Jomo: 1MDB, ECRL were used to fund elections
1MDB and the East Coast Rail Link were "tools" created by BN to fund the last two general elections, says Jomo Kwame Sundaram.
According to the Khazanah Research Institute senior adviser, this was because BN lost its two-thirds majority in Parliament after the 2008 election, purportedly due to the lack of election funds...
1MDB and the East Coast Rail Link were "tools" created by BN to fund the last two general elections, says Jomo Kwame Sundaram.
According to the Khazanah Research Institute senior adviser, this was because BN lost its two-thirds majority in Parliament after the 2008 election, purportedly due to the lack of election funds.
Back then, Jomo said, some blamed then-prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi for the setback.
"Pak Lah (Abdullah) did well in the 2004 polls, because he replaced the prime minister then (Dr Mahathir Mohamad), who had been there for two decades.
"People were quite happy to see him (Mahathir) go, to see a new face and a new spirit.
"But by 2008, all that waned. So BN did badly," he told a post-GE14 forum at International Islamic University Malaysia today.
"The whole idea of a new BN leader (Najib Abdul Razak) was how to get money for the 2013 election, and he did all kinds of funny deals," he said, referring to 1MDB, which started out as the Terengganu Investment Authority (TIA) in 2008.
"And the whole point of the ECRL was precisely to raise money for last year's election, considering how it was rushed through the cabinet in November 2017.
"And in January 2018, ECRL started operations."
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Jomo also pointed out that China's Exim Bank, which is providing 85 percent of the loan for the ECRL, is allowing Malaysia to only make repayments after seven years.
The economist added that this arrangement, which also applies to other projects, is irresponsible as it passes the debt to the younger generations.
"It is grossly irresponsible, but this was the way the country was being run," he said.
The Harapan government had suspended the ECRL project in July last year, but agreed to resume if after negotiating with its China counterpart to bring down its price tag by RM21.5 billion, to RM44 billion.
As for 1MDB, Najib is facing at least 39 charges related to 1MDB and other linked entities.
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