PKFZ – The devil is in the details

The PKFZ report was officially released this week. While interested parties are scouring the details, I was surprised by what the Star reported Lee Hwa Beng as saying, “The appendices could not be released due to its voluminous nature.” (Report reveals weak project management, the Star, May 29, 2009). It makes me wonder, how voluminous is voluminous.

Following the investigation into the space shuttle Columbia tragedy in 2003, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board released the full report to the US public, including all the details. Mind you, this was a highly complex incident, which required CAIB to look into tremendous volume of data, information, communication records, etc. When they published the final report, they laid bare not only the immediate causes to the incident, but more importantly, the pre-conditions and the underlying factors (organizational weaknesses, oversights, weak leadership, etc.) that existed within the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration which had contributed directly or indirectly toward the event. (See CAIB website). They did all these because one of their objectives was to prevent recurrence of similar incidents.

I hope when Hwa Beng said the government could not release the details because they were voluminous, it was not the Port Klang Authority chairman’s feeble attempt to hoodwink the Malaysian Public.

To be honest, I have given up on the Barisan Nasional government. Scandal, after scandal, some of their leaders have been gleefully helping themselves to the nation’s coffer. Can you imagine how many government scholarships those billions of ringgit can fund every year? If we can stop this pilferage, deserving Malay, Chinese, and Indian students may no longer need to fight for scraps every year to help finance their university education.

To Pakatan Rakyat, when you do take over the government after the thirteenth general election, I hope you can adopt some of the good practices from the US.

One of it is transparency in dealing with issues of public interest. The CAIB investigation is an example. Hold public hearings. Haul up the offending parties and witnesses to the hearings. Broadcast the hearings on national TV stations. Guilty or not, I would love to see someone like Rahman Palil and Azim Zabidi hot under the collar when interrogated on national TV.

And, please, let the public know the details. Don’t worry, we can stomach them. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details. It will augur well for your Competency, Accountability, Transparency rallying cry. (By the way, CAT is so much better than OneMalaysia. While the public can readily relate the former to actionable items, the latter remains vague and conceptual without the propaganda machine having to try hard to explain it.)