An epic failure in the making?

By Emmanuel Samarathisa

IN October last year, Mohd Redzuan Md Yusof was awarded the prestigious Datuk Seri title. He took it to town so much so that a week later, at a function, he bragged, “For three consecutive years, they wanted to give me (the award), but I said it wasn’t time yet. So when it was offered to me this time, I accepted it.”

When asked why he turned down the award in the past, he said he perceived himself as merely – wait for it – an “ordinary citizen.”

That, dear friends, is our “extraordinary” Minister of Entrepreneur Development (MED).

Ever since Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad resuscitated the ministry in July last year, I’ve always been confused on what exactly is Redzuan’s role in the grand scheme of “New” Malaysia.

A zombie ministry?

This portfolio is an old one. Under Barisan Nasional (BN), the job had a few incarnations since 1976 under the leadership of the late Tun Hussein Onn.

But the thrust has always been to provide preferential treatment especially towards the country’s largest demography, the Malays, in the realm of entrepreneurship.

Essentially, what that means is using public funds to fuel political patronage, secure a vote bank and maybe talk about that rare success.

But Pakatan Harapan (PH) promised to be a different government. It went on a series of cost-cutting measures and trimmed the number of agencies and ministries. A good thing.

But in the wake of that exercise, Mahathir decided to serve us a series of retrograded portfolios. One of them is MED.

We are certainly not lacking in the Malay outreach agenda. We have an alphabet soup of agencies that cater to this group that cuts across various ministries.

Even sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Bhd has been mandated to divest assets to Malay (or Bumiputera, the softer term) tycoons while nurturing an entrepreneurial class through its vendor programmes.

But somehow these had been insufficient. As this is Malaysia, the answer to such policy flops is to, well, establish another ministry with a weak mandate.

Just like the MED or, better still, the Ministry of Economic Affairs which is essentially the Economic Planning Unit. Great.

‘Flying’ policy initiatives

But let’s be fair. Redzuan has been productive since he punched in to work on July 3, 2018.

According to the man himself, in an interview with a local newspaper in February this year, during the first eight months into the job he decided to “just do observation and see how things are being implemented.”

Redzuan also seems to love the limelight. He decided to “school” his Cabinet colleagues on the controversy surrounding Australian rare earths miner Lynas Corporation Ltd’s operations in Malaysia.

“Asking me to zip my mouth and focus on my own ministry – I think they need to be schooled,” he told reporters on April 3 after being criticised for talking about matters beyond his ministry.

There was that time when he harassed a Malaysiakini reporter. In August, Redzuan (or his social media manager) posted videos on both his personal and official Facebook profiles.

On his official page, a video from a news outlet was uploaded with the caption: ‘Menteri terkejut’ ada wartawan bangsa Cina tak tahu pelembagaan (sic) Malaysia (‘Minister shocked’ that a Chinese reporter doesn’t know the Malaysian Constitution.)

On his personal profile, the video had been re-edited to begin with a text splash reading: “Pak Wan terkejut ada wartawan bangsa Cina tak tahu Rukun Negara” (Pak Wan shocked that a Chinese reporter doesn’t know the Rukun Negara). Pak Wan is, as you’ve guessed it, Redzuan’s nickname.

As of Aug 28, both videos have been deleted but they capture an exchange on Aug 19 when the reporter questioned Redzuan on his previous remarks that the Malays have been tolerant with racists.

If you were a Malay, poor and reading this, Redzuan has something for you too. It seems you are risk averse.

“We (the ministry) are always encouraging the Malays, especially those from the B40 group, to muster the courage to come forward and be creative… But today, I see most of them come only seeking money although the ministry has opened many avenues for starting a business,” he said on June 2.

But, of course, all these pale in comparison to Redzuan’s brainchild and the sole defining “policy” of his ministry: the flying car.

His zeal has been phenomenal. He has said he will be the first to fly the thingamajig around Cyberjaya. He even touted that through a flying car, Malaysians can “fly” to Penang from Kuala Lumpur in an hour.

And nobody can touch his baby. Even United Nations special rapporteur Prof Phillip Alston got rapped for criticising the mindblowing concept.

“It’s best if the UN does not get involved in the business of this country,” Redzuan said on Aug 27 in response to Alston’s chiding of the project as a waste of resources.

Part of the elite

On paper, Redzuan seems to be privileged and smartish. He graduated with a civil engineering degree from Leeds University on scholarship.

He began his career in Esso Production Malaysia and moved on to take up a project manager job at Petronas Carigali.

In 1993, he left Petronas and founded his own business in oil and gas engineering and fabrication consultancy for technology application and equipment manufacturing.

While he claims to be “apolitical” prior to joining Bersatu and campaigning for the 14th general election, he has had strong ties with certain political figures, especially Mahathir and Home Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

In fact, he is not shy in taking credit for helping Muhyiddin set up Bersatu.

But that’s about it really. Aside from these typical elite connections, Redzuan is pretty much a mystery.

We don’t know if he was a successful entrepreneur. We are equally clueless about his stance on policy and governance.

It was certainly a no-brainer that there were calls for him to be sacked from Cabinet. Fortunately his ties with patron Mahathir are strong.

Governance and transparency

Now, I’m not going to wade into this whole should-government-be-in-business argument with regard to MED. That’s for another day and time.

But good governance and transparency will be important themes here. MED’s agencies are mostly grant- or loan-conferring agencies.

But as we know it, government and money make a deadly cocktail.

History is a good teacher. In 2017, former Tekun Nasional managing director and chief executive officer Datuk Abdul Rahim Hassan claimed trial to two charges of corruption under Section 16(a) of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2009 in the Shah Alam Sessions Court.

He pleaded not guilty to soliciting a bribe of RM30,000 and accepting the cash in 2015.

Bank Rakyat, the country’s largest development finance institution (DFI), had been embroiled in a scandal in 2016.

Back then, corruption allegations surfaced involving then chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Zainal and managing director Datuk Mustafha Abd Razak.

Mustafha allegedly committed criminal breach of trust of the bank’s marketing expenditure allocation which involved some RM15 mil while Abdul Aziz purportedly abetted him.

The case went to court but in June last year both were acquitted and discharged after new developments emerged, which resulted in the prosecution withdrawing its charges against them.

More recently, the Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC) proved not magical after all.

While the Auditor-General’s 2018 report endorsed MaGIC as financially stable, the agency’s output performance was not efficient and ineffective.

Overall, grant performance was also not efficient as grants were not spent optimally for 2015 and 2017, at only 73.1% and 76% of total grants received respectively. What happened to the remainder?

And speaking of DFIs, a merger is on the cards. This involves SME Bank as well as Bank Pembangunan Malaysia Bhd (BPMB), Danajamin Nasional, and Export-Import Bank of Malaysia (Exim). The merger, if it transpires, will happen in two phases: BPMB-Danajamin and SME-Exim. While the details are scant, and assuming there will be two enlarged entities, then most probably the man overseeing SME-Exim will be none other than Redzuan.

If that happens, most probably the man overseeing the merged entity will be none other than Redzuan.

That would effectively confer him with a large purse to finance enterprises. But what kind of enterprises will Redzuan seek to finance?

What with the policy direction from Mahathir, I expect Redzuan to channel funds in the direction of patronage where funds are captured by a chosen few.

Note that his ministry also received a slightly more than RM1 bil allocation under Budget 2020. That makes MED richer than, for instance, the youth and sports ministry which received some RM671 mil.

That is a lot of money to use and waste. Given his flying car ambitions, I’ll not be surprised if his tenure at the MED would end on a more grounded note.

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