Wee said that the points raised by DAP’s Ong Kian Ming yesterday were “factually wrong and begs better fact-checking”.
He also advised Ong, a former deputy international trade and industry minister, to contact NTT Ltd directly so that the Japanese telecom giant could dispel the latter’s claims.
“If you still insist you are factually right, then I have no choice but to reveal the truth. Your call!,” Wee said in a tweet.
Yesterday, Ong said that Wee, on several occasions, wanted to create the impression that global submarine cable company NTT Ltd was the only owner of the proposed Apricot undersea submarine cable project that was bypassing Malaysia.
But Ong said this was “grossly misleading” as there were a number of other shareholders in the project, including Google, Facebook, PLDT (Philippines largest telecommunications company), and Taiwanese telco, Chunghwa Telecom.
Claiming that Wee “conveniently left out” Facebook and Google, Ong said that it was because these two tech giants were part of a group of companies, both local and international, which sent two letters to former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin and one letter to Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob asking for Wee’s cabotage policy to be set aside.
Ong also said that these companies wanted the return of former transport minister Loke Siew Fook’s cabotage exemption policy on undersea submarine cable repairs.
The Bangi MP had also corrected Wee on Yoshio Sato’s designation at NTT, saying Sato was only a manager and not the vice-president as claimed.
He said that it was also wrong for Wee to claim that Sato was consulting on the “Intra-Asia Express Cable Project” as the latter was no longer with NTT.
According to Ong, Sato had left NTT to set up his own Singapore-registered company called Orient Link Pte Ltd.
In a prompt response to Wee’s tweet, Ong said he stands by his comments and threw the challenge back to the MCA president to prove otherwise.
“Any self-respecting minister would want to reveal the ‘truth’ to debunk my fact-checking and to clear his name. I stand by all of what I said on Twitter and in my press statement yesterday.
“Please show the Malaysian people that I was wrong, if you have the so-called ‘real facts’,” he said in a tweet this morning.