What happened to Petronas money?

An angry Petronas CEO Shamsul Azhar Abbas has boldly announced that he is ready to quit at any time, but is he ready for the consequences?

COMMENT

Morale in the civil service is low. When Tengku Adnan Mansor, the MP for Putrajaya, looks at the blank and inscrutable faces of civil servants he meets in Putrajaya, he is not confident of their unqualified support. It is not there anymore. So he says privately – Umno is kaput.

Tengku Adnan is not standing as candidate this time around. Meanwhile, in keeping with ‘good business’ and the inexhaustible Umno pragmatism, he says BN will win 140 seats and win a 2/3 majority in parliament.

That is good for the morale of the supreme leader in Umno and the ground troops.

Then suddenly Ali Hamsa the head of a department more known for passing on the list of government projects to powers-that-be, bypasses everyone to become the Ketua Setiausaha Negara (KSN).

And he immediately gets embroiled in a controversy by making outrageous and politically explicit statements. Ali allegedly got his position by being the trusted errand boy for Second Finance Minister Nor Mohamad Yaakob.

Meanwhile, the former KSN Mohamd Sidek Hasan got the plump job as Petronas chairman prompting the current president Shamsul Azhar Abbas to announce he is ready to quit.

The sudden entry of Sidek as Petronas chairman has unsettled the apple cart. Didn’t he say he did not know what the PM was thinking?

Consequences

Well, Sidek can be excused because no one else knows what the PM is thinking. Having brought someone in from Esso Malaysia to replace him as president, Shamsul has been preparing to get into the chairman’s job.

Suddenly the rug is pulled under his feet, prompting him to blow off his top. He has boldly announced that he is ready to quit at any time and that he is not irreplaceable. He has in fact said what other mortals dare not and will certainly rue the consequences.

There must be something fundamentally wrong here. After 55 years we should be celebrating our success in alleviating poverty, in our success in forging people on a united platform of shared ideals and ideas.

We should be celebrating the art of governing the people where what matters most is the economic management of the country.

Instead, what we have is 40% of the population with incomes of less than RM1,500 per month. Or a nation which is more divided along racial and religious lines. We have a government riddled with questionable financial conduct and corruption cases.

How do slogans hide the fact that we have NOT reinvested in building the tools to exploit our oil and gas industry- most of the oil rigs are in need of replacement or extensive refurbishing.

That should be a top priority because almost 50% of our revenue comes from the various taxes and dividends from Petronas.

Petronas money has been redirected to bailing out a host of failed businesses and realising the fantasies of vainglorious leaders.

Where has the Petronas money gone to?

The writer is a former Umno state assemblyman but has now joined DAP. He is a FMT columnist.