Dr M will testify in Dr Ling’s case if called

By Asrul Hadi Abdullah Sani Malaysian Insider

August 03, 2010

 

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 3 – Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said today that he will testify in Tun Dr Ling Liong Sik’s Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) cheating trial if the court subpoenas him. He said that whoever is called by the court is required to testify. Yesterday Dr Mahathir stressed that Dr Ling is innocent until proven guilty.
“It is required to testify in court, a person must do it. He cannot say that I don’t want. Everyone that has to testify in court has to do so,” he told reporters at Petronas headquarters here.
Dr Ling, 66, is charged with cheating the government by misleading the Cabinet helmed by Dr Mahathir (pic) on the land acquisition for the PKFZ project in Klang.
Dr Mahathir also refused to comment if the Cabinet was misled by the former transport minister.
“I don’t know if he misled me or not because I do not know if he is guilty or not. At this moment, he is only being charged. Whether he is guilty or not, it is for the court to determine,” he said.
The PKFZ project was mooted during his term as transport minister and the cost of the project, initially estimated at less than RM2 billion, more than doubled to RM4.6 billion by 2007.
The total bill for the project is expected to swell to as much as RM12.5 billion due to interest costs from deferred payments, if the trans-shipment hub fails to perform.
He faces up to seven years in jail and a fine under the Penal Code.
The friendship between the two doctors dates back to the 1980s when Dr Ling helped hold the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) together as the MCA president while Dr Mahathir struggled to unite the splintered Umno. Both retired from Cabinet the same year – Dr Ling in May 2003, and Dr Mahathir five months later.
Last year, The Malaysian Insider reported that Dr Ling had told the Public Accounts Committee’s (PAC) probing the scandal-ridden PKFZ that it was Dr Mahathir who oversaw the project’s land valuation.
In the verbatim of the PAC meeting procedures, the former MCA president pointed out that the costing and valuation of the land was determined by the Valuation and Property Services Department (JPPH) which was chaired by Dr Mahathir, who was the then finance minister.
“Our job in Ministry of Transport is to only state the fact that we want the land. Costings, valuations and all that, it is not the function of the Ministry of Transport. We do not have a Valuation Department.
“Costings and valuations is a question for the Treasury to deal with. They have the Valuation Department and everything is there, not in Ministry of Transport. I think [it was] Tun Dr Mahathir who chaired it, and he was the finance minister also. He saw it very clearly. That was the fact of the case,” Ling said in the verbatim report.
However, Dr Mahathir said that a prime minister is only responsible over matters that he has knowledge.
“As a prime minister, he is always responsible but there are limits to the responsibility and if he doesn’t know something then you can’t say that he is responsible. There are a lot of things which happened in this country which the prime minister do not know, so if you know something, please tell,” he said.

Dr M will testify in Dr Ling’s case if called