Hanipa: CEP to remain classified, OSA won't be abused
PARLIAMENT | The Council of Eminent Persons' (CEP) report will remain under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) only to protect confidential information and not to conceal wrongdoing.
Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Hanipa Maidin said this was unlike the previous BN government which used the OSA to conceal corruption.
PARLIAMENT | The Council of Eminent Persons' (CEP) report will remain under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) only to protect confidential information and not to conceal wrongdoing.
Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Hanipa Maidin said this was unlike the previous BN government which used the OSA to conceal corruption.
"We were not unhappy with the OSA itself, but (back then) the OSA was abused. It was used to protect corruption, abuse of power and tyranny," Hanipa, the de facto deputy law minister, told the Dewan Rakyat today.
He was responding to a question from Wong Kah Woh (Harapan-Ipoh Timur) who had asked whether the government planned to make the CEP report public.
Hanipa said the government has no plans to do so and the CEP report would remain under the OSA.
"The report is only given to the prime minister and there is no intention to share it with the masses," he said, adding all countries needed a form of an OSA and that Harapan was never unhappy with the OSA itself.
He said during the BN administration, people were arrested and charged under the OSA if they raised issues of bribery and abuse of power.
"That is what we are against. Now we only want to protect information that is confidential. This is the difference between us and the previous government," he said.
Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad had said last year that the CEP report would not be made public as the CEP's job was to investigate and report to him alone.
"Whether I accept the report or not, it is my business. The main thing is to feed me with the information I need in order to make decisions, so it is the government’s business.
"When we make decisions in government, we don't always publish it," he had said at that time.
The formation of the five-member CEP on May 12 was among Mahathir's first tasks as prime minister.
Led by Mahathir’s confidante Daim Zainuddin, the CEP is a powerful body that interviewed some 350 people from 200 organisations – many of whom were from the government and GLCs – to help formulate a report on economic and financial reform policies for the prime minister.
The report was submitted 100 days after the CEP was formed.
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