The departure of the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad from KLIA at 1.05 am yesterday morning for vacation in Argentina and the Caribbean cannot be a good reason for Cabinet Ministers to declare a holiday for themselves as well. This is a strong argument why there should be a special NGO to monitor Cabinet performance.
In the past few days, I had been demanding to know whether the Cabinet had received a report from the Transport Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Ling Liong Sik on the road carnage during festivities, with another eleven road fatalities reported on the fourth day of Hari Raya, bringing the total number of deaths during the 20 days of Ops Statik IV to a mind-boggling 266.
Can Abdullah explain whether there is now a Cabinet Commitee on Road Safety, who are its members and its terms of reference or has such a Cabinet Committee been disbanded as Liong Sik is notorious for his "hands-off’ and "minds-off" attitude towards road safety and the criminally high death tolls on the roads?
Last Saturday, after the six-hour traffic gridlock stranding thousands of motorists in Shah Alam as a result of highway floods, Abdullah said he would raise the issue of flashfloods caused by clogging of drains and canals with the Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure. Has this issue been raised at the Cabinet level?
Yesterday, I called on Abdullah to make public a full list of the Cabinet Committees which have been set up since the first Cabinet meeting on December 15, 1999, with their respective terms of reference and composition, with the public informed periodically about their activities and successes.
Is Abdullah able to do so?
(13/1/2000)