Sunday 9 December 2012

‘Petronas - Show us you are man enough, Najib’



‘Petronas - Show us you are man enough, Najib’
By Chua Jui Meng

 
I HAVE just returned from a ceramah in Kangar on Friday night (Dec 7, 2012) and a Johor PKR meeting and a Deepavali Open House in Gelang Patah, Johor, yesterday (Dec 8, 2012).
As I settled down to pen my response to an article by Zainal Epi , posted by Free Malaysia Today (FMT) on Dec 7, 2012, titled “Chua off the mark on National Trust Fund”, I found another article in FMT posted yesterday (Dec 8, 2012), authored by Mohd Ariff Sabri Aziz with the headline “What happened to Petronas money?”
That is the question that I have been asking. The answer is also what I am seeking to enlighten the people whenever I deliver my ceramahs in Johor and elsewhere.
From what I could gather, Zainal Epi is a former journalist with The Star, theSun and the defunct Watan and he is now linked to Umno warlord activities.
I will not respond nor clarify what Zainal has written because it is Petronas and Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak who should have rebutted the contents of my ceramah and blog postings on Petronas issues and whether there exists a national oil sovereign fund.
Wouldn’t that have been more credible, instead of using an errand boy to rebut me?
Why can’t Petronas and Najib proudly clarify the matter and tell us how much is in the fund?
How much do you have? Why the secrecy?
Malaysia is one of the bigger oil producing countries in the world, rolling out 693,700 bbl/day as of 2009.
Why is the Barisan Nasional (BN) government so shy to declare how much of the country’s wealth, derived from depleting oil resources, had been saved over the years for Malaysians during rainy days?
Most other oil producing countries duly observe transparency to keep their people informed. They do not hesitate to make public their savings in their national sovereign oil fund.
What’s so special about Malaysia that it has to be different? What’s there to hide when the funds are for the people and country’s future utilisation when the oil fields run dry.
Mr Prime Minister! After three years of governance, you have shown yourself to be the only Finance Minister in the world who refuses to clarify economic and financial issues.
You always choose the easy way out and that is to remain unresponsive and silent.
You don’t even have the courage to defend your own Budget 2013 in Parliament against the Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim.
Shame on you! So, why don’t you start showing that you are man enough to lead and govern Malaysians and Malaysia by telling us what has happened to Petronas money.