P.100 Pandan; N.21 Chempaka, N.22 Teratai

Pandan - a six letter word which will mean political death for one of two excellent politicians.

We have been astounded, nope more than that, flabbergasted actually, to read that Rafizi Ramli, PKR’s rising star, has been nominated to stand in that federal constituency against local hero Ong Tee Keat, a six term MP there (including Pandan’s former constituency title as Ampang Jaya) - see PKR’s Rafizi to face Tee Keat in Pandan for GE13 at Malaysia-Today.

Against the tide of the 2008 tsunami, Ong emerged winner in that general election with a healthy majority, and even more amazing, despite two of the state seats within Pandan going to Pakatan. That's who Rafizi will be going against!

Anyway, Rafizi has been endowed with brilliance, scoring exceptional academic and professional achievements, which means he possesses solid underpinning knowledge for life’s tussles. And he demonstrated this quality in his ingenuity in digging out the NFC scandal where he exposed questionable practice and expenditure of NFC money by its top management, and in those revelations, succeeded in damning a senior UMNO minister from palace to cowshed wakakaka.

Ong Tee Keat is no less capable, being known as a gifted writer, indicating he has scholastic competencies, an accomplishment valued traditionally as a virtue by Chinese. Ong had actually won several literary awards for his articles. He wrote as a columnist for Sin Chew Jit Poh for nearly a decade. He quitted a lucrative engineering career to participate in politics.

Like Rafizi (or on political seniority, Rafizi is like him) Ong is renowned for his exposure of corruption and inappropriate conduct.

In 2002, when he was MCA Youth chief, he condemned MCA party leaders for acquiring Nanyang Press Holdings Bhd.

Then in September 2006, as deputy minister for higher education, he did it again, exposing alleged embezzlement of funds meant to repair and upgrade vernacular schools. Investigation (by JKR officers) spurred on by Ong’s revelation showed that refurbishment works carried out on SJK(C) Kung Yu in Muar, Johor, was only about RM3,000 worth when the allocation was ten times larger, at RM30,000.

In other words, 90% of funds went missing, and was never explained and which Education Minister (not Higher Education Minister) Hisham had strenuously denied. Then-DPM Najib conveniently dismissed that inconvenient 'fact' of the missing RM27,000 because Ong had not passed that issue to the correct Education Minister, namely his cousin. I bet Ong didn’t do so because it would not only be the 90% funds which disappeared but that ‘fact’ as well wakakaka.

When told to apologise to Hisham for incorrect communication protocol, Ong refused, which then forced his minister to apologise on his behalf (without Ong's agreement wakakaka) to save face for Hisham and Najib wakakaka.

Okay, so Ong f* up the communication protocol, but then, was he praised for his exposure of corruption? Wakakaka, Ong was instead censured by the UMNO-dominated Cabinet (where MCA ministers sat in total silence) for speaking out on what ACA should have been investigating.

He was also the Transport Minister who ordered a Price Waterhouse Cooper investigation into the scandalous PKFZ runaway costs. Once again UMNO was pissed off with Ong as I had posted in UMNO prefers Ong Tee Keat out? 

A sign of this was when Ong, then head of its supposedly chief ally, was besieged by his detractors, like Kuala Dimensi Sdn Bhd's (KDSB) CEO and Bintulu parliamentarian Tiong King Sing (also BN Nasional Backbenchers Club Chairperson) who launched a suit against Ong for the latter’s outspoken and transparent handling of the PKFZ issue. UMNO unusually remained (maybe gleefully) silent.

When Ong Tee Keat counter-sued Tiong for alleging that he (Tiong) gave RM10 million to Ong for party activities, a suit in fact supported by the MCA central committee, CSL criticized Ong “for dragging the party into a legal battle over his personal problem".

In its unusual silence, UMNO showed its obvious dislike of Ong Tee Keat.

So Rafizi and Ong are both corruption-fighters. But I would place Ong on a much higher pedestal because he spoke out against his own MCA and BN ally UMNO, showing he doesn’t tolerate nonsense, even from his side. Rafizi of course did a good job on NFC but that’s against an enemy camp and required less or even little courage. I would have admired Rafizi more had he spoke out against several recent cases of PKR’s alleged dodgy-ness or even the process of its last party polls. But alas, he didn't.

Be that as it may, it would be a pity to see one of them ousted from active politics (at least for the next five years).

Ong is no doubt facing more than Rafizi in GE-13. He has mucho enemies in UMNO and MCA, especially the latter, some factions of which I suspect would be prepared to lose Pandan just to see Ong disappear. The possibilities for his candidature in Pandan are as follows: