ada apa dengan khalid ibrahim?

For someone who had once served as a teacher, Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim, has indeed come a long way.

Many will remember him for the role he played in bringing back Guthrie, which was then listed in the London Stock Exchange, to Malaysia, in 1981.

Khalid, who joined Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB), the Bumiputera trust agency, in 1978, as an investment manager, rose to become its CEO seven years later.

Under his leadership and to a large measure with the close guidance from the late Tun Ismail Ali, PNB became one of the most successful trust agency in the world, mobilising billions of ringgit from Malaysia's son of the soil community, and investing it in the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange.

PNB is one of the most important instrument created by the Government, to realise the objective of the New Economic Policy (NEP), for the Bumiputera community to achieve a 30% target in the country's economy by 1990.

On a personal level, Khalid is known as an outspoken personality.

He is quite frank and couldn't care less for those who might not like what he has to say.

He is known to be tough and uncompromising.

Criticism is usually thrust at his displayed arrogance and his disposition of one who knows it all.

His appointment as Keadilan's Tresurer General is not a surprise to many, given the many outspoken interviews that he has given to the pro-opposition medias such as Harakah and Malaysiakini for the past one year.

His criticism on the NEP, is a bit ironic, given the fact that he is one of biggest beneficiery of the policy.

When Khalid stepped down as the CEO of PNB in 1994, he was given a "golden handshake", in the form of 50 million units of Guthrie worth at RM2.50 per share.

It was a "golden handshake" because throughout 1994, Guthrie's shares were traded at between RM2.80 to RM5.95 per share.

So, can someone, who was once the largest beneficiary of the NEP, be the right crusader in dismantling the system?