Time to revamp military procurement process - Rafizi

 

It is time to revamp the military procurement process with the help of experts and former generals, said PKR deputy president Rafizi Ramli.

This comes in the wake of the RM9 billion littoral combat ships (LCS) procurement scandal.

Rafizi proposed the formation of a royal commission of inquiry (RCI) to review the military procurement process and to resolve the issues surrounding the appointment of local defence contractors.

“Put experts, generals who served the country decades ago and senior statesmen on the inquiry panel. Get them to come back to help the government put in place a robust procurement process,” Rafizi said, as reported by Free Malaysia Today.

Malaysia’s location in a hotspot area means it has to deal with problems such as the territorial disputes of the South China Sea and piracy off the waters in Sabah, he said.

However, the country does not have the luxury of having a large allocation for defence.

“We are not only already in quite a precarious territory security-wise, but we are also not a rich country to allocate large funds for defence like the US or China,” Rafizi said.

As such, he said funds allocated to the Defence Ministry tend to get used up quickly, turning that ministry into a money pit to steal public money.

Rafizi had previously landed himself in trouble with the police over his allegedly defamatory statements linking Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Special Functions) Abdul Latiff Ahmad to the LCS scandal.

He had accused Latiff and his family members of allegedly benefiting from the LCS project and other defence contracts during the latter’s tenure as deputy defence minister.

Latiff had denied any involvement in the scandal and Rafizi is currently being investigated by police for alleged criminal defamation. - Mkini