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Sumber
theedgedaily
1. On clean government. You came to power in 1981
and introduced the slogan “bersih, cekap dan amanah” (clean, efficient
and trustworthy). What did you do to further that? Did you make the
Anti-Corruption Agency more independent and effective? Did you ensure
that the police and judiciary did their job properly and reduce
corruption in their ranks? Did you ensure that ministers and chief
ministers not have income beyond their legal means? How many big guns
were prosecuted for corruption offences during your long tenure? What
happened to “bersih, cekap dan amanah”?
2. Press freedom. Your criticism of the government got plenty of
coverage in the local media whereas during your time, criticisms against
you by two former prime ministers were muted in the mainstream
newspapers. Editors in Umno-linked newspapers too were removed during
your time for not toeing the line. What did you do to advance the cause
of responsible press freedom?
3. Proton. You went ahead with the national car project in 1983
despite a number of experts disagreeing with you, especially with
respect to lack of economies of scale. Isn’t it true that Proton’s
profits over the last 20 years came out of vastly higher prices that the
Malaysian public has to pay to subsidise Proton, resulting in
considerable hardship for Malaysians who need cars because of the poor
public transport system? More lately, why was it necessary for Proton to
buy a stake in a failed Italian motorcycle manufacturer when it could
not even produce cars competitively?
4. Heavy industries. Why did you push into heavy industries such
as steel and cement in the 1980s, ignoring studies which suggested
developing natural resource-based industries instead? They caused major
problems and billions of ringgit in losses.
5. Population. Why did you encourage a population of 70 million
for Malaysia and change the name of the National Family Planning Board
to the National Population Development Board? How do you expect poor
people to take care of five, six or more children? What kind of quality
of life can they provide their children?
6. Immigration. Why did you allow hordes of people to immigrate,
mainly from Indonesia, in such an unregulated way that there are as many
or more illegal immigrants than legal ones now, accounting for some two
million or more people? Did you not realise that this would cause
serious social problems?
7. On his first deputy. Some five years after you came to power,
there were serious rifts between you and your deputy Datuk (now Tun)
Musa Hitam. What was the cause of these problems and was it because you
were heavy-handed and did not consult your ministers?
8. On the first serious Umno split. When Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah
and Musa took on Tun Ghafar Baba and you at the Umno general assembly of
1987, it caused a serious split in Umno, with you winning by a very
narrow margin (761 to 718). Why did you not seek to heal the rift in
Umno post the elections? Instead, you purged Umno and its successor Umno
Baru of those who opposed you, causing an unprecedented split in Malay
unity.
9. Operasi Lalang. Why did you have to resort to this move in
October 1987, when you used wide powers of detention under the Internal
Security Act to detain over 100 people, close down four newspapers and
cause a wave of fear throughout the country? Was it to consolidate your
tenuous hold on power then by using an oppressive law?
10. Judiciary. What was your motive to take action in 1988 to
remove the then Lord President and several Supreme Court judges from
their positions under allegations of judicial misconduct, a move which
was heavily criticised by the Bar Council and other bodies? Was it
because you needed more compliant judges whose rulings would not
threaten your position of power in a number of cases in court? Was this
the first step in dismantling the judiciary’s role as a system of checks
and balances against the legislature and the executive? What have you to
say to repeated assertions by many, including prominent ex-chief
justices, who maintain that this led to the erosion of judicial
independence?
11. Education. You presided over the education system at an
important part of its transformation first as Education Minister in the
1970s, then as Prime Minister. Would it be correct to surmise therefore
that you were also responsible for its decline during those years? Why
did you not spend more money and resources to ensure that our education
system was excellent and continued to improve but instead spent billions
on other showpiece projects? Why did you allow our national school
system, which is the ideal place to develop ties among young Malaysians,
to become so divisive that today, 90% of those who attend national
schools come from only one race while the rest have opted out?
12. Former finance minister Tun Daim Zainuddin. Why did you give
this one man so much power? And you have not given a satisfactory
explanation why he left government the second time round. Did it have
anything to do with the forced consolidation of banks? Why did the
government buy back Malaysian Airline System (MAS) at RM8 a share in
2000 from Tan Sri Tajudin Ramli when the market price was less than half
that?
13. Cronyism and patronage. Did you not encourage cronyism and
patronage by dishing out major projects to a few within the inner
circle? People such as Tan Sri Halim Saad (the Renong group — toll
roads, telecommunications and so on), Tajudin (mobile telephone group
TRI and MAS), Tan Sri Amin Shah Omar (the failed PSC Industries —
multi-billion ringgit naval dockyard contracts) and Tan Sri Ting Pek
Khiing (Ekran — the Bakun Dam), to mention just a few?
14. Privatisation. Why did you allow privatisation to take place
in such a manner that the most profitable parts of government operations
were given away? Toll roads had guaranteed toll increases and
compensation in the event traffic projections were not met. Independent
power producers had contracts that guaranteed them profits at the
expense of Tenaga Nasional.
15. Tun Ghafar Baba. Although Ghafar had the highest number of
votes among Umno vice-presidents when Tun Hussein Onn became Prime
Minister in 1976, you, who got the lowest number of votes, were chosen
as Hussein’s deputy. Yet, when you called upon Ghafar to be your deputy
in 1986 when you fell out with Musa, he obliged, helping you to win the
Umno presidency. Yet, you and your supporters did little to back him up
when he was challenged for the deputy presidency in 1993 by Datuk Seri
Anwar Ibrahim. Can we say that you stabbed him in the back? And what
about Hussein, the man who picked you as his successor? He died not as a
member of Umno as he had refused to join your Umno Baru.
16. Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim. Did you move against him because he
was a threat to your position in 1998? Did you use the entire government
machinery at your disposal to get him sentenced? Do you think he got a
fair trial? Don’t you think the country suffered terribly because of
nothing more than a power struggle involving the two of you?
17. Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Was it
really necessary to spend RM10 billion on a showpiece airport at Sepang
when Subang airport could have been so easily expanded?
18. Putrajaya. What is the justification for spending RM20
billion on a grandiose government city at a time when office space was
available in Kuala Lumpur? Could the money not have been put to better
use, such as improving educational resources?
19. Government-linked companies. Why did you not make efforts to
improve the performance of GLCs? Why did you allow funds such as the
Employees Provident Fund and Kumpulan Wang Amanah Pencen to take up
dubious investments? These have led to hundreds, if not billions, of
ringgit in losses to these funds.
20. Islamisation. At the end of your tenure after your falling
out with Anwar, you criticised the extreme elements in Islam of taking
control of government institutions and doing things that divided Muslims
from non-Muslims. But isn’t it true you started it all with your
“Menyerap Nilai-Nilai Islam Dalam Pentadbiran Negara” policy of 1981
when you lured Anwar into Umno to help you promote it? And why did you
declare that Malaysia was an Islamic state when it is clearly enshrined
in our Federal Constitution as the wishes of our founding fathers that
Malaysia should be a secular country given our multi-racial and
multi-religious composition? Were you trying to reverse the policy of
the nation’s founding leaders?
21. Approved permits. You blamed International Trade and Industry
Minister Datuk Seri Rafidah Aziz for the AP fiasco. As we recall, you
appointed her and kept her at the ministry since 1986 until you stepped
down in 2003 and never once complained or took action over the issuance
of APs by the ministry. Indeed, she was embroiled in some controversy
over bumiputera share allotment but you stood by her. So why make it an
issue now? If you say you were not aware back then, what does that tell
us?
22. Money politics. Why did money politics (vote buying) in Umno
become such a big issue during your tenure as Umno president? Why were
you so powerless to do anything about it when the solutions were so
simple? There are other questions, of course, but this is our list of
22. In the same way that Mahathir hopes the government will answer his
questions, we hope that Mahathir will answer ours
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