This is the political fallout from a necessary policy that lost its way for which Dr Mahathir is as responsible as any. He attacks it now for a different purpose. He wants to bring in Chinese business men, who he believes would deliver with more panache and efficiency. Yet, what was to be the largest engineering project, the RM13 billion Bakun hydroelectric dam, was given to a property company, Ekran Bhd, controlled by a Chinese crony, Tan Sri Ting Pek Khiing; they made a mess of it. He and Ekran are let off the hook, given RM800 million for failing, now gets a major engineering project for the Sepanga Bay for several hundred million ringgit. Why?

The RM350 million Miri Port Authority is incensed. The while elephant is built, like so many projects, for no reason than to tell the world it has one. Like the Kuantan Port, a white elephant the moment it opened its doors in the 1970s, it is built for some crony to make money. If it works, it is an incidental benefit. We know what happened to the Bakun Hydroelectric Dam project, for the failure of which one Tan Sri Dato' Paduka Dr Ting Pek Khiing and his property company, Ekran Berhad, got RM800 million; and is now given a contract worth about RM150 million for the anciliary works for the naval base in Sabah. Ekran say it is for the naval base itself; it lied. Besides, if the Sepanga naval base, with the most modern submarine facilities, can be built for far less than it cost to build Miri Port, then even sampans could not land in there safely. The naval base will in fact cost more than RM1 billion. Even that could be an underestimate.

Ekran Berhad published the following announcement in the Star about what its beloved chairman, Tan Sri Dato' Paduka (Dr) Ting Pek Khiing aka Tan Sri Dato' Paduka (Dr) Candonodam Ting, about his inability to pay an initial installment of seven per cent of loans he took from the company. This advertisement appears on page 38 of the Star of 17 January 01:

The Chinese business men press-ganged are handpicked not for their ability but for their lack of it. So, Tan Sri Ting Pek Khiing, a former tractor driver, and his Ekran empire keeps going with projects which prove their incompetence: after making a mess of the Bakun hydroelectrice project, he is given another chance to build it; besides, he also gets an important subcontract for the submarine base at Sepanga Bay in Sabah. The former car salesman and insurance agent, Tan Sri Vincent Tan, cannot rise from his inability to run companies and businesses without fresh infusions of government projects.

Charles Dickens, in his novel on the French Revolution, The Tale of Two Cities, asks if removing one thousand aristocrats would be a calamity to the nation. The revolutionaries clearly thought not, as it indeed it proved. Are one thousand aristocrats more valuable to a nation than one thousand chambermaids? Or one thousand school teachers? Or one thousand newspaper boys? This extends the age-old conundrum on whether society exists to benefit the community or a section of the community. Can a thousand Amin Shahs ever be worth a thousand Indonesian maids? Can a thousand Vincent Tans and Ting Pek Khiings equal one thousand Lin Yutangs? Can a thousand Samy Vellus ever equal one, yes, one, Rabindranath Tagore? Is the Petronas Twin Towers, Kuala Lumpur International Airport, the Bakun No-Dam and Putra Jaya worth more than a regular unrestricted supply of clean water or clear traffic or a good health service?

According to this list, Tan Sri Halim Sa'ad controls six companies with a total debt of RM16,671.9 million; Tan Sri Tajuddin Ali two with RM959.2 million, while one Mahathir sibling controlled two companies with debts of RM1,760.6 million and another one with RM545.5 million. Tan Sri Vincent Tan controls two companies with total debts of RM6,505.5 while Dato' (Duta) Yap Yong Seong two owing RM2,143.2 million. Malaysia's Onassis-in-waiting, Dato' Amin Shah, has two companies owing RM509.1 million. Tan Sri Dato' Dr Ting Pek Khing controls Wembley and its debt of RM374.8 million. Dato' Joseph Chong controls Wing Teik, with its debts of RM845.1 million. Tan Sri Quek Leng Chan controls Hume Industries with its debts of RM1,631.1 million. Khazanah Nasional, which controls Tenage Nasional with its debts of RM17,389.2 million, is not only Bolehland company controlling other companies. DRB with Bolton controls two companies which have debts of RM4,144.9 million, while Kumpulan Darul Ehsan controls SAP Holdings with its debt of RM403.1 million and MRCB of Malakoff which owes RM3,159.7 million.

There was confident predictions of Ekran's rebound when RM700 million of the RM1,000 million management fee would be paid it for work not done over the Bakun project. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, insists that it be paid; the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, wants that assessed on work done, backed by receipts, and set off against any income derived from the "biomass removal" of which Ekran's ebullient Can-Do boss, Tan Sri Dato' Seri Ting Pek Khiing, once said he was not interested in. (Now, his lifeline depends on that.) Since the project has collapsed, perhaps irretrievably, helped in large measure by his own, and his company's incompetence, the government deferred the project. Dato' Seri Anwar has indicated that if it would ever be restored , it would be a long, long while away. But his tone indicated that Bakun is as good as dead.

The forced sell-down of companies controlled by once-favoured business man, Tan Sri Dato' Dr Ting Pek Khiing, continued on the Kuala Lumpur yesterday. The star counter, Ekran Bhd, which was to have been the project manager for the now doomed Bakun Hydroelectric Dam project, touched a new low at RM0.69 before recovering slightly to RM0.715 at the close, or more than 40 per cent lower than the previous closing.

Much depends on the outcome of this case. Following this, a spate of libel actions have been filed, with both Dato' V.K. Lingham and Tan Sri Vincent Tan among others suing for hundreds of millions of ringgit in general damages from journalists, lawyers and others. Newspapers are now faced with libel demands of tens of millions of ringgit. Ironically, Tan Sri Vincent Tan's "The Sun" newspaper is being sued for RM10 million for an article by one of its columnists, Mr A. Ghani Ismail. And Tan Sri Dato' Dr Ting Pek Khiing, the builder of the Bakun Dam sued M.G.G. Pillai for RM100 million, a case to strike out the action is in the courts.

But it does emphasise one important principle dearly held in Bolehland: for those of the courtiers and the coterie, even those no more there, the free lunch can last awhile. In the case of Tan Sri Datuk Dr Ting Pek Khiing, who ensured that a property company like Ekran got Southeast Asia's biggest infrastructure project without knowing what a diversion tunnel it, the cost of all these free lunches have forced him into a corner; and even more interesting, given the project management without having built anything to do with a hydroelectric project.

Despite deputy prime minister Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim's insistence, the MOF Inc's takeover of the Bakun hydroelectric project from the floundering Ekran Berhad is a bail out. Whether the Bakun dam is a national or international project is irrelevant. When Ekran Berhad was given it before the Sarawak state elections, the decision was taken by two men, the prime minister Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed and the financial adviser Tun Daim Zainuddin. One reason for this was the growing disenchantment among the Chinese community in Sarawak with the government, and giving such a large project to a Sarawak Chinese would have swung votes towards the government, as it did. There were other financial conditions attached to this, mainly as a way for Tan Sri Dr Ting Pek Khiing to be paid for his "can do" buildings he built in a hurry in Langkawi and for extending the runaway there to take in Boeing 747s. That did not have Khazanah approval, since it was given in the usual Bolehland way of a prime ministerial directive.

Tan Sri Taib Mahmud's Swiss bank accounts now return to the public eye. The report recently posted on Internet about Swiss authorities investigating the alleged RM20 billion stashed in Swiss banks did not appear to be correct. I was one who questioned its authenticity. I was wrong. He has, I am told, four known Swiss accounts, and they churned up in the aftermath of Tan Sri Dato Dr Ting Pek Khiing's peremptory cancellation of the Bakun dam contract with the Swedish-Swiss-Brazilian ABB-CBPO consortium. Many in the federal government are upset at the cancellation, even if their public postures do not suggest it. The Swiss accounts, it seems, turned up during a routine search for hidden assets of those involved in the Bakun imbroglio. That letter from the "Sunday Journel" (note the misspelling) with a Singapore dateline appeared to have been deliberately spread to warn the protagonists of Bakun that much is known.

Ekran's announcement followed its decision to bring in fresh contractors with negotiations about to begin with the French contractors, Dumez, when the statement caught them offguard. ABB-CBPO, meanwhile, are reportedly readying for legal action for breach of contract. But since ABB is in a cartel -- with Alcatel and Pirelli -- to make the cables, and is building the turbines, any new contractor would have to bring ABB in, and that would not, as Tan Sri Dr Ting Pek Khiing, chairman of the proponent company, Ekran Berhad, only know too well, come cheap. Dumez, in any case, had quoted RM2,000 million and more in the tenders which selected ABB-CBPO. With the currency in the present parlous state, Bakun, if continued under a new contractor, would up the price beyond reasonable limits. The government should wash its hands off this legal suit, and instruct Ekran to meet that out of the proceeds of the timber -- oops, "biomass removal" -- to settle any outstanding claims. And return the RM1,000 million fee it got to manage the Bakun project. After all, this is a national project, and both Ekran and Dr Ting has denigrated it.

The deputy prime minister, Dato' Anwar Ibrahim, recently ordered Ekran Berhad and the main Bakun contractor, ABB-CBPO, to sort out their differences over the Bakun project. The Ekran Berhad executive chairman, Tan Sri Ting Pek Khiing, immediately responded to say there was no problem. ABB-CBPO kept quiet publicly but told anyone who asked that there was indeed a problem. Dato' Seri Anwar says there is and major enough to give the two an ultimatum to resolve the issue. (But then, who is he? He is only the deputy prime minister, not the top honcho himself.) The two parties met this week, and suddenly the problem was there all the time. Tan Sri Ting insists, echoing the prime minister's statement that a project of this size would inevitably give rise to differences and problems, now there is a "minor" problem which six hours of negotiations could not erase. To emphasise this, the Bakun Hydroelectric company held a board meeting before and after their negotiations with the ABB-CBPO consortium.

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