Room for restructuring after resignations, says Dr M

PUTRAJAYA: The en masse resignation of Khazanah Nasional Bhd’s board will allow room for a restructure in line with the new administration’s policies, says Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

The Prime Minister, responding to the resignation of Khazanah’s bigwigs, said his government was not on a witch-hunt.

“We do not regard everyone as guilty of everything, but this administration will not accept obvious wrongdoings.

“This action of clearing the deck will allow restructuring as our policies are now different,” he said in a statement issued by his office yesterday.

Dr Mahathir said it was his prerogative as the PM to appoint new Khazanah board members, redesignate them to other entities or retain some of them to allow for continuity.

A 77-day impasse between the Government led by Pakatan Harapan and Khazanah ended with the board of the national sovereign fund handing in their undated resignation letters on Thursday.

This came about after the new administration repeatedly criticised Khazanah, stating that it had deviated from its original objectives and that its executives were overpaid.

On this, Dr Mahathir said while the Government believed in paying good salaries, it cannot all the time base it on commercial rates.

“We would rather focus on rewarding with good bonuses tied to performance as some companies may not perform as they should,” he pointed out.

On reports that RM2bil had been wiped out from Bursa Malaysia, the PM said the amount of paper loss was nothing compared to the burden of the RM1 trillion debt that had been inherited and that was now being shouldered by the current government.

“The amount of debt is real, the amount needed to service the debt is real. And most of the amounts ‘invested’ by the previous administration has yet to be recovered as we do not know where they have been invested in,” he said.