KUALA LUMPUR: The visit by Council of Eminent Persons (CEP) chairman Tun Daim Zainuddin to China is not an indication that the CEP had overstepped its advisory role.
Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Liew Vui Keong said the visit was on instructions from the Prime Minister, so that Daim could get views on pertinent issues.
“The CEP is doing a national service, by providing their expertise without any salary.
“The CEP is only in an advisory capacity and does not have executive powers, whatever they recommend to the government is not necessarily binding,” he said in reply to a supplementary question from Khairy Jamaluddin Abu Bakar (BN - Rembau) in Parliament on Tuesday (July 24).
Khairy had asked about the CEP’s source of power, and claimed they were “unelected and unaccountable”, and therefore they should be disbanded.
CEP chairman Daim was in China last week, and Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said he was sent there to renegotiate loans and contracts that the previous government had inked with Chinese companies.
Khairy claimed the CEP appeared to be more than mere "advisors" to the Government.
As an example, he mentioned the time Daim summoned then top judges Tun Md Raus Sharif and Tan Sri Zulkefli Ahmad Makinudin to his office in early June.
Days after the meeting, Md Raus and Zulkefli resigned from their posts of Chief Justice and Court of Appeal president respectively.
Khairy also criticised the appointment of CEP member Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz as chairman of Permodalan Nasional Berhad and Sime Darby Property Berhad.
“How is all this national service? When is the Government going to disband the CEP?” he asked.
In response, Liew said the question on CEP’s locus standi (legal standing) was “nonexistent” as they were an advisory body, not a statutory one, and that once its task of preparing recommendations within 100 days to fulfil Pakatan Harapan’s manifesto was complete, the CEP will be disbanded.
Read more at https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2018/07/24/liew-cep-not-overstepping-its-advisory-role-by-sending-daim-to-china/#RPm8zL6laxKpSIvf.99
