KUALA LUMPUR, April 17 — Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim wants a special parliamentary sitting to discuss the billions of ringgit in government projects being allocated without any apparent transparency.
The Opposition leader cautioned the government and Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaacob against using the memorandum of understanding (MoU) as a reason to ignore the principles of honesty and integrity and their responsibilities.
“The government has to answer serious questions on the management, abuse of power and decisions for some of these billion-ringgit government projects funded by taxpayers’ money.
“This is concerning and I urge that it be given special attention as soon as possible before it gets worse. In the past, we had 1MDB, now MRT, DNB, MySejahtera and Sapura, all these issues need to be explained to the public.
“Hence, I urge for a special parliamentary sitting for a few days to debate these actions taken by the government,” he said in a Facebook posting last night.
Digital Nasional Berhad is Malaysia’s 5G rollout project which has been hit with criticism over its Single Wholesale Network (SWN) model.
Finance Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz said the government has agreed to offer 70 per cent of equity holding within DNB to telecommunications companies, with the remaining 30 per cent to be held by the Malaysian government.
This means that the DNB will not be fully owned by the Malaysian government as previously announced, which critics had said would create a monopoly and raise prices at the expense of efficient services.
MySejahtera ownership and data protection have come into question lately, with many asking who is the real owner of the digital property and its data.
In late March, it was reported that three directors and two former directors of engineering companies were detained by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to assist in the investigation of corruption cases related to the MRT project worth more than RM650 million.
Sapura, on the other hand, is another company served with winding-up petitions and affidavit-verifying petitions as reports emerged its CEO was being paid in the millions despite the company’s declining performance.
