NFC, not a mess; just a disaster

January 25, 2012

 

JAN 25 — The National Feedlot Centre (NFC) scandal is just snowballing into a public relations disaster for the Barisan Nasional (BN) government.

Today, the Auditor-General said his 2010 Report had never labelled the NFC project as being ‘in a mess,’ but that its audit had found weaknesses in its implementation and that objectives had not been met.

Not a mess at all. This comes months after the 2010 Report was made public and PKR’s subsequent claims that the NFC management had used money meant for the cattle farm to buy luxurious properties in upscale Bangsar.

The NFC management, National Feedlot Corporation (NFCorp), even said the purchases provided better yield for the cash that was not yet being used for the project. Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin even echoed the rationale for the project money being used for property purchases rather than its original intention.

It’s fine for Umno if it wants to save Wanita Umno chief Datuk Shahrizat Abdul Jalil’s blushes as the NFCorp is owned by her husband and children.

But don’t expect Malaysians to be so gullible as to believe that the project isn’t in a mess. What does one make of project money being used instead to buy a condominium in Singapore and at least two in Bangsar? NFCorp has already admitted they used part of the RM250 million soft loan for the property purchases or in other words, public funds were used to underwrite personal expenses.

It is obvious that the Auditor-General Tan Sri Ambrin Buang has had his arm twisted to issue his statement today. The mess has become such an unmitigated disaster that he has to come and save the day.

It is also laughable to say the objectives of the NFC were not met. One can only wonder why.
The sequence of events was a complete abuse of taxpayers’ money, and now it does seem that Putrajaya is sanctioning what has happened.

It would be very easy to say this is just another Opposition strategy to smear the good name of a BN politician, the family and a project for the good of the people. But the NFC is now another byword for excesses that the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) was for lax procedures in the acquisition of land for a publicly-funded venture.

The BN government doesn’t need enemies to cripple itself. It is doing a great job of shooting itself in the foot rather than waiting for its rivals to do so.

The NFC is proof of that. Public funds for a national project being used for other purposes. And apparently that’s okay for Putrajaya. It’s so inured to the excesses of some leaders that such offences are seen as par for the course.

They aren’t. They are just more examples of bovine excrement that stink the hard work of those who actually put BN in Putrajaya.