— Lucius Goon
The Malaysian Insider
Mar 18, 2012
MARCH 18 — Finally, the Prime Minister has come clean on something — last night he said that the parliamentary select committee on Lynas will not have the final say on the project.
Thank you, Najib Razak for this rare piece of honesty because now I will urge the Opposition and fair-minded Malaysians to boycott this committee and see it for what it really is: a public relations exercise by a government which is big on symbolism and gimmicks and nothing else.
According to Najib, the committee is supposed to engage the public and allay their fears about a project which has raised concerns about toxic waste and waste management.
Here is where the duplicity of the government shines through: they have given Lynas a temporary operating licence, have allowed the Australian company to build a plant, given them 12 years tax holiday, have rubbished fears from PKR’s Fuziah Salleh, have given the anti-Lynas movement almost no coverage in the media and have allowed the Atomic Energy Licensing Board to become a partisan outfit and now they want to have a process of consultation.
This is like a parent punishing a child for allegedly playing truant and then asking later if the child actually did play truant.
Najib is not serious about Lynas. He wasn’t serious about justice for Teoh Beng Hock. He wasn’t serious about tackling the National Feedlot Corporation. He certainly is not serious about finding where the money went in the Port Klang Free Trade Zone.
It is all about closure, about being able to tell the voters that his government did something. Not the right thing, mind you. Just something.