The Malaysian Insider |August 11, 2011

AUG 11 — Why?

Why let Tan Sri Tajuddin Ramli get off the hook by ordering all government-linked companies, including Malaysia Airlines and the national debt restructuring company Danaharta, to cease all civil suits against the one-time corporate high-flyer?

That’s a question that Putrajaya has to answer.

After all, Danaharta has a judgment against the one-time telecommunications, tourism and transport czar and as at December 31, 2005, the amount outstanding was RM589.14 million.

On May 11, 2006, which also happened to be the original Umno’s 60th year, Danaharta and the subsidiaries commenced action to recover the money from the man trusted by Umno to helm Malaysia’s flag carrier.

So why this volte-face in Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz’s letter to the GLCs and Danaharta that the Finance Ministry will settle all outstanding civil suits against Tajuddin, a poster boy of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s plan to groom Bumiputera entrepreneurs.

“This is to inform you that the government of Malaysia and the Finance Ministry have agreed to settle all civil claims against Tan Sri Dato Tajuddin Ramli and others to be withdrawn immediately in view of the fact that the government and the Finance Ministry have agreed that the said cases will be settled out of court.

“For your information the government has given me the mandate to act for the government in this matter,” Nazri said in the letter sighted by The Malaysian Insider.

To add the incredulous nature of this flip-flop, Nazri’s letter also directs the lawyers acting for the GLCs and Danaharta to hand over their cases to the firm of Hasfarizam Wan and Aisha Mubarak, a known Umno lawyer.

Why an Umno lawyer? Is there any more blatant show of the nexus between business and politics in Malaysia?

Doesn’t it raise further suspicions about how this country is managed?

MAS was a profitable company when it was flogged off to Tajuddin in 1994 but by the time he left at the end of 2001, the state airline was in debt for RM9.5 billion. It has never recovered since then, despite going through an asset-stripping exercise and two business turnaround plans.

Just this week, the men who engineered MAS’s wide asset unbundling (WAU) in 2002 had to finally resort to getting the men behind Asia’s largest budget carrier AirAsia to help steer the loss-making state airline back to profitability.

But those who presided over MAS’s decline from one of Asia’s best airlines to an also-ran are not brought to account for their deeds. Fact is, MAS has lodged a police report against Tajuddin. Is that report now considered false?

For those outside the corridors of power in Putrajaya, there must be a need for accountability. If the likes of Tajuddin can go scot-free, then the politicians who absolved him will have to be accountable. Perhaps, in the next general election.