Former minister Rafidah Aziz has dismissed a statement from the Defence Ministry (Mindef), as her open letter was addressed to caretaker prime minister Najib Abdul Razak and not the ministry.

“I’m sorry, my open letter was addressed to the prime minister and not to Mindef, let alone a unit that is the Mindef corporate communications unit.

“There is no need to explain the in-depth details of the process to decide how the projects are executed,” Rafidah said to Malaysiakini today.

She was responding to a statement issued by Mindef’s corporate communications unit yesterday, which explained that the ministry had implemented development projects via various means, including privatisation, through a land swap.

However, Rafidah said the more important issue that needs to be verified is whether Najib himself had tabled a cabinet paper in 2007 to privatise all land under Mindef to a three-person company.

“Where is this cabinet paper which had approved of this privatisation?

“Please show the cabinet paper so the rakyat can see clearly. The cabinet paper is the proof.

“As long as the cabinet paper is not revealed, all the arguments in Mindef’s statement are merely the administration’s explanation about the internal processes in implementing projects,” she said.

Besides, Rafidah said, even the explanation came from the ministry’s officers, that is the corporate communications unit.

“They were not present at that cabinet meeting. I was,” she said.

She once again insisted that the cabinet at that time had approved the privatisation of more than 40,000 hectares of Mindef land to a three-person company, consisting of two men and one woman.

Rafidah had first made this claim in her April 8 open letter to Najib.

“No one can deny there was such a cabinet meeting, including the cabinet paper tabled by himself, the defence minister at that time, Najib,” she said.

Mindef’s corporate communications unit had in its statement yesterday denied Rafidah’s claims about the transfer of Mindef land to a private company.

“Referring to Rafidah’s statement that there was a so-called three-person company controlling the implementation of the projects via land swap method from Mindef, it is not true.

“Her statement that all federal land used by Mindef having been transferred to the three-person company is also not true,” the unit said.

Instead, it explained that the appointments of companies to develop the lands was according to the procedure set by the Public-Private Cooperation Unit (Ukas).

“Every development project is carried out by a different company and they do not have any relations with one another,” the unit said.

Their projects, it said, use the land swap method, which is a mechanism used in public-private partnerships, as handled by Ukas.

The process involves many stages, including vetting before it is brought to the cabinet for examination and approval, the unit said.