TRANSPARENCY DONERIGHT
DAP can learn from BN rep’s decision to take leave of absence to ‘clear family’s name’
ONE of the more attention-grabbing headlines in the past fortnight in Johor was the report about seven people who were arrested by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) for alleged involvement in a real estate corruption scandal.
It involved the loss of tens of millions of ringgit worth of potential housing revenue that could have gone to the state government.
What was most shocking was that the son and special officer to a state executive council member were among the suspects detained.
The first six suspects, aged 25 to 50, were arrested on Feb 24 and included two developers, a lawyer and a civilian.
Four days later, the seventh suspect, a 46-year-old contractor, was picked up to facilitate investigations.
Details of the ill-gotten gains and luxury items seized during the investigations also gained attention for all the wrong reasons.
MACC froze RM15.5 million in 45 bank accounts and seized 21 luxury cars, five high-powered motorcycles and RM500,000 in local and foreign currencies.
The question on many people’s minds was how corruption of that magnitude could have involved people with links to a state government official?
MACC has yet to complete the investigations, so it is unfair to lay all the blame on those arrested.
No one has been charged, and two of the seven arrested have been released on bail.
The Johor government, under the leadership of Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin, has been transparent about the case.
Khaled allowed the exco member’s request to go on leave pending the completion of MACC’s investigation.
In this regard, the exco member, a first-term assemblyman, made a responsible move by stepping away from state government duties.
The exco member told a colleague prior to the state executive council meeting last Wednesday that he needed time off to focus on the investigations and to “clear his family’s name”.
What was not called for were the brickbats from the opposition when the exco member was implicated.
DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang was the first to fire a salvo at the Barisan Nasional-led Johor government by saying that Khaled should follow in the exco member’s footsteps and go on leave in the wake of the corruption scandal.
But such a suggestion by Kit Siang is unbecoming and tainted with hypocrisy.
The DAP supremo does not call for the same thing for his son, Lim Guan Eng, the Penang chief minister and DAP secretary-general, who was charged with two counts of corruption last year.
While Guan Eng continues to desperately hold on to power despite the charges against him, the exco member chose to be the bigger person and has dealt with the case by being accountable for it.
Perhaps DAP can take a leaf out of the Johor government’s practice of transparency.
Instead of resorting to mudslinging politics, the Johor government presented facts and figures to rebut baseless allegations that were levelled against it in the wake of the MACC investigation.
Khaled addressed a chief concern among critics who questioned whether the case would affect the supply of affordable and low-cost housing in Johor.
This was a question on everyone’s mind because MACC’s initial findings revealed that the suspects in the Johor case had converted Bumiputera-allocated housing units into non-Bumiputera housing units to sell at higher prices.
In Johor, housing developers are required to allocate 40 per cent of units in a new housing project as Bumiputera units, which are sold at a 15 per cent discount.
Khaled responded to these concerns by furnishing details of the state government’s housing policy, which disallows the conversion of Bumiputera units under the Rumah Mampu Milik Johor (RMMJ) affordable housing or low-cost housing schemes.
By explaining this mechanism, Khaled revealed an important facet of the state’s housing policy in which developers are only allowed to release unsold Bumiputera units if they paid a premium to the state government.
The premium, which is 7.5 per cent, or about half of the Bumiputera discount rate, is channelled into the Johor Bumiputera Property Fund, which is used to build housing and commercial infrastructure for Bumiputeras.
Since 2013, the fund has collected RM600 million from developers, and this money has been used to build 6,000 units under the RMMJ scheme.
These facts must be considered by anyone who wants to form any opinion about the MACC case in Johor.
What everyone needs to do now is to allow the MACC to conduct its investigations.
While Guan Eng continues to desperately hold on to power despite the charges against him, the exco member chose to be the bigger person and has dealt with the case by being accountable for it.