Is the revival of the Bakun hydroelectric project in its original scale  Mahathir’s last folly or does it presage a final spree of monument mania in his final years like the Northern Regional International Airport,  the Kuala Lumpur Linear City and  Malaysia - Indonesia Bridge projects

(Petaling Jaya, Thursday): Is the revival of the RM13.5 billion Bakun hydroelectric project in its original scale the last folly of Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad or does it presage a final spree of monument mania in his final years like the Northern Regional International Airport, the Kuala Lumpur Linear City and the Malaysia-Indonesia Bridge projects?

“Folly” is not too strong a word to describe the Cabinet decision yesterday to revive the Bakun dam project in its original scale minus the plan to lay the  world’s longest  670km-long undersea link to the peninsula - although it would still create a number of “firsts”, such as the world’s highest dam with its physical design in the form of a Concrete Face Rockfill Dam of 205 metres high and being the largest of its type in the world, as well as flooding an area the size of Singapore of about 69,500 hectares as its reservoir area in addition to requiring l.5 million hectares as its catchment area.

Without the world’s longest 670km High Voltage Direct Current submarine cable link between Sarawak and the Peninsula Malaysia, the revival of the Bakun dam in its original scale is an even greater folly than the original proposal - as the bulk of 2,400 megawatts to be generated by Bakun dam was predicated on its sale to Peninsula Malaysia and Singapore as both Sarawak and Sabah would only require a minor fraction of its generating capacity.

It is clear that the announcement of the Cabinet decision on the revival of the Bakun dam project is to influence the impending Sarawak state general elections, hoping to win votes by promising a mega-development project for the state - another example of money politics on the  grand scale!

The Cabinet should submit its decision  to revive the Bakun dam project in its original scale  to Parliament for debate and prior approval before the government takes any further action on the project, and the government should explain:
 

• whether the final costs would mushroom to RM20 billion because of the ringgit's fall against the U.S. dollar after the Asian financial crisis;
• the viability of the Bakun dam project in its original scale from the economic, ecological, technical, social and cultural standpoints; and
• why it had rejected the earlier recommendation  by Tenaga Nasional, which was named the project manager after the government had taken over the project from Ekran Bhd., to build  a smaller dam producing 500 megawatts to cater just to Borneo island at a cost of around RM5 billion.

The Bakun dam project was one of the mega-projects  whose total value worth  RM65.6 billion which the then Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, shelved in late 1997 during the Asian financial crisis.

With the revival of the Bakun dam project in its original scale, Malaysians want to know whether Mahathir would also be reviving in toto the other mega-projects like the  Northern Regional International Airport, the Kuala Lumpur Linear City
Project, the Cameron Highlands-Fraser Hill-Genting Highlands Highway Project and the Straits of Malacca, Malaysia - Indonesia Bridge project.

(1/3/2001)