Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat tells TERENCE FERNANDEZ

One front too many By: (Thu, 05 Aug 2010) The Sun

> Former MCA president and transport minister Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat tells TERENCE FERNANDEZ that despite his political setback, he will do little to change his game plan if given a second chance.
Why did you lose?

I DID my post mortem and identified factors including my action in spearheading the PKFZ probe. I’m not saying the probe should not have been conducted. It should be conducted in the interests of taxpayers, but timing is important. You might have done the right thing at the wrong time. I had been pushing for party reform. That was part of my manifesto. I mean it and I still mean it.
Hardly 10 days into my presidential tenure, I made the decision to conduct the PwC probe into PKFZ.

Perhaps my timing should have been better thought of and I underestimated the kind of linkages between the various quarters including the party insiders in the debacle. When I started the probe into the debacle, that is disturbing the hornets’ nest and the magnitude of the backlash was beyond my imagination. My only regret is that it should have been better timed because at that time many people had no real understanding of the issue. Many of them pleaded (with me), thinking it was merely an MOT (Ministry of Transport) affair or (that) sometimes people might just rely on hearsay and half-truths. I should have done more groundwork in preparing people including the party members and insiders, especially on the impact of the debacle on the party during the 2008 general election.

You are implying that your party members did not accept your stand for openness and transparency.
I was made to believe that transparency, accountability and integrity would always be the basic principles that all politicians and political parties must uphold. But at the same time I should not have underestimated the kind of spinning perpetrated by those who had a vested interest in the debacle because I could see at a later stage that my efforts and initiative in spearheading the probe was deliberately distorted – a move with ulterior motive aimed at "victimising" certain individuals, especially so-called ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs. To me we should be colour blind in dealing with issues of public interest.

Seems the delegates do not represent the wishes of the majority of the Chinese community or MCA members even.We know that the public is all for such an investigation but to say that the party per se is not supportive of such a move, we should narrow down to the delegates – not the members at large because the members constitute the public.

Did the statement made by your successor come as a surprise to you?Yes, because on the morning of the handing-over, that statement was made immediately after I left. But I was not aware of the background story. I mean why was he made to come up with such a statement?

When I was party president, my deputy was Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek. Dr Chua did reiterate that the PKFZ debacle is nothing more than an MOT affair. (He said) let the government deal with it and that any move on my part to conduct an investigation, especially the way we did it, was tantamount to destroying BN’s credibility. That was deemed something detrimental to the interest of the ruling coalition. All these words and statements alarm me; and my deeds were seen as seeking publicity in the eyes of Dr Chua.

What would be tantamount to destroying BN’s credibility is if you don’t conduct
an investigation and bring the crooks to book.Precisely! That’s what I argued and I put up my line of argument exactly like what you said, but ultimately it was up to the judgment of the delegates. There are two schools of thought – mine and Dr Chua’s. And the mandate is given by the delegates.

All these talk about delegates being compromised, bank-rolled even. Any truth to that?Immediately after my defeat I made no mention of the perceived misdeeds taking place in the party election because to me I need to respect the institution. It has never been my practice to be a sore loser. Because if we have such a system where the party leadership is elected by delegates, then we must make sure that the system works untainted. Of course, along the line, reported and unreported cases of inappropriate deeds have been brought to the fore; but again in any system including the MCA, that depends on whether you have delegates wanting to lodge reports officially and whether or not such cases will be heard by the party authorities.

We passed the resolution in the 2008 general assembly for direct election of the presidency but that was stalled along the way. Due to the leadership crisis, peoples’ attention seemed to have shifted to the expulsion of Dr Chua. A lot of lies and half truths have been told with the aim of justifying certain misdeeds and to demonise me. I choose to speak the truth because these are the things that should not happen at all in any system of healthy politics because ultimately it will be detrimental to the country.

Your reforms as president included taking the power out of the hands of the delegates. You could have alienated delegates because of your party reforms.I was told that was one reason but when I brought it up as part of my manifesto, it was echoed by Dr Chua who included this in his manifesto. But when I spearheaded this, I had no support from his people.

Now they have netted a big fish in PKFZ. Did the charges brought against Tun Dr Ling Liong Sik come as a surprise?Tun Ling’s arrest came as a surprise to me because the MACC and police investigations triggered last year had appeared to be somewhat oblivious in the past several months. (But) This is part of the process in the name of upholding the rule of law. To me transparency, integrity and accountability can only be convincingly upheld by the conclusive findings of the probe without fear or favour irrespective of the social status or the political affiliation of the perpetrators.

Are you satisfied then, that you have been somewhat vindicated?This case should not be concluded without the crooks being brought to justice or merely being given a slap on the wrist. Taxpayers’ monies that has been fraudulently claimed must be recovered.

It must bring to mind the Team A-Team B fiasco when you and Ling were on opposite sides. Does vengeance come to mind when you see him facing the law?

That does not arise at all. I was determined to probe the debacle not because of any personal vendetta but mainly due to the call of my conscience. I seriously took it as part of my job as transport minister.

How much more work needs to be done on PKFZ?On one hand people want to know how much more we can reveal but on the other hand, it is no secret that you can hardly quantify the amount of work that needs to be done further. Reason being having gone through a lengthy investigation, we managed to identify the various root causes for the debacle and along the line we unearthed dirt, but again we must admit that there were certain missing links that were beyond our reach. Not that I’m trying to be evasive because when I first took over the issue, I had virtually nothing to begin with other than the known facts such as the Hansard and parliamentary answers.

Those were not facts they were fiction.(Laughs) Well, I did make an attempt to verify. I did not take anything at face value. Before I was removed from the cabinet, I was of the view that pending the outcome of investigations by the MACC and the police and the action anticipated from the Super Task Force, MOT under my leadership was prepared to help. (But) MOT does not have the power to prosecute or gain access to certain information. But the panel members had been ready to render their assistance and service.

Do you think you had made the right appointments to the panels and statutory bodies or do you have regrets?I had limited choices. And one thing for sure, not withstanding I made the appointments there and then, I thought there must be some changes introduced to the system and I made an attempt to bring in independent directors and that explains why later I introduced the Whistleblowers Policy.

The Port Klang Authority (PKA) Board was an example of how party representation reflected the weakness of the PKA. You have people from Umno, MCA and MIC on the board who kept quiet while the rot was setting in. Do you still subscribe to the view that we need the best people irrespective of political affiliation?We need to introduce changes but changes can only be brought about in stages. When you have too drastic changes, not only wouldn’t it work, it might give rise to a new set of problems. You must understand that within the establishment, when I entered the arena, what choice did I have? When I made those appointments, even if there was an unwritten rule that you need to set your sights on the political boys, I did bear in mind that any political appointee must have the professional aptitude.

But were you ever advised against appointing certain individuals but went ahead anyway?When I said we need changes, that just shows what we have may not be ideal. There is room for us to improve.

You had the support of the prime minister in uncovering PKFZ, yet you were fighting a lot of battles from within the establishment.I had been under severe attack from the establishment and colleagues within the establishment. Even today among the backbenchers, there are individuals who are vindictive against me.

And did you also discover that your trust had been betrayed by those whom you entrusted to clean up the mess?Absolutely! And I must say that over the past one and a half years, cases of betrayal of trust were one of the key disturbances haunting the investigation of the PKFZ debacle.

As minister, you also addressed the issue of vehicle inspection by Puspakom. You initiated the sting against corrupt officials.Upholding integrity is easier said than done; more so when you want to nip it in the bud, especially at the front counters of customer service rendered by the concessionaire. I took the initiative to reach out to the management of Puspakom. Of course they obliged and in all fairness the initiatives had been taken and they did put in the effort. But on the other hand I did take cognisance of the public outcry as well as input from the public that it is time for us to have a look at the monopolistic concession granted to Puspakom.

I needed to look at the views and aspirations of all quarters including the concessionaire, as we need to act fairly and justly because they had invested substantially in the infrastructure. The outcome was upon the maturity of their contract in 2009 they were given a reduced extension of five years instead of 15 years. But at the same time it doesn’t mean they will be thrown out of business. When I said five years, it means that after five years this will be opened to competition. Puspakom will still operate but they have to face competition.

And in doing so, did you alienate many of your coalition colleagues?This is what you may have seen but there are also unseen cases. For instance, the locomotives. In 2008, when I first took over MOT, I was alerted to newly commissioned locomotives left stranded in "graveyards". Upon my own investigations I managed to resurrect 15 of the 20 locomotives that had not been used; and true enough, all those locomotives were deemed irreparable.

After a few months of grappling with red tape, ultimately we managed to get all the 20 sets to be attended to by the principal in China (Dalian). To my understanding, Dalian was kept in the dark but what happened to the parties responsible for the maintenance and repair? That was the question I raised and mind you after three months of hard work, the 20 sets of locomotives were put on the tracks. But this was hardly reported and the deal was worth more than US$50 million (RM160 million).

Why e-road tax?The online e-services, specifically E-Road Tax came into being before I took over. Once I moved in I took a hard look at the various aspects of e-services and told my officials that e-services must be open. You must allow service providers to have the necessary access to the system. But one of the more established industry players raised their objections to other relevant ministries and there had been a flip flop in the decisions. I had been very clear that the service provider didn’t have exclusive rights. Unfortunately, my decision was overruled but until today I still maintain my position. I am no longer in the ministry or cabinet, but as a taxpayer and an MP, it must be an open turf. And that should be extended to the various types of e-services especially when we are in the midst of fighting corruption and enhancing public delivery which had been my main justifications as to why we need to open up.

Do you think you did too much too soon?Yes! Sorry to say my detractors had been labelling me as someone seeking publicity to enhance my political career. But to me there is nothing great in doing all these. It is just the right thing to do as I too am a taxpayer, so I put myself in the people’s shoes. That also explains why I had opened up too many battle fronts.

As a seasoned politician, you would have known that your time was limited, especially in the way you were doing things.Sure! After the 2008 electoral setback I was elected to the party presidency, I was mindful of the urgency in transforming the party. And transformation is not something that is domestic within the MCA. But I must say that the MCA representatives in the cabinet must be able to show to the people that we mean business. We are there not just to warm our seats. We are there to deliver, initiate changes in the interest of the people. That explains why I disagree with any argument claiming that PKFZ is a government affair. Don’t forget PKFZ was one of the main contributing factors that led to our setback.

So you are saying BN is yet to learn its lesson?People may have different views especially the party insiders but let history judge whether we are on the right track.

There have been many labels hurled against you like "bull in a china shop", "Lone Ranger" and dictator. But several of your MCA colleagues had said you alienated many people including those closest to you because you were paranoid. So you have this problem of trusting people?That is their perception, but my conscience is very clear because when an individual is assigned with a trust, certainly I must place trust in him. If I don’t trust him then I shouldn’t have assigned him with a task. I might as well do it myself.

Having said that, I learnt one thing: people will always look for excuses to justify breach of trust. If they can’t justify in the right way, they will try to link it with other unfounded allegations like "something wrong between the chemistry of so and so".

In partisan politics it seems that name calling and labelling without justification has been the order of the day.

Dictators would never grant any room for dissenting views and if I were ever a dictator, those individuals who had been going overboard to smear me would have been dealt with severely. At least during my presidential tenure, none of those who openly smeared me had been expelled.

But you are in a conundrum. Because of the system you must work with what you have. How do you explain chopping all the deputy ministers from the presidential council? That is a well-designed half truth. What do you mean by "chop"? Even today the present leadership is talking about its presidential prerogative. One year after my presidential tenure, it was time for me to revamp the presidential council. I had to honour what I said. Unfortunately, when I revamped the line-up of my presidential council, people chose to ignore that. When you choose your team; you need to choose people who can work with you, people of certain standing and people of certain aptitude and capability. And when I announced the new line-up, I did not pluck these people from thin air. These people were chosen from the pool of CC members – except for several estranged individuals, since they themselves said they could not work with me, I did not consider them.

How was MCA to speak on behalf of the community effectively at the federal level when its deputy ministers were removed?It’s untrue because when I announced the presidential line-up, I said these people with the government portfolios can attend the meetings upon invitation. But these individuals chose to ignore that and they managed to succeed in distorting the scenario.

Looking to the future, people are eyeing your Pandan seat.
(Laughs) Pandan to certain individuals is a safe seat. But from the 1990s, I had been telling my supporters that being an urban seat, Pandan was no easy seat. At the height of the political tsunami, BN lost the two state seats with a margin of about 10,000 and I won my seat by a reduced majority of 2,962.

We must earn the respect and support of the people. Support and respect do not come automatically.

My seat being eyed has in no way deterred me from pursuing my cause and I still follow the same routine like my Sunday mobile clinic service. We’ve managed to venture into more initiatives aimed at helping the people. I do it not just to safeguard my seat. Sometimes I do it on the NGO platform. If you want to transform the community, society and country you must go beyond partisan bounds.

You are perhaps among the most consistent politician in terms of your beliefs and words, but it seems that being consistent cost you.I paid a price for it.

So there’s no room for good politicians in this country?(Laughs) I wouldn’t be that pessimistic but I believe in my own idealism … I am always pursuing my dream. I believe in making things work and making things happen.

Would you do anything differently if you had a second lease on political life?I would uphold my idealism and principles but in terms of methodology or approach, I’d do it differently. It has to be flexible and in line with the current scenario. The political scenario is ever-changing. There is no such thing as a hard and fast rule that you need to abide by at all times. Of course, I need to stay loyal to my principles. Don’t think only those in the Opposition face such an onslaught. I’m still in the BN and I have been enduring all these things for years. But the lesson learnt is that at the end of the day one must rise from the fall.

But will you be loyal to the MCA and BN forever?
I don’t believe in blind loyalty to any entity or individual. My loyalty is to the people and my principles.

--- end ---