With this signal from the Prime Minister, I hope Barisan Nasional MPs would dare to speak up in Parliament on the Asahi Shimbun revelation last Friday about Mitsui’s RM10.6 million kickback to Telekom Malaysia in connection with its syndicated contract with NEC Corp. for a 10 billion yen deal to supply switchboards with a total capacity of about 800,000 circuits in 1996.
Up to now, despite three days of debate in Parliament on the motion
of thanks on the royal address, not a single Barisan Nasional MP dared
to refer to the RM10.6 million Telekom kickback scandal, although this
is the most current issue in the country which has attracted widespread
national and international attention and uppermost in public mind.
As in the past, the Opposition provides the only voice on issues of
corruption and public integrity in Parliament - with Parliamentary
Opposition Leader, Datuk Fadhil Noor and the DAP Parliamentary Leader,
Dr. Tan Seng Giaw speaking up on the Telekom kickback allegation on Tuesday
and Wednesday, demanding full accounting and an independent inquiry.
In the Malaysian Parliament ever since Merdeka in 1957, it is the only the Opposition MPs who had been concerned about corruption and public integrity, while the tradition of government MPs is to be completely indifferent to the burning issues of corruption and abuses of power.
The time has come for Barisan Nasional MPs to demonstrate that they are no more "blind, deaf and dumb" on issues of corruption and public integrity as in the past four decades of Parliament, but that they belong to a new generation of MPs who fully understand the aspirations of new Malaysian generations for a good, clean, honest, upright and moral government.
I hope that before the debate on the motion of thanks for the royal address concludes, there will be Barisan Nasional MPs who would dare to speak up to support the Barisan Alternative call for a truly independent investigation into the Telekom kickback allegation.
Now that Mahathir had spoken and expressed the government’s interest
in finding out the truth about the allegation of RM10.6 million Mitsui
kickback to Telekom Malaysia, I call on Barisan Nasional MPs to support
a two-point amendment to the current motion of thanks for the royal
address:
A full day of debate on such an amendment motion should be held to show Malaysians and the world that the tenth Parliament is taking a most serious attitude on the allegation of the RM10.6 million Mitsui kickback to Telekom Malaysia, but wants to send a clear signal to the country and the world that the new Parliament wants to be known as one which would not aid and abet corruption and all forms of abuses of power by sweeping all allegations of corruption under the carpet.
(18/2/2000)