Farewell, Khalid: GOOD RIDDANCE TOO!

SELANGOR will soon have a new mentri besar as Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim bows out after six tumultuous years as chief executive of the nation's richest state.

His exit, just over a year into his second five-year term, brings to a closure a coup in his own Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) and engineered by the man who picked him for the hot seat in the first place, PKR de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

At the start of the move to oust him that began in earnest in March with the Kajang by-election, Khalid was relieved that Anwar's plan to contest and take over as MB was thwarted by a Court of Appeal ruling just a day before nomination day that found him guilty on a charge of sodomy.

Then Anwar went full steam ahead to bulldoze his wife and PKR president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail as the candidate to replace Khalid after she won the by-election, but Khalid refused to budge and vowed to finish his term.

As Anwar became agitated and impatient with Khalid's refusal to step down to make way for Dr Wan Azizah, PKR sacked him on disciplinary grounds, triggering off weeks of turmoil among PKR and its two Pakatan Rakyat partners in the state, PAS and DAP.

Khalid then submitted his resignation when Pakatan leaders announced that they had the majority support in the state legislative assembly but was told by Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah to remain in the post until his successor was selected.

While PAS obeyed the Sultan of Selangor's command that each party should submit at least three names as the potential new MB, PKR and DAP insisted on only Dr Wan Azizah as their candidate.

Their defiance led the palace to issue a very strongly-worded statement.

Anwar and DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng later apologised to the sultan but their acts of seeking forgiveness could at best be described as hollow or meaningless because they still went against the royal decree to submit at least three names.

That's Anwar or Guan Eng for you, both known for their defiance and big ego.

Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang, the PAS president, is against Dr Wan Azizah as MB and has made known his view in no uncertain terms, calling her unfit for the job while her other detractors say she will be too much of a "puppet MB" with Anwar calling all the shots in PKR and having a strong influence on DAP as well.

And Hadi has all along insisted that he wants Khalid to stay put.

Meanwhile, Khalid's final big act as MB was seeing to the finishing touches of the master agreement to restructure the state's water industry that was finally signed between the state and federal governments last Friday after so much haggling.

With this agreement, yet another new entity, Air Selangor Sdn Bhd, which Khalid says is a company fully owned by the people of Selangor, will take over operations and maintenance of water treatment plants and water supply services which were managed for many years by four concessionaires.

The agreement fulfils Khalid's wish to run Selangor's water industry on its own and opens a new page in the way this vital utility is managed in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya that have a combined population of seven million.

I'm sure Khalid is sad that he won't be there to oversee even the initial stage how this entity would be running the show given so much acrimony in the past between industry players and the state government.

Khalid's assurance that Air Selangor will be managed by a team which has the expertise and experience in managing water services and that they can carry out efforts to make the industry "more holistic" would carry a lot of weight if he's still the MB but the reality is that he won't be for long.

A palace source told the New Straits Times the sultan may reveal his choice of the new MB next week, after the PAS muktamar or general assembly ends on Saturday.

On the water agreement, Khalid said: "This agreement is a success not only for the state government but also the people of Selangor and Malaysians who have supported the efforts to return water rights to the people all this while."

I wonder if this is fact or fiction because as far as the people of Selangor, or any other state are concerned – and the industries as well – they just want enough clean water without the politics that they have seen in the past few years that led to an unprecedented water crisis in the nation's economic and administrative hub.

Questions remain as to the bottom-line of this restructured water industry, including how it will remain viable when Selangor continues with its free water policy, probably the only such policy in the world at a time when water is a rapidly depleting resource.

And coupled with that in Malaysia, water tariffs are the world's lowest and priced way below the cost of production.

Khalid has also said the signing of the water agreement was his "legacy" for Selangor.

And as for his forced resignation, he said last month that he's paying the price for upholding his integrity.

I sign off by bidding farewell to Khalid, an outstanding MB in his own right. -Sundaily