Mahathir in Bad Bad mood
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South China Morning Post – Chinese ‘projects will not go on’: Mahathir blasts Najib’s ‘stupidity’ (extracts):
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Renegotiation of deals worth tens of billions of dollars appears to have stalled as Malaysian leader wraps up five-day visit to China.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Tuesday demurred on whether there had been resolutions on his plans to cancel controversial Beijing-backed infrastructure projects in his country after meetings with top Chinese leaders, as he repeatedly slammed his predecessor Najib Razak’s “stupidity” for endorsing the deals in the first place.
Mahathir’s five-day visit to China – capped by meetings with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang – was in part meant to move along renegotiation talks on the projects, but the Malaysian leader said more time was needed to achieve his objectives.
While that may have been one unchecked box after his highly anticipated trip, Mahathir said he was glad he was able to assuage anxieties about his policy towards China following his shock defeat of the Beijing-friendly Najib in May.
The premier continued to demur on whether he was seeking to cancel or defer the US$20 billion East Coast Rail Link and two pipelines worth over US$2 billion. While stating that the projects had been cancelled outright, he also said they may be “deferred”.
His government alleges that large sums of loans the Najib administration took out from the Chinese Export-Import Bank for the projects had been drawn down by the Chinese companies involved in them, even though they are far from completed.
“The projects will not go on. At the moment, the priority is reducing our debt … it will be deferred until such time when we can afford, then maybe we will reduce the cost,” Mahathir said before his departure for Kuala Lumpur.
“If we have to pay compensation, we have to pay. This is the stupidity of the negotiations before. We must find a way to exit these projects … this is our own people’s stupidity.” […]
Beijing said it would take a “long-term” view to resolving the underlying tension with Kuala Lumpur.
“When … two countries cooperate, it is unavoidable that various problems may emerge and we may take different views at different times,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a regular press conference on Tuesday.
“We should approach these problems through friendly negotiations with the purpose of maintaining friendly ties and adopting a long-term view,” he said. “I can tell you that this is an important consensus reached during this visit by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir”.
In diplomatic language it means Mahathir did NOT succeed in his attempts to persuade Chinese leaders to accept him withdrawing from projects contracted with China without any penalties.
At most, China might have allowed a longer period for Malaysia to settle the compensations. They might have offered Mahathir ‘tea & sympathy’ but probably ended up saying, “Business is business, we cannot interfere with the companies who signed those contracts with Malaysia”.
The above news report came from the Hong Kong English daily, the Southern China Morning Post, which tells a different story from what Malaysian press reported, that Mahathir did succeed in his reach-out to China and that Chinese leaders understood him. That might have been the gloss of the visit, but they didn’t reveal the Chinese stand on compensations.
Mahathir was probably so stunned by the quantum of the compensation required by the Chinese that he showed his anger when he uttered (lividly?): “If we have to pay compensation, we have to pay. This is the stupidity of the negotiations before. We must find a way to exit these projects … this is our own people’s stupidity.”
