This stark reality emerged from his annual interview programme Wawancara Bernama dengan Perdana Menteri yesterday, where he said he still needs a finance minister or at least a second finance minister to help him manage the country’s economy “if not to take over from me as finance minister, then may be as my assistant”.
On June 11 last year, a week after he took over the Finance Ministry’s post from Tun Daim Zainuddin after the latter’s mysterious resignation at the end of a “bizarre” two-month leave of not attending the Cabinet but still going to his office in the Finance Ministry to clear “files”, Mahathir spelt out three criteria for the new Finance Minister he was looking for - “someone who is non-controversial, knows about finance and is clean” and who could be a politician or non-politician.
Of these three criteria for the first Finance Minister of Malaysia in the 21st century (apart from Mahathir), the first two of being “non-controversial” and “knows about finance” are not major obstacles, but the third criteria requiring the candidate to be “clean” would be a tall order eliminating a long list of possibilities - although it should not be an impossible task to find such a person fulfilling all these three criteria from outside UMNO and Barisan Nasional circles.
It is a sad commentary on Mahathir’s two decades as Prime Minister that after more than nine months of search (as Mahathir’s announcement in April last year about Daim going on two-month “leave” from Cabinet was as good as a “quit” notice to Daim) he could not find a “clean”, non-controversial and competent Finance Minister whether from the present Cabinet or Barisan Nasional - or even from outside Barisan Nasional political circles.
There may not be any candidate inside UMNO or Barisan Nasional who could meet the criteria of being “clean”, non-controversial and competent to become Mahathir’s Finance Minister, but there should be no lack of such candidates outside UMNO and the Barisan Nasional - or something is very wrong with Malaysia and there can be no future for the country.
The problem is whether such candidates outside UMNO and Barisan Nasional circles who fulfil the three criteria of “clean”, non-controversial and competent to become the new Finance Minister and who have not yet been tainted by the politics of money or other forms of political corruption would want to serve as Mahathir’s fourth Finance Minister completely without conditions.
I had posed a most pertinent question on 2nd June 2001 on the announcement of Daim’s resignation as Finance Minister “whether the departure of a Finance Minister famous as a Minister for Bail-outs and Buy-outs would be followed by the abandonment of a policy of bail-outs and buy-outs involving billions of ringgit of public funds whether by companies or government-linked funds like the Employees’ Provident Fund and the Pensions Trust Fund and the beginning of a new policy of financial accountability, transparency and good corporate governance”.
The record of Mahathir as Finance Minister in the past seven months since Daim’s resignation does not give positive signs that Daim’s exit marked the beginning of such a long-awaited reform.
Mahathir may not find it so difficult to find a list of candidates from outside UMNO and Barisan Nasional circles who meet the three criteria of “clean, non-controversial and competent” to become Finance Minister if he is prepared to give the new Finance Minister the full mandate to clean up the Augean stables in the government, end all KKN - cronyism, corruption and neptoism - root out all bail-outs and buy-outs using taxpayers’ money to save companies or individuals, so that Time dotcom, Malaysian Airlines and Indah Water Konsortium bail-outs and the biggest corporate pardon in Malaysian history - the cancellation of the RM3.2 billion UEM “put option” of Tan Sri Halim Saad - are scandals of the past.
Better still, the new Finance Minister should be fully empowered to conduct no-holds-barred l investigations - including public inquiries - into the scandalous breaches of trust in the misappropriation of mega-public funds to bailout companies and individuals at public taxpayers’ expense as historic lessons and deterrence to prevent any future recurrence.
May be, the mass media, whether printed or electronic, can perform a national service by helping the Prime Minister to publicly talent-scout for Malaysians who qualify to enter the short-list of candidates who fulfil the three criteria of clean, non-controversial and competent to become the fourth Finance Minister of the Mahathir administration, as well as starting a national debate as to the conditions under which such qualified candidates would be prepared to serve as the Finance Minister in the opening years of the 21st century.
(2/1/2002)