A BERSATU leader said it is not wrong to appoint a politician to head a government-linked company (GLC) under the condition that the individual is qualified for the job.
In an FMT report, Bersatu information chief Datuk Razali Idris said it is not wrong to do so if the business nature of the GLC is related to the individual’s field of expertise.
“Politicians these days are different than those in the past, whether they belong to a party or otherwise…they can hold a position in a GLC if they are qualified,” he told the news portal.
“These days most of them have PhDs and there are even (professional) doctors and engineers.”
Razali pointed out that appointing such people to important positions in GLCs is significantly different from the unity government’s current practice of appointing unqualified politicians to GLCs, which also violates Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) 15th general election (GE15) manifesto.
He was responding to Bersih chairman Thomas Fann who had slammed Perikatan Nasional (PN) chairman Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin for promising members of his coalition positions as head of GLCs should the coalition win in the forthcoming state polls.
Fann had reminded the Bersatu president that GLCs are companies that exist to safeguard and increase public wealth and are not for use by political parties as ATMs (automated teller machines) by putting party loyalists on the state’s payroll.
In March, Bersih had also slammed several political appointments to GLCs including Datuk Dr Ashraf Wajdi Dusuki as MARA chairman and Balik Pulau MP Datuk Muhammad Bakhtiar Wan Chik as MyCreative Ventures Sdn Bhd chairman.
Subang Jaya MP Wong Chen was also recently appointed as non-executive chairman at Malaysia Debt Ventures Bhd (MDV), a state-owned enterprise. – July 5, 2023
Main pic credit: New Straits Times
