Azmin Ali and the open tender system

From Malaysia Today:

SHAH ALAM, April 2 — Former Selangor mentri besar Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim chided Azmin Ali today, claiming his successor had changed the state’s open tender policy for public procurements that he had introduced in 2008 to improve government transparency.

While debating the motion of thanks to Selangor ruler, Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah, Khalid said that he had enforced the policy to stimulate competitiveness and address the problem of middlemen, claiming that Azmin had, however, changed the policy in November last year.

“In 2008, I enforced the open tender system whereby only the most competitive, prices from vendors are considered, ensuring that they also complied with all the regulations put in place to reduce the role of middlemen,” said the now independent state assemblyman who stepped down from his state leader post after being sacked from PKR last year.

One thing people cannot fault Khalid is his rather efficient way to run things in Selangor.  Although his lack of foresight is lacking in regards to infrastructure build out is inexcusable, he ran a tight ship in Selangor.

The reason Azmin Ali gave was because the open tender system resulted in sub-standard projects.  If the projects were sub-standard, its no reason to change the system all together.  Simply ban out the previous contractors who won projects but did not deliver in terms of quality or make a selective open tender and only invite contractors known for their quality of work to bid.

By taking the regressive route of a closed tender system, no one knows where the money goes.  Does it go back to certain people's pockets?  I don't know.  No one knows.  Azmin Ali has lost a couple of points in my book regarding his regressive policy.  I'm disappointed, is there any leader that is capable in Malaysia?