The murky world of Khalid’s deals

Selangor Menteri Besar Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim admitted today that he met the Sultan of Selangor in a bid to retain his post. – The Malaysian Insider pic, March 7, 2014.Selangor Menteri Besar Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim sure does talk a good game. He preaches about good governance, transparency – all the stuff to which the Umno/Barisan Nasional regime apparently do not subscribe.

But yet in the last month or so, Khalid appears to have borrowed heavily from the Umno playbook. The two deals involving him/his administration bear all the hallmarks of deals from the era of excess:
opaque and with a bunch of question marks.

Let's start with the surprising Bank Islam out-of-court settlement.

For years, the bank went after Khalid for an unpaid loan. The matter was before the courts and suddenly, the bank agreed to take a major haircut and accepted much less than the US$18 million (RM59.5 million) it was claiming.

Much much less. Until today, Bank Islam has not offered a credible reason it decided to settle a case in which it had a good chance of winning. The settlement also came as a surprise to Khalid's lawyers.

And it’s an open secret that the man who brokered the settlement is a prominent Umno lawyer who was a big player in the days of Renong and the Malay corporate captains.

Bank Islam is not a public-listed company but its shareholders manage taxpayers' funds. So it has a duty to explain why it offered such a haircut and easy payment scheme to Khalid.

Now comes the second less-than-transparent deal – the recent Selangor water memorandum of understanding (MoU) that was signed hastily last week after several years of haggling by Putrajaya over the Langat 2 water treatment plant.

Khalid signed the MoU without as much as having his executive council or his party vet the papers, ostensibly because of time constraints and also to keep it a secret to prevent insider trading.

Is he saying that he doesn't trust any of his colleagues? And do they trust him enough to handle the entire matter with the federal government?

Or is senior lawyer Tommy Thomas's presence in an independent panel and indication of Pakatan Rakyat's (PR) trust in the second-term menteri besar?

The fact of the matter is the MoU remains a secret and Khalid has promised to reveal the contents only after some pressure. Is there more to the deal and will Selangor folk only know the details after the March 10 deadline for the four water companies to agree to being acquired?

Where is the transparency that Khalid has made a hallmark of his administration so much so that Selangor voters voted them for another term in the 2013 general election?

Which brings to today's revelation that Khalid admitted that he met with Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah to reaffirm his desire to remain as menteri besar.

"I have informed the Sultan and the exco of my intention," he told a press conference after a meet-the-people session at Dewan Taman Mesra in Kajang.

But isn't his position due to the support of his fellow state lawmakers rather than just a royal assent? What would he do if they deserted him and supported another lawmaker as menteri besar?

Khalid came to prominence in the early 1980s with his dawn raid for shares in the London stock exchange. And now he has done similar dawn raids to settle his bank loan and also the Selangor water imbroglio.

Is he also doing a dawn raid to keep his post as menteri besar? Or should he just stick to what he promised before – work for the people of Selangor.

He can start that by revealing all the deals that involve him instead of taking his time to admit he wants to remain the Selangor menteri besar at a time when his party has other ideas.