Pakatan Harapan to scrap Pemandu if opposition wins GE14

Pakatan Harapan says it will channel resources directly to the civil service instead.

PETALING JAYA: Should Pakatan Harapan win in the coming general election (GE14), it says it will terminate the Performance and Management Delivery Unit (Pemandu) and conduct a forensic audit into all its activities.

In a statement today, issued by leaders from all four parties in the opposition pact, Ong Kian Ming (DAP), Wong Chen (PKR), Dzulkefly Ahmad (Amanah) and Rais Hussin (PPBM) said Pemandu had failed on many fronts since its launch in 2010.

“It has failed to deliver on its main KPI, failed to be accountable to Parliament and the public and, most recently, ensnared itself in possible conflict of interest situations,” they said.

According to the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) 2010 roadmap report, the key target was for Malaysia to reach high income nation status of US$15,000 (RM6,500) gross net income (GNI) per capita by 2020.

However, they said, Malaysia was clearly “very far” from that target. Quoting numbers from the Statistics Department, they said GNI per capita had increased by a mere US$490, from US$8,636 in 2010 to US$9,057 per capita in 2016, or 4.9% in six years.

“Based on this statistic alone, Pemandu has failed.”

Likewise, in an article in The Malaysian Insight, Pemandu claimed that it reported to the Economic Planning Unit (EPU), the Prime Minister’s Department as well as Parliament.

But the opposition leaders said Pemandu’s CEO, Idris Jala, had never once appeared in Parliament to answer any parliamentary question concerning the unit, despite having been a member of the cabinet for six years.

Calling this “a massive failure from an accountability standpoint”, they added that Pemandu had never tabled any of its reports on the ETP, the Government Transformation Programme (GTP) or the National Transformation Programme (NTP), or distributed them to MPs.

“It does not table its own financial accounts in Parliament nor tell Parliament how much Pemandu has spent for its various activities.

“And despite public criticism, it has not made known how much its staff get paid, which according to some reports, is higher than the prime minister’s salary.”

They also hit out at Pemandu over its conflicts of interest, pointing out that all staff of Pemandu Corp, a 100% finance ministry-owned entity, had been transferred to Pemandu Associates Sdn Bhd, a private entity of which Idris owns 50%.

Noting that Idris had been chairman of Heineken Malaysia, a public-listed company, since the beginning of 2017, they said his position there clashed with his post as Pemandu president.

“The position of Idris Jala as the chairman of a publicly-listed company and the president of a private company which is deeply embedded in the inner workings of the federal government via its work in the NTP, raises serious questions with regard to possible conflicts of interest.

“Until today, he has not even attempted to explain these conflicts of interest.

“For these reasons and immediately upon winning GE14, Pakatan Harapan will terminate all existing contracts with Pemandu Associates Sdn Bhd.

“We will initiate a forensic accounting investigation into all of the expenditures undertaken by Pemandu Corp and BFR Institute, both of which are 100% MOF-owned entities, including how much was paid to each and every celebrity speaker for the 2015 and 2017 Global Transformation Programme.

“We will publicly disclose the salaries received by Pemandu directors.”

Rather than spending huge amounts of money on external consultants, they said, Pakatan Harapan would channel resources directly to the civil service.

“Pakatan Harapan will also call upon respected retired civil servants to help us reform the civil service to its former glory days of integrity, transparency and effectiveness.” -FMT