gap between the youth and the veterans?

There is a big gap! Umno is now a party that fights for the poor and the less educated. During Merdeka, Umno’s leadership consisted of the elites. Tunku Abdul Rahman was a Prince, Tun Abdul Razak was a nobleman, a “ Bangsawan” and it continued, Tun Hussein Onn… and then Tun Dr Mahathir Moahamd broke the mould and Pak Lah (Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi) came along and broke it further. Now the cycle is back to the elites: Datuk Seri Najib Razak, his cousin (Datuk Seri Hishamuddin Hussein) as successor.

But, back in the old times… they led the country. The British gave Tunku, Tun Razak and Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman a university education and these guys came home and screwed the British back. And people followed.

Today, we are being led by the elites again but the elites are being shunned in Umno. And Najib is going to the lower end of the socio-economic scale with BR1M and so on… He is focusing on welfare and hand-outs, so Umno from a party of elites became a party for the poor.

T: There’s no comprehensive and sincere policy to elevate poverty. After over 40 years, the New Economic Policy is not working if there are still many poor Malays.

Our poverty is focused on rural poverty. That’s where all our policies were focused on. Giving out rice seeds… but the new poor are the urban poor and they are in town. And then there was the presentation that said they have tackled the urban poor via BR1M.

A: It doesn’t work. Can RM500 make a real dent in the city?

Well… right now it’s BR1M handouts and the PR1MA housing scheme. Two good things. But what about job opportunities and income? That’s why during Umno assemblies we are still focusing on the rural poor … in Sabah and Sarawak which is not your constituency.  Sarawak doesn’t even have Umno.

T: Umno focuses on vote banks

That’s what I’m saying, vote banks, but Umno’s cause was once led by the elites for all. And the rakyat followed. Malaysia that time, we were all poor. Back then, when you were one of the elites and you led, the people followed you. Now it’s the other way around. The elites no longer support Umno. They want an alternative. And Umno is getting filled up with the lower educated and lower income group.

A: Is it Umno’s fault that the elites turned against them?

We have the power… because the Malays think that only a new group of elites in Umno itself is getting everything. What (Datuk Seri) Anwar (Ibrahim) said 16 years ago when he left Umno… it’s the same but he was also one of them.

T: Corruption, abuse of power … there is nothing on him. All you have is Saiful. After 16 years, that is all one has on him.

I was Youth Exco when Anwar was sacked in 1998. I had to go down and meet the Youth Wing … I was the only one in the room who had to explain Mahathir’s stance. But 16 years later, his time has passed. But I agree politically, take Anwar out and the Opposition is in disarray. Buys BN another 5-10 years. With Anwar running around, he will still be a thorn and a unifying force for Pakatan to mount their election campaign.

A: Now they can turn him into a martyr. Isn’t that bad for Umno?

Well… when he isn’t there… Malaysian politics is very simple, that’s why PAS keeps on going back to the same script… they don’t do much work but every time there is an election they would send out their fiery orators, throw out some Quranic scriptures and Malays will start applauding and being impressed…

That’s why the voters, despite thinking that they are smart, still vote emotionally. That’s why in my work as PAC, I try to inject Process and Evidence. Work that cannot be disputed factually, instead of just making political accusations and innuendos. Like (DAP Publicity Secretary) Tony (Pua). Not everything that (PKR Secretary-General) Rafizi Ramli and Tony say is true. But the way it is presented makes people think they are 100% right, but they are not. Like the 1MDB deals including the bonds that were sold to Goldman Sachs… the Board approved it. Names like Tan Sri Lodin Kamaruddin… Tan Sri Ismee Ismail and other members of the Board. These are established names.

Goldman came up to them and said ‘it’s hard to sell without a government guarantee’. And then Goldman might come up and say ‘it’s hard to sell these bonds even with the government guarantee. How about we take it from you but at a higher price?’

It’s just like the IPP (independent power providers) before. I was in a forum with Rafizi and he said that the IPP would be received only by the cronies. I asked him some simple questions.

Who owns Tenaga Nasional Berhad? Khazanah. Who owns Khazanah? The rakyat… thus that means every Malaysian is a crony.

Now let me tell you why the IPPs happened. Before IPP it was all under Tenaga but they were slow in electricity generation and then there was a huge peninsula-wide blackout in 1995… It happened twice.

Because of these unfortunate incidents, the government implemented IPP. Of course, being the first proposers, it was a seller’s market. How do you determine the correct rate, supply, how many IPPs? The price was dictated to Tenaga.

At that time we wanted to invite people to invest and put money in for two to three years and then put in a few hundred million Ringgit. That’s why the first IPP deals were lopsided because Tenaga didn’t do their job because they were heavily indebted too.

I think 10 years later, the new IPP agreements were renegotiated. So… who are the cronies? Was the government doing its job or not? First we negotiated the new agreements. We did it in the best interest of the people.

T: But the former Tenaga CEO of that time himself disagreed (and stepped down)

I know… but at the end of the day, Tan Sri Ani Arope wanted it his own way. But good la, he was a principled fellow, he resigned. But my final question is this: Since the IPPs happened, did we have any more nationwide blackouts?

It was a government policy that worked. Yes, it cost a bit more money but the government had to privatise power generation.

But this is where it breaks apart with 1MDB. IPP is supposedly for one term only and then give back to Tenaga so everything can be housed under one body. Then you establish 1MDB and bought over SIPP and extended the concession period.

That’s where it breaks down.

T: No one is saying don’t do it… do it right.

That’s why when PAC looks at things and the government’s point of view. We try to comment on what’s there. But if you ask about IPP and even the North South Highway concessionaire PLUS, it was a seller’s market. And now the highways are all owned by the government again.

Who is the crony in PLUS? The government. The people. Khazanah owns it… so the cronies are the people but Tony Pua and Rafizi will take it and twist it and say cronies gain from it. But look at the facts.

That’s why I’m very careful in doing my job because at the end of the day my own reputation is at stake.

T: But today there are more players out there…  why is there a need for 1MDB to get involved in IPPs?

That was my argument before when Mahathir said it… why did you privatise IPP and now you are taking it back? And taking it back under a new government organisation instead of just putting it back under Tenaga.

T: So is 1MDB able to recoup the money?

Why it was done… it’s up to the government to explain. But the right thing to do is to give it back to Tenaga. Because you said 20 to 30 years ago that Tenaga couldn’t do it, that’s why you had to privatise.

T: There were no takers that time except for one

Yes, go back in history. Even Tony Pua was still in school back then. So was Rafizi while I was already working. So that’s why by being factual at least people will get better information.

That’s our job at PAC – to make the system more transparent and give more information to the people. But how many people read the PAC reports anyway?

And partly it’s my fault also because I asked the Parliament admin to put the reports as a downloadable PDF file in the Parliamentary website. We are just starting but I bet you there won’t be a lot of people downloading it.

The thing with Malaysians… they’re not (good at) details. They think they’re very clever and quickly make their own conclusions and assumptions.

A: How effective is PAC?

It’s up to the people to think if we are effective or not. But if we produce good reports, factual accounts with historical rhetorical context, then it will become a good reference for the people to refer to the issue. And then it’s been vetted by the Opposition and the Government members and our report is always a consensus, there is no veto power, it must be unanimous.

In the chamber, there is block votes but we don’t have that. We don’t play politics.

T: Your terms of reference grant you a wider net compared to the Auditor General’s Department right?

The problem is always about basis. The Auditor General’s Department is akin to an audit committee in a company. There is an internal audit team and they do investigations and they prepare the report to hand over to the audit committee. And the committee goes through it and recommends actions to the Board to be taken.

Then at the AGM, the General Body is to decide whether the Board is doing its job or not.

So, PAC is like the Audit Committee for the whole country and the government for the shareholders which is the rakyat.

But the shareholders need to read the reports instead of just reading news reports that has been spun out of control. Like Malaysiakini.

Every time I hold a press conference, there would be a lot of coverage, around 20-30 people. I have to inform MalaysiaKini on what to write because they will just go and change the angle… the rest follow, even if they are Malay Mail Online, The Malaysian Insider… they are quite factual and not biased.

A: When you call up the civil servants, are they frightened?

N: The civil servants especially because they have never faced anything like this before. They would hold a prep session before meeting us. They know that the chairman of PAC knows what he is doing. I come from a commercial audit background.

Usually the ones who will ask the questions will be me or Pua, the rest of the committee not so…

I would say something and the others pick up. I normally direct the hearing so that the rest will focus on the issue at hand.

Look at KLIA2. There were some changes during construction and originally they engaged a Netherlands based company to design the airport and then they held a tender based on that.

Seven companies went in, six followed the tender documents specified by MAHB designed by the Netherlands company but it was awarded to the one that did not follow specs.

So the board has to explain. That company should have been disqualified from the start. So if anyone wants to read up on KLIA2, it’s all there. But people must use the information because otherwise they will just listen to the Opposition who will take it from a political angle instead of a factual one.

The best part about KLIA2, after we did it we couldn’t accuse them of any wrong-doing until the investigation has been completed. So our recommendation was that we urged the government to allow the Auditor General to investigate KLIA2 based on our report.

It was the other way around. Actually AG should be investigating and hand their report to us and we will zero in on that. But then again, this is a Khazanah company which the AG is not mandated for audit.

Another thing I want to know, why should Khazanah companies have special privileges just because their board of directors are luminaries… who were actually former civil servants.

T: But do you have to go through an act of Parliament to change it?

No. They were under the Ministry of Finance (MOF) until the Putrajaya GLC Committee was created in 2006 and it was all taken out. TNB, Khazanah … all!

A: Why?

In a way, they have a point there because they wanted to remove MoF’s interference. Based on my experience in Telekom, where we wanted to run it like a profitable business venture but MoF would say no…

Pudu Jail is a perfect example. When I requested money for the project (as chairman of UDA Holdings), they say they didn’t have the money. So, they asked me to go and tender and I asked them which tender model did they want to use? SPV (special purpose vehicle) or another model?

They said they preferred SPV. SPV meant UDA will get the land and join venture with another company and then we sign over the rights and hope that the project will be built. That’s what happened with Plaza Rakyat. If the project is built, UDA’s land as capital is not enough.

We needed more money to build it, so that was the capital cost. We needed to raise loans and guarantees. We couldn’t afford to do that. So we found another model which was more like a turnkey.

The point was to find people with money so we wouldn’t have to borrow money. So we decided from the outset, we build, we’ll take the shopping centre and you take the rest. The shopping centre itself was already equivalent to 30% of the value of the whole project.

And then in construction, the building design is also very important because you have to make sure that the contractor will build our side first. So once completed even if it is a failure, we can still get our end of the bargain.

There’s no guarantee or anything and the land is not encumbered. And the land isn’t transferred. We can (get) strata (titles done).

At that time, I already knew what kind of building was suitable. Build the offices, hotels on the podium. The podium is the shopping centre. Everything was already there from the financing down to the design.  So we did it and the Chinese came and offered 30% more than the rest. And they had cash and a letter of support from China Construction Bank, the second biggest bank in the world.

Others say give us first and we find the financing later…

I went to see the PM and he agreed. I said the Chinese wanted to do it as a G2G thing. It’s a Chinese government company. Everbright. It’s no small company. It’s worth RM20 billion!

T: That makes you the odd guy out. What about your own (political) survival? Even in UDA they went after you.

It doesn’t matter, because at the end of the day Umno needs to press the restart or reset button. If you don’t press that button, you will lose.

A: So… for you it doesn’t matter in the end?

Either way I’m going to lose.

T: Even if you reset, after the reboot… will we be seeing people like you or Khairy Jamaluddin or Saifuddin Abdullah?

It’s all right, I’ve done my bit and I can already walk away. I’m already 50 years old.

T: You’re still young, Anwar might become a PM when he is 80, you never know.

(Laughs) I want to experience my retirement. At least after politics I can go back (as an auditor) on a project basis and earn a living but I need my reputation intact and not in tatters because I have to do all these things.

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