Selangor water deal: To tell or not to tell

It appears that the powers that be would like to keep all the candies, or maybe worms, inside the tightly closed tin.

COMMENT

Puzzling, perplexing, highly unusual, absurd. These are some of the words used to describe the secrecy surrounding the contract documents, the paperwork carrying the terms and conditions of the commercial transaction that is the Selangor water deal, definitely not some obscene story or a plan for some covert military operation.

An explanation would definitely be nice. Full accountability would be even better. But the Attorney-General has cracked his whip, and now anyone who has been privy to the contract is sworn to silence on pain of prosecution under the Official Secrets Act (OSA). That’s a tough place to be if one is obsessed with freedom of information. So we are left questioning if the people even have a right to know. We definitely wouldn’t recommend holding one’s breath waiting for that to happen. You need air more than water and luckily no one has yet figured out how to charge for that gaseous commodity.

Given the track record on highway toll concessions and, more recently, on the inaction against a certain individual for what looked clearly like religious provocation, it appears that the powers that be would like to keep all the candies, or maybe worms, tightly in the tin.

There really isn’t much to be said. The system, as Ku Li has described it, is fraught with loopholes and crevices big enough to hide an elephant. No, he didn’t say that. But he did say “it conceals a thousand sins.” In his experience, the OSA allows any number of corrupt practices to go undetected because of zero accountability and it is high time we review this type of enforced secrecy in matters not concerning vital national security. Unless you consider having no water to flush the loo as a national security threat.

Cryptic hints

Azmin will be breaking the law if he tells what he has seen. So he’s been hinting cryptically that there may or may not be anything there, and by so doing he has headed the ball back to the AG to convince the public, since the AG has zipped Azmin’s mouth on pain of punishment. His cryptic answers also allude to the contract being irrevocable. But we cannot assume too much. It appears that the AG has a lot to answer for these days, and we know that even Nancy Shukri won’t be volunteering to speak for him anytime soon.

Azmin’s only concern, it appears, is a steady supply of H2O for Selangoreans at a reasonable rate. And Selangoreans won’t know if its reasonable or not without understanding the contents of the deal and its relevance on the pricing. So our Menteri Besar may be forced to play ball with whomever has monopolised the field. And if there ever is a need for a price review, which there inevitably will be, he will have to kick the ball right back to the legal offices of the Attorney-General, where it appears most balls tend to get deflated.

Is there an issue of the people’s sovereign right to know? Well, yes, we assume there is. And no, it has not yet been legally defined.

Transparency is great, but given the tangled web of legal hurdles put up by those who want the details screened from prying eyes, the rakyat will just have to trust that Azmin will find a way to free himself from the spider’s trap if he has seen something illegal or found any evidence of bad faith. For now at least, all he needs to do is to keep the taps flowing and not worry too much about tearing down the house to repair one small crack.

The book is not closed, the game is not over. It’s only that the ball has rolled under the lorry. The lorry will move one day, or it will be moved.