19 Apr 2024, 13:15 Kuching
19 Apr 2024, 06:15 London
Former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak today took aim at the renegotiated East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) deal, in particular the China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) forming a joint venture with Malaysia Rail Link (MRL) for operations and maintenance.
“The suggestion for the Chinese side to be involved in the management of the ECRL is not reasonable, because this is a form of domestic transportation in our country.
“Malaysian citizens have the capability to handle the entire railway system, and that is why we have trained our workers before this,” he said.
Najib was speaking to reporters outside the Kuala Lumpur High Court after attending today’s proceedings in relation to the SRC International Sdn Bhd corruption trial.
One of the key points in the renegotiated deal is that CCCC forming a joint venture with MRL to operate and maintain the ECRL. The joint venture also means that the Beijing-owned company will bear 50 percent of the risk should the project run into trouble.
‘National security risk’
Najib said this stipulation could affect national security, because “national secrets would be made known to outsiders.”
Najib’s successor has just negotiated a RM21 billion REDUCTION for a bettered and extended version of the project that this charged kleptocrat locked Malaysia into in order to hide his alleged thefts from 1MDB – a matter that is currently the subject of some 38 criminal charges, which are costing the country a fortune to put to trial as Najib won’t admit to any of them.
Najib is not only refusing to admit to his ‘imperfections’ as prime minister, he is taking full advantage of his continuing freedom and the indulgence of a reforming government to accuse all those who have had to clear up his own economic mess of themselves being ‘failures’ at this and that.
So, perhaps no surprise he has even had the brass neck to accuse them of failing over this major improvement of a dud deal he had signed up to under a $5 billion penalty clause, preventing this government from getting out of it.
Sarawak Report suggests that Najib’s enormous legal team (a mystery in itself since this ex-PM argued he had no money to pay his generous bail offer) ought to consider an entirely new defence…. that of their client being a self-delusional, barking-mad fantasist.
At least, under that plea, this pampered failure could hope to be placed in an asylum for the mentally unbalanced, to be kept in relative comfort (compared to the prison that his alleged crimes would normally make him eligible for life) and be allowed the space and time to rant on about his imagined grand successes and the failures of the poor team of folk, who have had to rally together to make good his disastrous term of office.
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