How Mahathir ‘raped’ the Selangor water industry
“It tells you that SPLASH is controlled by a Tan Sri who is as much a Mahathirist as he is an Anwarist. Then, you have the guys at KPSB who are controlled one way or the other by Dato’ Seri Azmin Ali via Menteri Besar Selangor (Incorporated), the state’s asset management company. Factor all this together, and you have sufficient grounds to reason that SPLASH is 60 percent Pakatan Harapan ‘controlled’ and not a ‘Barisan Nasional entity’ as Hannah Yeoh would have you believe”
THE THIRD FORCE
The Selangor Water Crisis is nothing but a monument of Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s failure, one among the many he erected during his 44-year stint with government. In 1983, just two years after being sworn in as Prime Minister, the onetime Kubang Pasu Member of Parliament (MP) announced a decision by the Government of Malaysia (GoM) to reduce the level and scope of its spending by privatising public enterprises. At first glance, the policy seemed consistent with the global wave of conservative market reforms that began in the Thatcher government in 1979 and reverberated towards the Regan administration the following year.
However, the move turned out to be a complete digression from the initiatives Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak’s late father, Tun Abdul Razak, had put in place in the seventies. Accordingly, the nation’s second premier had intended to eliminate race identification through economic function by spurring reform on a cross-cultural platform. But Mahathir preferred to let a handful of cash-rich capitalists do the thinking for him instead. These capitalists went on to sink their teeth into the privatization pie through deals both the former premier and Daim Zainuddin would regularly negotiate in their smoke-filled conspiracy rooms.
One of these deals ended with the fragmentation of the Selangor water industry. Towards the mid-nineties, Mahathir decided to privatise the profitable water treatment service by awarding contracts to three crony-centric concerns that were ill-capacitated to participate in the industry. One of these concerns, Puncak Niaga Sdn Bhd (PNSB), had on board a majority shareholder who served both as Tan Sri Muhammad Muhammad Taib’s proxy and informant in the company. The remaining two entities were intertwined at very obscure levels via proxy and nominee concerns that were either linked to Daim or Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
Both Taib and Anwar had vested interests in the Selangor water industry and needed to make absolutely sure the consolidation exercise Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim was pursuing would fall flat on its ass. Prior to privatisation, water works in Selangor was handled by Jabatan Bekalan Air Selangor (JBAS), a state-owned entity that raked in a handsome RM50 million to RM80 million on a yearly basis. By the time Anwar succeeded Daim as Minister of Finance, Taib, who was then the Menteri Besar of Selangor, had arranged for PNSB to be awarded a 25-year concession to take over and refurbish 27 water treatment plants in Selangor.
