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COMMENT I read with interest the commentary by P Gunasegaram, which draws the conclusion that Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng should step down over the purchase of his bungalow, simply because in his opinion, the chief minister has been deemed to have received a ‘gratification’ in the form of a substantial discount.

However, this contention is akin to putting the cart before the horse, especially when the author himself admits that “some legal opinion seems to indicate that this ‘gift’ … needs to be tied back to a definite corrupt act, but others think that it may be something for the courts to decide".

In other words, the author concedes that the transaction may not even be conclusively categorised as a “gratification,” in which case asking the chief minister to step down would be to say he is guilty of an act that may or may not even be a crime.

From what has been publicly reported, the house was bought on a willing-buyer willing-seller basis in 2015, following a verbal agreement in 2012 and a written agreement dated June 23, 2014 in which the house owner, Phang Li Koon, had agreed to grant an option to Guan Eng to purchase the said property at RM2.8 million.

Previous to the purchase, the chief minister had been renting the property for six years from 2009 to 2015 at a rate of RM5,000 per month.

Phang had purchased the bungalow for RM2.5 million in 2008, and as declared in her statutory declaration dated March 22, 2016, she had made up her mind to sell it after the said property became the target of a raft of allegations and protest activities, causing her undue stress. She had also declared that she gained no special benefit from selling the house to the chief minister.

I feel what is more important in this case is to establish whether there was any impropriety by way of corruption or vested interests in connection to the house purchase.

The controversy arises because of the sale of a 0.4ha plot of state land in Taman Manggis for RM11 million to a company called Kuala Lumpur International Dental Centre Sdn Bhd (KLIDC) in 2012 via an open tender. The major shareholder of KLIDC is one Tan Yong Chew, who happens to be an associate of Phang in a different company, Winbond Management & Consultant Sdn Bhd.

Now, I would be the first to agree that it would raise eyebrows had Phang been the successful bidder for the land, even if it were conducted via open tender. However, this was simply not the case as Phang has no shareholdings or dealings with KLIDC whatsoever, besides her association with Tan in a different and unrelated company.

Surely, she cannot be held responsible or even be considered to have an interest in what an associate of hers does on his own accord. Therefore, the attempted connection here is a very specious one.

Land sold via open tender

I also think it is important to stress that the land had been sold via an open tender, a process that is designed to avoid the very kind of conflict of interest that the chief minister is accused of.

Notwithstanding the fact that the chief minister does not even sit in the tender board, the question that begs itself is – how can the state not award the sale of the land to the highest bidder, which KLIDC was?

In fact, the state would have a lot to explain had a lower bidder been awarded the sale instead.

The Penang state government under Guan Eng’s leadership believes in the very same values that the author espouses – accountability and transparency.

It is for this very reason that the state has, since 2008, introduced a raft of policies and legislation to encourage exactly that, via the introduction of open competitive tenders, the enactment of the Freedom of Information law, annual public asset declarations by the entire state executive including the chief minister himself, and restrictions on elected representatives and their relatives from conducting business with the state government.

Finally, the author makes an attempt to link Guan Eng’s case to that of the prime minister’s ‘donation’ scandal, by essentially applying the same standards on two situations that are completely different.

As has been pointed out before, the chief minister of Penang is unable to influence the police or MACC investigation in any way whatsoever, unlike the prime minister who sits on top of the hierarchy as far as agencies such as the MACC and Attorney-General’s Chambers are concerned.

Therefore, I beg to disagree with Gunasegaram. I do not think that the chief minister should step down, as there is no logical reason for him to do so.


ZAIRIL KHIR JOHARI is the MP for Bukit Bendera and DAP assistant national publicity secretary.

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