KUALA LUMPUR, May 2 ― Putrajaya’s brief preliminary report on the Flight MH370 leaves unanswered reasons for initial hours-long delay in launching a search for the missing plane DAP Parliamentary Leader Lim Kit Siang said today.

Questioning the credibility of the report released yesterday, Lim claimed Putrajaya’s early findings contained facts that did not match the federal government’s past official versions of MH370’s March 8 disappearance and search operations.

Lim said that Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein needs to provide “satisfactory explanation” for the “new additional discrepancies”, saying that a failure to do so would result in a “serious credibility gap” for his statement and the report yesterday.

Lim also repeated his calls for Putrajaya to set up a bi-partisan parlimentary panel on MH370, but went one step further today by asking that the federal opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) be given the reins in the probe.

A report by an opposition-headed Parliamentary Select Committee on the MH370 disaster would have greater credibility than a unilateral statement by Hishammuddin, he said.

“Especially when new facts suddenly surface as if to embellish the government’s version of what happened in the crucial first few days of the MH370 disaster,” the Gelang Patah MP wrote in a statement today.

Lim listed down the “fatal omissions” in Putrajaya’s preliminary report to explain the past “flip-flops, contradictions and confusion” on the MH370, including the time of the flight’s disappearance.

Lim singled out the report’s findings that over four hours lapsed before the initial started, calling the delay  a “most fatal error” that needs to be explained.

Lim pointed out that Putrajaya’s preliminary findings was dated April 9, asking why the three-week-old report was “not made public earlier”, while also asking why the families of those on board MH370 were not briefed before its release.

Lim also noted that Malaysia’s early report only had five pages, while preliminary reports on the Air France Flight 447 disaster and a 2010 engine explosion on a Qantas flight in Singapore had 128 pages and over 40 pages respectively.

Yesterday, the cargo manifest and audio recordings of the radio transmissions from the missing MH370 flight were released, along with a seating plan for the 227 passengers aboard and a map showing the plane’s flight path.

A report detailing the action taken between 1.38am and 6.14am when the plane disappeared on March 8 was included in the preliminary findings released yesterday.

Previous refusals to disclose the contents of the report and associated information had fuelled the mistrust and suspicion over Malaysia’s handling of the matter.

MH370 has been missing for nearly two months with no evidence of its location unearthed.