Sime Darby heart deal raises too many questions

It would appear that the public outrage has become an effective tool to contain heavy handedness on the part of government.

Two weeks ago, a massive landslide that killed four people, crushed 14 houses and displaced over 3,000 people in a hilly area in Ampang, Selangor raised such hackles that the authorities hastily ordered a review of all hillslope developments and stopped work on more than a few.

Indeed, it's prompted a rethink on all such developments — a belated, but much needed, outcome given that landslides have been occurring over the last 15 years causing much destruction to property and, sometimes, life without as much as an apologetic shrug from the authorities and its standard “let the buyer beware” justification.

Now the government seems to have been stopped in its tracks on its way towards allowing the privatisation of the National Heart Institute (IJN) by multinational Sime Darby.

On Saturday, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said the deal would be “shelved” until after a thorough study on its consequences had been carried out.

Why do it in the first place given that the IJN, set up in 1992, has been also serving poor people and civil servants whilst also catering for paying patients?

Najib had mentioned that it also had to do with the fact that the institute's medical staff had been demanding higher pay — they do not receive the equivalent of their peers in the private sector — and that they would leave if their demands weren't met.

Nope, said 35 of the institute's senior doctors in a signed statement late on Friday, that was not true at all. The doctors said that the annual attrition rate in the institute was a mere 3 per cent and that 75 per cent of its staff had been there for more than 10 years.

Other reports have since said that the doctors, even the Health Ministry, had no clue about the Sime Darby proposal.

Sustained public pressure was maintained on the government through the press' widespread coverage and critics of the scheme which included prominent heart surgeon Dr Yahya Awang — who performed the 1989 bypass on former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad — almost all prominent opposition figures and, yes, Dr Mahathir himself.

Dr Mahathir dismissed the assurances given by Sime and the government that the poor and the needy would not be disadvantaged. “If the poor are going to be charged the same low fees, how does Sime Darby make money?” he asked in his blog yesterday.

“There are far too many questions about this privatisation which need to be answered,” wrote Dr Mahathir. “Some I think cannot be answered.”

Dr Mahathir may have been too kind here. In fact, the whole scheme does not make sense at all. Companies privatise government entities to make a profit.

But the institute has become an institution in Malaysia, offering heart patients, even well-heeled ones, reasonable healthcare at affordable prices. Why tinker with something that isn't broke?

Still, the main reason why the government backtracked was explained by Dr Mahathir. “The Barisan Nasional Government is not too popular today,” he noted. “Why do something that may give the opposition another issue to belabour the government.” Why, indeed?