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The BN Government builds a RM500 million airport for a crony

THE NATIONAL FRONT (BN) GOVERNMENT quietly builds a RM250 million airport in Pulau Tioman, where the Prime Ministerial crony, Tan Sri Vincent Tan, owns a much-hyped holiday resort, so Airbuses could land. But the final cost could double. The second finance minister, Dato' Jamaluddin Jarjis - JJ to everyone but to the Opposition PAS he is JV - wanted it built in a hurry and ahead of more important public works projects like low cost houses, schools and rural health clinics. Why? When the Government cancelled the Tioman resort's additional 100 slot machines given it when Tan Sri Vincent breached his licence for 250 slot machines at his Bukit Tinggi Holiday Resort by installing 420 and advertising it worldwide as a casino. JJ justified it as a move to encourage eco-tourism. The Tan Sri Vincent-owned Berjaya Air runs propeller aircraft several times a week and it is hard put to fill the seats. In any case, the only reason people - even eco-tourists - fly to Tioman is the resort. If Tan Sri Vincent is so sure the airport would have crowds flocking to it, he should have built it on his own, and not ask the Government to build this wasteful airport. After all, it is built for his own benefit and for him alone.

The people of the island, as poor as the proverbial church mice, cannot afford to travel by plane to the mainland, nor have relatives and friends who could afford to fly in to visit them. They need other more basic amenities than an airport that would not only destroy the ecology of the island but turn it into yet another confrontation between modernity and tradition, and between religion and irreligion. The political cost for Pahang is high: for the first time since 1955, when elections were first held, PAS could, if it plays its cards right, turn BN out of office. Two cabinet ministers - JJ and Tengku Adnan Mansor - are responsible for this, the latter and a Pahang government agency having a sizeable chunk of shares in the Bukit Tinggi resort when it applied for the gambling licence. Tenku Adnan incidentally says he sold his shares "a long time ago" but the latest records kept by the KLSE, which must be told when substantial shares are sold or transferred, show he is economical with the truth. Unless he and the Pahang government agency produces proof they have disposed off the shares, they must be assumed to hold them.

So why did JJ wamt this airport in a hurry? For one, Pulau Tioman is in his parliamentary constituency. For another, he hopes he could bring instant development to a constituency he has ignored since he was elected in 1999. He believes he can win votes with this one project when he did not bother to spread much needed basic projects around the Rompin constituency. The RM250 million airport - which could double with variation orders when it is completed - is more than 90 per cent of development he brought to his constituency. He hopes the mainland jetty and its environs in his constituency, for the duration, would see enough development for his unemployed constituents jobs as unskilled labourers and other low paying jobs for them to believe in him. He plays with fire. It upsets the life of the area and as we have seen in Kelantan, Trengganu, Perlis, Kelantan and even Selangor, the people move way to take refuge in Islam and walk away from their traditional Malay icon, UMNO.

Tenders for the airport construction close on Thursday, 02 September. One foreign construction company declined to tender: it could not build it at RM250 million for a profit. The airport is designed like the old Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong and the runway juts into the sea. To construct it the loose sand on the beach must be dredged and filled with 250 million cubic metres of rock, most of which must be brought in barges from elsewhere in the peninsular and beyond. Even the workers must be brought in from the mainland. Much of the work has to be built over water. The variation orders could easily double its cost to RM500 million. It is clear this airport would be a white elephant for a long time to come. As the Kuala Lumpur International Airport is proving to be. Even if foreign airlines are allowed to fly into the new Tioman airport from outside Malaysia. To make it profitable a dozen and more return flights daily is an absolute minimum from not only the peninsular, Sabah and Sarawak but from countries beyond. A holiday resort cannot generate that sort of traffic. When people fly into the airport for only reason, what happens when that reason collapses or when its owner is in bad odour with the government of the day?

The BN Government claims credit for all development in the country. It would not allow anyone to claim credit for a RM250 million airport. But it does not claim it. Why? Is it because it benefits only one individual? Or that it has do with gambling in a state which has too many gaming establishments? Why this fascination for a man who has failed every privatisation the Government given him with about a billion ringgit in long-term-payable-when-able-loans to sweeten them - the Indah Water Konsortium and the KL Monorail projects, for example? Is this airport built also to collect funds for UMNO and BN for the general election to come? Why was it forcibly put into the Public Works Department's list of priority projects? Was it provided for in the Budget estimates for 2003? Or has JJ lost his head and did it on his own, without either the Cabinet or any one else not knowing of it? Or more frighteningly, did his permission come from the one man who could order it and the Cabinet would turn mute? Especially when PAS calls him JV, which stands for not Jamaluddin Vincent but Joint Venture: he is known to hold on to projects which he must approve until his camp followers contact the interested parties to see what they could make out of it. It does not matter if he does that or not. That is the perception. He must therefore explain for no reason than to ensure Pahang UMNO is not stuck with making certain the state is indeed Pahang Darul Kasino.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my