Media statement by Lim Kit Siang in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday, 31^st January 2012: 

Four MCA Ministers should make amends for their ministerial cowardice and irresponsibility

Just before the Chinese New Year, the MCA President Datuk Seri Dr. Chua Soi Lek gave an interview where he blamed the Barisan Nasional government, “particularly embattled minister Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abd Jalil”, for the “poor handling” of the RM330 million “cattle condo” scandal, causing the public to perceive the National Feedlot Centre (NFC) project as “real rotten”.

If the MCA President is right, then the four MCA Ministers must also bear full responsibility as they have allowed the RM330 million “cattle condo” to drag on for three months in the public limelight, with the relentless expose of one abuse of power and misuse of public funds after another, without any rebuttal and providing no light whatsoever “at the end of the tunnel”!

In fact, as it is more than six months since the completion and submission to the government of the Auditor-General’s Report 2010 in early July last year which led to the expose of the “terrible mess” of the NFC scandal, Malaysians are entitled to an explanation why the Cabinet (including the four MCA Ministers) had been sleeping on their jobs to get to the very bottom of the NFC scandal?

In view of the MCA President’s statement blaming the “rotten mess” of the NFC scandal on Barisan Nasional’s “poor handling”, are the four MCA Ministers prepared to make amends for their ministerial cowardice and irresponsibility by speaking up in first post-Chinese New Year Cabinet meeting for full public transparency and accountability for the RM330 million “cattle condo” scandal?

Let Malaysians, for instance, know when the Auditor-General’s Report 2010 was first tabled in the Cabinet, when the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak and the Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin (who was the Minister for Agriculture and Agros-based Industries in 2006 who approved the NFC project) and the current Minister for Agriculture and Agro-Based Industries respectively received their copies of the Auditor-General’s Report 2010?

Are the four MCA Ministers prepared to make clear at the forthcoming Cabinet meeting that it is most disgraceful for the Najib administration, with the slogan of “People’s First, Performance Now”, unable to satisfactorily handle the RM330 million “cattle condo” scandal to match the pledges of public accountability, transparency and integrity after more than three months of public uproar and more than six months of completion of the Auditor-General’s Report?

Are the four MCA Ministers brave enough to raise in the Cabinet the fact that Malaysians have no faith in either the police or the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to get to the bottom of the RM330 million “cattle condo” and that the only credible and acceptable solution is the formation of a Royal Commission of Inquiry to conduct a full-fledged inquiry?

Will the four MCA Ministers demand in Cabinet that Shahrizat should extend her leave as Minister for Women, Family and Community Development when her three-week leave expires this Friday, if not to resign altogether from her Cabinet post to allow for unimpeded investigations into the “cattle condo” scandal?

Also, will the four MCA Ministers get the Cabinet to issue a clear statement that it welcomes the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee conducting full and wide-ranging investigations into the “cattle condo” scandal, promising full co-operation from all Cabinet Ministers and public officers, past and present – so as to circumvent the objection of the PAC Chairman Datuk Azmi Khalid in allowing a PAC investigation?

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