COMMENT | Bank Negara’s silence on 1MDB bailout tarnishes its integrity

COMMENT | Members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) have grilled many people including ministers and civil servants in the course of its hearings.

Some came up with unembellished facts and figures, while there were many who feigned ignorance or told half-truths or simply could not remember events of the past.

Chief among them was a civil servant, entrusted with billions of ringgit, claiming she did not know what cash flow meant to a project!

Unfortunately for the rakyat whose money the PAC is trying to protect, its proceedings are held in private and we can only rely on statements or utterances by its chairperson or members on what had transpired.

So, when OC Phang, the former general manager of the Port Klang Authority which developed the scandal-ridden Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ), claimed that no cash flow projections were made before embarking on the project, the exasperated faces of the members could not be described or recorded, even for posterity.

Despite claiming to have a Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, unlike the select committee meetings in the British parliament, hearings of our PAC are not open to the public.

Hence, we have to depend on what the PAC wants to tell us and that depends on the subject, the key protagonists, and other factors which in the past, have influenced its chairperson and some of its members.

Readers may remember the furore caused by the amendments made to its findings on the 1MDB in 2015 and the resultant “cari makan” remark by the PAC's then chairperson.

Although it is supposed to be bi-partisan, the PAC’s then actions changed its façade and image, and its integrity came under a cloud.

But this week, the PAC laid bare the facts which had previously been the subject of intense speculation and discussion...