The initiative of the prime minister to reform government-linked companies (GLCs) must be looked at from the angle of some pertinent questions to be asked.

Firstly, one has to ask who is going to benefit from the good intention to reform. Will it be the government as a whole or will it only benefit the government as a substantial shareholder? What about the minority shareholders? Will they stand to receive more dividends? Or the employees -will they all get a pay rise?

Most importantly, of course, will the people of Malaysia? Are they also going to benefit from the reform? More specifically, can we look forward to cheaper electricity, telephone rates and water tariffs? What about air fares? Will they also drop as MAS is a GlC, isn't it? More down to earth, will the Putra and Star light rail transit rides be cheaper?

Basically, one has to ask what is the duty of the government to its people with respect to GLCs? In the good old days, before privatisation, the government owned the power, telecom and water providers 100 percent.

Then its duty was clearly defined, that is to provide infrastructure amenities for the people at the lowest affordable cost. But now, can the same duty be said to apply to GLCs?

And while we are soul-searching, can somebody tell me the objective of Khazanah, the investment arm of the government? We hear so much of Khazanah nowadays. But what is it really for?

Much public money is channeled to Khazanah but has it got a charter? We need to know all these things lest the GLCs and Khazanah become just some empire building toys for some new empire builders, albeit of a different kind.