A Pyrrhic victory for NAAM

By P Ramasamy

DAP leaders Ong Kian Meng and V Sivakumar have expressed satisfaction with the New Affirmative Action Movement (NAAM) after examining documents made available to them yesterday.

However, this “satisfaction” is limited as both have yet to examine other documents relating to the activities of NAAM, making it therefore premature to claim that both have cleared NAAM of all wrongdoing.

For MIC leader, M Saravanan, the man behind NAAM, this could only be construed as a Pyrrhic victory and he should not take delight that everything is hunky-dory with the foundation.

I do not think Ong and Sivakumar are fully satisfied and they are hoping that Saravanan will be honest enough to make available other documents relating to the activities of NAAM, particularly its affiliates.

While Ong and Sivakumar made the right decision to visit the office of NAAM, I believe, they should have done some homework before this visit.

Allegations about the wrongdoings of NAAM are not something new; various Tamil dailies have been covering these over the last two years. While the focus was on NAAM, the foundation, very little is known about the kind of projects undertaken by its affiliates over the last two years.

More information is needed on NAAM’s various affiliates, the personnel who manage these affiliates, their salaries and the beneficiaries.

Is Saravanan going to reveal this information to the public soon?

This information is no secret. All one has to do is some simple research to get to the bottom of the matter.

NAAM by itself is a foundation, a kind of showpiece for the public. It may offer some training programmes for Indian youths but its core economic projects are carried out by its affiliates. It is strange why Saravanan did not reveal this information to the two DAP members of Parliament who went to his office.

The public should not give a clean bill to NAAM just yet on the basis of this visit. While there is no denying that NAAM may have done some good work, the Indian community’s perception of the foundation must be taken into consideration.

To members of the Indian community, one of the most marginalised communities in Malaysia, NAAM is another MIC-linked organisation that merely exists to shore-up political support for Saravanan.

A full independent audit by an agency must be called for to scrutinise the accounts of NAAM and its affiliates and to determine whether the foundation has successfully addressed its objectives.

In the absence of an independent audit, NAAM might be able to deal with allegations that it is no different from the Maika Holdings that raised RM100 million from the Indian poor but in the end was sold off to a private company by MIC leaders.

Since NAAM was funded by public funds, the government should not sit idle on this matter. It should launch its own investigation to ensure the Indian community is not taken for another long ride, as was done by some MIC leaders in the past.

P Ramasamy is Deputy Chief Minister II of Penang.

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