A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (102 page)

I personally liked the coolness of our mountains and initially favoured building a new city at Bukit Tinggi or Janda Baik, both in the hills of Pahang. Delighted at the prospect, the Pahang state government readily consented. But the cost of compensation for the land there was prohibitive so we decided to look elsewhere. This proved to be a blessing because if we had gone ahead and sited the administration in either Bukit Tinggi or Janda Baik, it would have been much farther away from the new international airport than Kuala Lumpur. In the end, we decided to build it in Selangor and we chose an oil palm estate called Perang Besar as its site. It had been developed by a British company after World War I, hence its name “Perang Besar” or “Great War”. It began as a rubber estate but after Independence, it was converted into an oil palm estate. About eight kilometres long and three kilometres wide, it occupied nearly 5,000 hectares of undulating land conveniently located halfway between Kuala Lumpur and the new international airport at Sepang. It met our needs and was sufficient for our purpose. The Government bought the entire estate for RM700 million and by 1993, development planning of Putrajaya (named after Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra), as the city was to be called, had started.

I had seen Washington, DC and Canberra, and other purpose-built capital cities including Islamabad and New Delhi, and had noticed that many of them sat near expansive bodies of water. I like lakes so I asked the town planners to include one in the plan. Another feature which I wanted was a straight central boulevard for parades. France’s President Jacques Chirac had once invited me to review with him the Bastille Day Parade in Paris and it had been a very impressive affair. The armed forces marched together with their armoured vehicles, guns and missiles down the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, the broad boulevard that stretches from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde. Kuala Lumpur lacked such a wide street for our Merdeka Day Parade, and the stretch of road in front of the Sultan Abdul Samad Building, which we usually used, was too short. I told the planners to provide a wide central boulevard with side lanes like the Champs-Elysées right through the centre of the city, and this they did.

We planned Putrajaya to be home to some 300,000 people, mostly civil servants. It was also planned as a garden city with seven parks, including a botanical garden. The boulevard, streets and roads would be lined with trees, bushes and flowering plants. As a symbol of the progress and sophistication of the nation, it was to be beautiful and full of colour. Its roads and streets were to be wide and well-planned, but there was a need for rapid mass transport. We were mindful of the transport gridlock in Kuala Lumpur, so right from the planning stage, a tunnel was provided under the central boulevard for a Malaysian-made monorail. Some RM600 million was spent on the tunnel, which ran parallel to another tunnel for water mains, electric cables, wastewater pipes and telephone lines. For some reason, however, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s Government decided not to build the monorail, which means the suspension bridge we built for it remains well and truly suspended. Perhaps one day soon, when government funds permit, the monorail will be built.

PETRONAS presented a Putrajaya development proposal in February 1995. It suggested the setting up of Putrajaya Holdings Sdn Bhd on a commercial basis as the owner and developer, while Kuala Lumpur City Centre Bhd would be the project consultant and manager. Perbadanan Putrajaya would be the local governing authority and would be independent of the state government. The entire piece of land would be transferred to Putrajaya Holdings Sdn Bhd, while its cost of RM700 million would constitute 30 per cent equity by the Ministry of Finance. The other equity holders were the Employees Provident Fund or EPF at 20 per cent, the National Trust Fund or Khazanah Nasional Berhad,
[1]
 also at 20 per cent, and PETRONAS at 30 per cent. Except for a hotel and a few other buildings which would be built and owned by the Government, all other buildings would be built by Putrajaya Holdings Sdn Bhd and leased to the Government. After 30 years, the buildings would belong to the Government as the lease amounted to instalment payments.
 

When Putrajaya was being built, the late Sultan of Selangor, Al-Marhum Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah Al-Haj ibni Al-Marhum Sultan Hishamuddin Alam Shah Al-Haj, was the Yang di-Pertuan Agong. He was gratified that the nation’s administrative city was being built in Selangor. During my weekly audience with him, I pointed out how this major development would contribute much towards the growth and development of his state. He showed keen interest in the progress of the development of Putrajaya.

I raised with him the problem of the city’s administration. It had to be under the Federal Government and not the state government. Otherwise there would be difficulties as the policies between the two governments might differ.

I was very conscious of the sacrifice already made by Selangor in agreeing to transfer Kuala Lumpur to the Federal Government. It meant that Selangor had to accept excision of its land to create Kuala Lumpur as a Federal Territory. But by the 1990s, the rapid growth of Kuala Lumpur had spilled over into adjoining areas of Selangor, thus contributing to the growth and development of the state. I felt sure that the development of Putrajaya would have the same spillover effect on Selangor.

With some trepidation I suggested to the Sultan that it would be easier for Putrajaya to be developed if it were made a Federal Territory.

To my surprise, he readily consented. I believe many in the Selangor government, despite being of the same party as the Federal Government, were not happy. Be that as it may, all the legal procedures, including obtaining the approval of the state government, were meticulously followed before the transfer of Putrajaya to the Federal Government to become a Federal Territory was made. I believe it was to the benefit of everyone. It has certainly facilitated the management of the new administrative capital; it has stimulated the development of the adjoining areas of Selangor and beyond; and it has contributed to the national identity and pride of all Malaysians.

Witnessed by ambassadors from some 80 diplomatic delegations in Kuala Lumpur, I officiated at the groundbreaking ceremony on 19 September 1996. A monument in the form of an unfurled Malaysian flag on a low flagpole was constructed in steel to mark the site. Less than three years later, I moved into the new domed Prime Minister’s Office. It was something of a record and I know of no other capital city that was built in that space of time. I visited the construction site almost every week, at times wondering whether I would be its first occupant. I was already thinking of stepping down. Had I done so in 1998 as I had planned, I would never experience living in the new Prime Minister’s residence or working in the Prime Minister’s Office in Putrajaya. The impressive speed of construction was perhaps due to the fact that this was a greenfield site. There were no buried pipes or cables to avoid or re-site, no old roads to dig out, or existing buildings to demolish. Had we tried using a built-up area, re-siting services and the demolition of structures would have pushed up costs and delayed construction.

The lake I had asked the planners to include in the design was fed by a number of tiny rivulets which converged in the valley to become a constantly flowing stream. The planners thought it would take two years to fill the lake to the level of the spillway at the end of the valley, but in the end it only took two months. Nature proved to do a better job than we could in meeting our deadlines. There had been a small hillock in the middle of the estate but now the water filled up the surrounding lowland, turning it into an island. The boulevard and the ministry buildings flanking it were located on this island. The lake enhanced the city’s beauty and though we had to build many bridges across it, pushing up the cost of development, we felt that it was worth it. Most of the bridges were very modern but one was of classic design. They are a great attraction to visitors, a source of pride to Malaysians, and a rendezvous point for people in the evening and on clear nights.

As for the boulevard, it is four kilometres long and I feel it adds grandeur to the heart of the administrative centre. The Prime Minister’s Office sits at one end, and it was later decided that an International Convention Centre should be built at the other. We held the Merdeka Day Parade along this boulevard for the first time on 31 August 2003, and it was spectacular. It was also the last parade I attended as Prime Minister.

Predictably, Putrajaya was labelled a megaproject, first by my foreign detractors who, no less predictably, were echoed by local critics. Since I was no longer Prime Minister my detractors, including members of Tun Abdullah’s Government, regularly had a field day condemning this “mega-waste-of-money project”. It has been suggested that this was one of the projects which bankrupted the nation and caused all Government projects in the Eighth Malaysia Plan to be abandoned. It has also been said that even the Ninth Malaysia Plan could not be started because there was no money. Malay contractors who depended on government contracts to survive were told to blame the Government I led, and me in particular, for their dire straits.

Putrajaya is a big project, but most private-sector development projects in Malaysia are big. No one builds just one house or even a row of shophouses in Malaysia—private developers
usually build whole towns complete with shopping areas and complexes, parks and gardens, kindergartens and schools, and even areas reserved for places of worship. Take Mont Kiara
[2]
 for example. Only 10 years ago when I used to ride along the paths between the bushes which covered the area, there was not a single house to be seen. Today there are scores of high-rise flats, condominiums and offices,
 

a large area where shops and numerous restaurants line the streets, and roads which give access to elevated highways. Even outside Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, the housing developments in the other states are also big. Frequently they merge with other adjacent developments to form sizeable towns. Putrajaya had to be bigger than most private housing estates but it was not going to be built all at once. We envisaged completion in 2020.

A private-sector housing estate is just a housing estate but Putrajaya is much more—it is a part of the capital of Malaysia and is its administrative centre. No one, I hope, dares suggest that the administrative capital of perhaps the most developed of the developing countries should be the size of a private housing estate, or smaller. The new towns in the Klang Valley such as Sri Kembangan and Puchong are now bigger than Putrajaya and they will all continue to grow. So will Shah Alam, the new capital of Selangor. If Putrajaya were to be only the size of a housing estate, it would be overshadowed and rendered insignificant by the neighbouring new towns in the same area. As an administrative capital, it had to be of substantial size. We could not invite foreign visitors and overseas consultants to a dwarf-like urban complex. What would they think of us? Would we be seen as people of limited imagination? Our administrative capital has to be impressive and must truly reflect the country’s development because it is to be our administrative capital not only for today but far into the future. It must be built to last, with ample space for growth, and its architecture should be admired by future generations. In its size, layout and architecture, Putrajaya had to be stylish and striking. And so it is—that has been the verdict of its many foreign visitors, including the leaders and officials of other countries who, having decided to build their own national administrative centres or new capitals, have openly said that they will use Putrajaya as their model.

But has the country been bankrupted by the building of Putrajaya? To the best of my knowledge, Malaysia’s finances were healthy when I stepped down. Indeed, had the Government done as I advised, it would have cost us nothing to build Putrajaya. I had suggested that the many government properties in Kuala Lumpur, which would be vacated after the move to Putrajaya, should be sold to the public as these properties were located in some of the most commercially desirable and strategic parts of the city. The Perang Besar estate was sold to us by the acre; land in Kuala Lumpur is sold by the square foot, for as much as RM3,000 per unit. We bought some 10,000 acres (or 400 million square feet) but Government land in Kuala Lumpur also added up to millions of square feet. From the proceeds of their sale, the acquisition of land and the building of Putrajaya could doubtless have been easily financed—without any burden on the budget.

Had the civil servants taken my advice, Putrajaya could have been fully developed without the Government having to produce a single sen from its Consolidated Fund, where all Government revenue is collected. But, ever more sentimental than realistic, the civil servants were loath to part with the offices we had in Kuala Lumpur. They wanted to retain them and find some other use for them. They wanted to preserve the identity of Kuala Lumpur as the federal capital so they would not let it be owned entirely by the private sector. I can understand their feelings as I too have a feeling for our national past—but pride and sentiment cost money.

As a result of its development, the Perang Besar land has gained in value and price and if we cared to do so, we could sell off Putrajaya. A Government which pleads that it has no money could in fact make a pile. Alternatively, we could sell off the remaining undeveloped land in Putrajaya and recoup our original outlay. Land development companies are among the most profitable in Malaysia. Before I became a Minister, I had a housing development project in Alor Star, from which I made quite a lot of money despite my complete lack of experience in the business. As the developer of Putrajaya, the Government should also have been able to make a substantial profit, so financially, the Government has not lost any money from developing Putrajaya. The criticism that Putrajaya is a megaproject and waste of money is unwarranted; rather, it turned out to be a very good investment.