LETTER | MCA Minister Wee Ka Siong’s desperate attempts to justify his '10 lies' with more lies on Penang's undersea tunnel project will not work because you can lie to some of the people some of the time, you can lie to all the people some of the time, but you can not lie to all the people all the time.

Even while clinging desperately to his lies, Wee continues to make new ones, such as the winning consortium Zenith securing a 110 acres prime land approved for high-density luxury condominiums despite the many delays in the proposed project.

This is false because the 110 acres of net developed land has not been transferred to Zenith. Where is it stated that there is approval for high-density luxury condominiums? How then can there be approval for high-density luxury condominiums when the land has not even been transferred?

Further, who caused the delays when federal government agencies changed their rules and Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) has carried out investigations since 2016? The unduly long MACC investigations have not only delayed but harassed government staff that required unnecessary and repetitive checks.

With the latest attack by BN to sabotage the entire project, doubts have been expressed about the commitment of all parties involved and whether the project is still viable.

Wee’s latest “10 lies” letter then spirals down to further depths of falsehoods of bare-faced denials by him. For instance, he claimed that he had never insinuated that a fashion company, Vertice Bhd, was building the Penang tunnel when he knew that China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC) was clearly the main contractor.

Wee should refer to MCA’s own paper, The Star, which on Jan 13 highlighted Wee’s lies.

So, Wee’s own party newspaper has caught out Wee for lying. Wee also denied BN’s involvement in the MACC investigations and allegations of corruption that kickbacks of millions of ringgit were paid to state government leaders in this project.

Has Wee so quickly forgotten that the BN media had put it up on the front page? (see New Straits Times, Jan 20, 2018)

Wee denies that MCA president Liow Tiong Lai abused his power as transport minister to pressure CRCC, when Wee and BN had first dragged them into this political controversy.

And yet, in the same breath, Wee admits that Liow got CRCC to “provide” information through his responsibilities as transport minister, even though the Malaysian government is not a party to the Penang contract.

Perhaps the Penang government should have carried out a direct tender like the RM55 billion ECRL project to avoid any harassment from MACC?

Wee claims that there is no need for an open tender for the RM55 billion East Coast Railway Link (ECRL) project, that is nine times bigger than the RM6.3 billion tunnel project because the ECRL is a government-to-government(G2G) project.

Is the Penang project not a G2G project too when it is undertaken by a China government-owned company and the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) witnessed by both the prime ministers of Malaysia and China in 2011?

Despite that, the Penang state government had insisted that an open tender be conducted in contrast to the ECRL.

If the Penang state government had known that MACC would only investigate projects conducted under open tenders and not under direct tender, then perhaps we should have done the project under direct tender to avoid any harassment, even just before Chinese New Year.

Again Wee tried to drag the Penang state secretary into this political fight by claiming that the paid-up capital of the consortium that won the tender did not fulfil the minimum paid-up capital (PUC) requirement of RM381 million.

He even claimed that when awarding the tender, the state secretary acted under instructions from the chief minister.

This is outrageous and a preposterous lie. The state secretary is the chairperson of the Penang state Tender Board and has carried out his duties according to the letter of the law. He received no benefit in granting the tender to Zenith.

Zenith fulfilled the minimum PUC requirement of RM381 million. The Penang Tender Board granted the tender based on the merits of the tender and not as Wee alleged. It is unscrupulous for Wee to try to drag the state secretary down just because Wee is unable to prove that there was hanky-panky in the award of the project by open tender.

I do not intend to explain at length to Wee that one does not need to stamp every page of a contractual document nor justify that any document attached to the main agreement is part of that agreement.

CRCC is mentioned in the main agreement and it signed the main agreement as a party to the contract, and it gave an additional signed commitment to ensure completion of the project that is attached to the agreement.

Any person buying a house would know that any document attached to the agreement is part of the main agreement.

Finally, I would like to repeat again that the state government had not paid a single cent or a single square inch of land to either Zenith or the contractor for the tunnel. Payment has been made only for the three main roads.

For Wee to continue to claim that the state government has paid to either Zenith or the contractor for the tunnel is just sheer dishonesty. Clearly, both BN and Wee are only interested in sabotaging this public interest project that seeks to alleviate traffic congestion in Penang.

It is pointless to respond to Wee when he continues to shamelessly cover-up and clings desperately to his 10 lies. We leave it to the people of Penang to judge.

I wish Wee and MCA Gong Xi Fa Cai and Nian Nian You Yu!

LIM GUAN ENG is Penang Chief Minister and DAP secretary-general.