Responding to questions about Selangor Menteri Besar Khalid Ibrahim’s rejection of his debate invitation, MCA central committee member Chua Tee Yong said that the MB was “not fit to be a teacher”.

“The MB of Selangor made an offer to me to be his student, but I think he’s not fit to be a teacher, because as a teacher he needs to pay RM500,000 to engage someone to explain his deal. As a teacher, he’s incompetent, not transparent, and not accountable,” said Chua.

Chua was referring to statements made by Khalid when rejecting the proposed debate on the Talam debt restructuring issue. The RM500,000 figure, said Chua, was obtained from previous media reports.

Khalid had declined the offer to debate yesterday, saying that he would rather have Chua become his student once the state-commissioned audit report on the Talam debt restructuring was ready.

“So I presume that with his qualification, considering he has an outstanding court case, that he owes Bank Islam RM66 million due to some shares that were sold, and in the Talam deal, a piece of land that was auctioned.

“ I don’t think I want such a teacher in the first place. I don’t expect him to take up the debate because he has always been silent, avoiding, and even when he promised he would answer in the state assembly, he did not answer,” said Chua.

Chua has been involved in a series of debates about the Talam debt recovery issue with the Selangor state government, asking it to provide full details of the agreements that had been made with regard to the debt restructuring exercise.

Chua was recently invited to debate the issue by DAP national publicity secretary Tony Pua, but he did not attend the event.

“I don’t want to debate with DAP members who only have third-hand information. I want to debate with the MB of Selangor," he was reported as saying in a press conference yesterday.