The Sun, in its promotional campaigns, brands R. Nadeswaran a.k.a Citizen Nades as the “Scariest man in Malaysia”. And another ad of him and his partner Terence Fernandez proclaim them as the “Most notorious duo in the country”. For the past five years, as a team, they have changed the face of journalism in Malaysia with their exposes and exhilarating stories on the abuse of power and corruption. As columnists in The Sun, both have a strong fellow of loyal readers who keep track of their activities and their chases for scoops.
However, this time around, Nadeswaran chooses to go solo but not without Terence playing a cameo role in his latest effort – a book on the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ). Nadeswaran has turned author and Terence has edited a book on the biggest scandal to rock the country which would eventually cost the country more than RM12 billion. PKFZ has been making headlines over the past six months, but Nadeswaran is not talking about the scandal per se, but the events leading to the biggest fiasco since the BMF scandal of the Eighties.
It does not touch on the various police reports made by officials of the Port Klang Authority and neither does it address the merits of various claims made by the various parties involved in the project. The title of the book – PKFZ: The Untold Stories – is a giveaway. It traces the history of the PKFZ and how the costs ballooned from RM2 billion to RM12 billion. If you thought that Nadeswaran would use the strongest words in the dictionary to hammer home his views, you ought to be disappointed. Although his writing style has not changed, he has chosen his words carefully and for obvious legal reasons. However, the lack of his combative choice of words is supplemented by documents which speak for themselves.
In the book, he has reproduced several documents, all of which are seeing print for the first time. They do not appear in the official report commissioned by the Port Klang Authority. These documents are sufficient to tell the story of how red tape, inefficiency and total regard for procedures allowed a few to cause a billion-ringgit project to fail.
Two letters in the book are of significance. Both written over a two-month period in 2006, addressed to the then Minister of Transport support the widely-held belief that a lot of goings-on with the PKFZ management were swept under the carpet. There are also letters which allege conspiracy and there’s another which suggest that certain parties were encouraged to cheat the Inland Revenue Board.
Nadeswaran has used his past columns and articles to give the reader a picture of the half-truths and misinformation that were fed to the media. But the book is not a collation of his articles and columns. And to a certain extent, he does some soul-searching. In his foreward he asks: “Couldn’t I, having known about the financial trouble the Port Klang Authority as way back as 2005 continued to harp on the issue and could that have prevented more good money being pumped in chasing the bad money? Shouldn’t we as journalists who often pride ourselves as the “eyes and ears” of the people have taken it further than merely exposing it? I don’t know about others, but with all humility, I’ll have to own up and say “Guilty as charged”. But before passing sentence, there’s a lot to say in mitigation.” This book may not make it as a best seller, but it contains enough information for the layman to study, analyse and make an educated stand on what went wrong and if the financial disaster could have been averted.
PKFZ: Some Untold Stories
By R. Nadeswaran