Media Conference Statement by Lim Kit Siang at Perak DAP Headquarters in Ipoh on Sunday, 28^th June 2009: 

Challenge to Tee Keat to five public debates in KL, Ipoh, Penang, Malacca, JB on the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal where he could be assisted by former Transport Ministers Liong Sik and Kong Choy as well as former PKA Chairmen Chew Peh, Pian Hon and Chee Heung

My three questions (No.88 to No. 90 on the 30th day in the current series) to Transport Minister Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat on the RM12.5 billion Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal today are:

Question No. 1: Speaking at the MCA Subang Division Delegates Meeting last night, Ong accused me of repeatedly telling lies about the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal. Yet he could not tell a single “lie” that I have told whether in Parliament or in the past 30 days of “three-questions-a-day on PKFZ scandal”.

Unlike him, I substantiate every statement I make, whether in Parliament or outside.

For instance, I said in Parliament that Ong is “hero outside, coward inside” Parliament, and I gave two instances:

• His heroic boast “outside” when he returned from his junket to the Paris Air Show that he welcomed a full debate and prepared to face any questions in Parliament on the PKFZ scandal when he finally appeared in the second week of Parliament on June 22 to make his Ministerial statement. But once “inside” Parliament, he became a coward and refused to allow any question or interruption in his eight-minute “Ministerial non-statement” which did not reveal anything new on the PKFZ scandal.

• His “heroism” in exposing, and rightly, the RM30,000 “leakage” in the renovation SJKC Kung Yu in Muar in 2006, but his cowardice to “reveal all” about the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal. How many times is the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal compared to the scandal of the RM30,000 “leakage” in renovation of a Chinese primary school? It is the astronomical 416,666 times!

I challenge Ong to a series of five public debates in Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, Penang, Malacca and Johore Baru on the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal where he could be assisted by former Transport Ministers Tun Dr. Ling Liong Sik and Datuk Seri Chan Kong Choy as well as former Port Klang Authority (PKA) Chairmen Tan Sri Ting Chew Peh, Datuk Yap Pian Hon and Datuk Seri Chor Chee Heung.

Ong had often boasted that he is not afraid of any public debate with any person on any subject. My first question to him today is whether he dare to accept this challenge to five public debates on the PKFZ scandal in Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, Penang, Malacca and Johore Baru. Once he dare to say yes, I will appoint my representative who can finalise with his representative on the date, time and venue for the series of five public debates on the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal.

Question No. 2- As the Chinese saying goes, “What a person does, he must have the courage to bear full responsibility” (一人做事一人当). Will Ong give an undertaking that he will stand by this saying and stop bullying and manipulating poor veteran MCA leaders like former MCA deputy minister Teng Boon Soon and Datuk Lee Hwa Beng to be his proxies, scapegoats and puppets to launch attacks on me, and in the process expose their ignorance and folly?

I pity Teng that after being humiliated in losing his Deputy Ministership, he is now bullied by Ong to file a motion in Parliament to refer me to the Committee for Privileges for misleading Parliament on the PKFZ scandal, when Teng does not know “head or tail” about “the mother of all scandals”. All I need is a joint press conference with Teng to expose him in five minutes his ignorance about the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal but I will not be like Ong in being a “beastly bully who push people too hard” (欺人太甚) and I will spare Teng the agony.

Or in the case of Hwa Beng, why has Ong forced the PKA Chairman and former three-term Selangor State Assemblymen to betray his shocking inability to know the difference between submitting 300 copies of the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report to Parliament and tabling them in Parliament? In the former, the 300 copies of the PwC report are physically handed to Parliament but can get lost in the vaults of Parliament to collect dust for the next few years, which is of no use to anybody; while ‘tabling in Parliament’ means placing a copy each on the table of every MP who will be able immediately read and study it. Lee does not know this important difference after being a Selangor Assemblyman for 12 years but why Ong want to humiliate Lee by exposing such ignorance himself?

This second question is on behalf of MCA officials – whether Ong will undertake to stop bullying and manipulating them to hide his inexcusable political failure to honour his pledge when he became Transport Minister 15 months ago to ‘tell all’ about the PKFZ scandal!

Question No. 3: In bullying and manipulating Teng to file a motion to refer me to the Committee of Privileges, Ong qualifies to get into the Guinness Book of Records in becoming the first Cabinet Minister not only in Malaysian parliamentary history but in the history of Commonwealth Parliaments, to accuse an Opposition MP for not telling the whole truth about the Cabinet meetings and decisions about a major financial scandal.

I had last Wednesday sent a motion to the Speaker to refer Ong to the Committee of Privileges for misleading the House on the PKFZ scandal.

I offer to support, and get the 83 Pakatan Rakyat MPs, to support Teng’s motion (fathered by Ong) to refer me to the Committee of Privileges on the quid pro quo that Ong persuade Barisan Nasional MPs to support my motion to refer the Transport Minister to the Committee of Privileges. Let both motions, to refer him and me, to the Committee of Privileges be adopted at the same time, and let us both appear before the Committee of Privileges to prove who had misled Parliament on the PKFZ scandal. Dare Ong agree to my proposition?

*Lim Kit Siang, DAP Parliamentary leader & MP for Ipoh Timor