FOREWoRD

WHEN I was at The Sun, we had to do a number of things to make readers and media industry executives sit up and regard us as a newspaper to be taken seriously. We wanted to prove that although we are a free newspaper, we will not be frivolous in our news pages. We were, however, handicapped by a lack of resources as we did not have a big nation-wide reporting team.

So, instead of trying to match our competitors for the breadth of their reporting, we focused on where we thought they were weak – strong commentaries and investigative reporting. For the latter, I turned to R. Nadeswaran, popularly known as Citizen Nades. I formed the Investigative Reporting desk and made him the head with only one staff – Terence Fernandez.

My message to them was: “Go do what you are best at but make sure you get the facts and story right.” What happened after that was a slew of scoops and special reports on scandals that the Malaysian public had not seen in their newspapers for decades.

From the Zakaria mansion in Port Klang to the sports project in Brickendonbury, UK; the Paya Indah Wetlands in Putrajaya to the land grab in Bandar Utama, Petaling Jaya; Nades and Terence churned out reports that shocked everyone.

But it was their series of exposes on the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) that were, perhaps, their best work.

When Nades first spoke to me about PKFZ, I was already familiar with the controversy, because as Editor of The Edge business weekly we had written that the Securities Commission had rejected a plan to inject the land into listed Pacific Chemicals Bhd (since renamed Wijaya Baru Global Bhd) because it did not agree with the valuation. Subsequently, The Edge also published articles questioning the economic viability of the project.

But what Nades and Terence dug up about the way the whole project was handled and how it bloated from RM2 billion to RM4.6 billion shocked the nation. Regardless of the final outcome of the PKFZ scandal, and whether anyone will face the music, there is no denying that what Nades and Terence uncovered was investigative reporting at its best.

Journalists like Citizen Nades are hated by some people. But society can only be better off and the public interest better served, if we had more like him.

Ho Kay Tat
(Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of The Sun,
June 2005 to February 2008)

September, 2009