PETALING JAYA, July 13 ― Putrajaya today sought to defend plans to sign the criticised Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) as vital to the nation’s progress even as it acknowledged the inevitable “accidents” that will arise from the deal.

The opaque agreement has now come under fire from former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who echoed opposition Pakatan Rakyat lawmakers in lambasting the deal as being of no real benefit to Malaysia despite opening up the country to foreign firms and lawsuits.

“Take, for example, the construction of a highway; it is good and we get to travel faster, but there must be accidents,” Minister of International Trade and Industry Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed (picture) was quoted as saying at a forum in Shah Alam yesterday by the Sinar Harian news portal.

“What is important is that the highway construction benefits the country, even if there are accidents.”

But the minister again did not elaborate on what these benefits will be. When asked in Parliament last month to detail what Malaysia stood to gain from the agreement, Mustapa had declined to divulge the cost-benefit analysis that led to the decision in favour of signing.

Yesterday, Dr Mahathir joined the growing band of critics in lambasting the TPPA, with the former prime minister singling out Mustapa’s ministry for the decision to join the secretive pact.

“I know MITI is already set to agree to the TPP. It will not entertain any counter arguments. It wants to do this secretly. We don’t punish people who make agreements detrimental to the interest of this country. So what is there to lose?” the nation’s longest-serving prime minister wrote on his blog.

Dr Mahathir also labelled the TPPA as another in a long line of lopsided deals that Malaysia kept walking into, further alleging it to be a covert US attempt to help its firms gain access to lucrative federal supply contracts.

“Look at all the agreements we have entered into and you will find practically none of them favours us,” he wrote on blog.

“Now we want to swallow the American conceived TPP, Trans Pacific Partnership. This is another attempt by America to let their huge corporations penetrate the domestic markets of the small countries, in particular government procurements.”

Yesterday, Mustapa also sought to dismiss claims his ministry was being opaque on the deal as simply “perception”.

“The perception of some is that we have something to hide, but when I say this, we must realise that nothing is done without consequences.

“If we want every action to not affect any party at all, that will be impossible,” he said in the Sinar Harian report.

Pakatan Rakyat lawmakers previously and Dr Mahathir now point out that the TPPA would open up the government to multi-billion ringgit lawsuits from global corporations that the former prime minister said Putrajaya was unlikely to be able to fend off.

“They will have the best lawyers, lots of them. We will exhaust all our funds to pay our less experienced lawyers. At the end we will lose and pay indemnities and fees running into billions. And we will continue to pay until we comply. And when we comply we will lose more money,” Dr Mahathir predicted.

The TPPA is a free trade agreement that has been negotiated by the US, Malaysia and nine other nations as part of the larger Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership since 2010.

Critics allege that the agreement has since been co-opted by powerful corporations to allow them to trample over existing consumer, worker and environmental rights in signatory countries.

Although it is not definitively known how much — if any — of the allegations are true, the secretive nature of the negotiations continues to provide a fertile breeding ground for such speculation.