The issue of Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng’s purchase of a house on Jalan Pinhorn at an allegedly huge discount from businesswoman Phang Li Koon has developed into something much bigger. We now have a seemingly endless and noisy row over affordable housing in Penang.

The battleground has shifted from Guan Eng’s upper-middle-class bungalow to a plot of land in Taman Manggis, which was originally supposed to be the site of Phase 2 of an affordable housing project. The DAP-run state government decided that the place was too small for a housing project; so it opened bids for companies interested in building a hospital there. The Kuala Lumpur International Dental Centre (KLIDC) won and apparently decided to build a 30-storey hospital-cum-hotel on the plot.

Gerakan, and by extension Barisan Nasional, has alleged that the land was approved only for a hospital.

BN is now also alleging that KLIDC received preferential treatment, saying the Federal Government doubled KLIDC’s bid but the state attached terms that made it impossible for it to make the purchase. BN has also hinted that Phang’s business partner Tang Yong Chew, who holds the majority stake in KLIDC, benefited from the sale of the bungalow by obtaining the Taman Manggis land cheaply during the open tender. We’re told that Phang herself has no part in the management of KLIDC.

Now, anyone who follows politics closely knows that deals are often struck via agents and intermediaries. This is not to say that Guan Eng is guilty of collusion in any way. However, he has resisted calls for the release of details of the Taman Manggis deal to the public, and this has raised some eyebrows. Despite the mud he has slung back at BN and Gerakan, he knows he does not look totally stainless coming out of this.

The CM has been embroiled in quite a number of quarrels over the issue of affordable housing in recent years as property prices shot up throughout the island. There have been complaints that the state government is allowing developers to price out the low income people of Penang. For example, there was the hullabaloo over the definition of affordable housing in Penang, with some units being priced at as much as RM400,000. Guan Eng tried to pass it off as being in line with the Federal Government’s cap on affordable PR1MA housing, a programme for the Greater Klang Valley area, where house prices are at their highest in the country.

Regardless of the CM’s defence, a cap remains a cap, not a mandated price to be set for housing everywhere in Malaysia. It is obvious that Guan Eng needs to be more transparent on how land is sold, bought, and developed on the island. It is when he is being opaque that his enemies can drag out any piece of laundry that seems dirty to make it appear as if he has something to hide from his constituents.

As the leader of a highly successful state government, he is perhaps unfairly held to extremely high standards, but it is precisely because of the prominent stage he occupies that he must live up to those standards or die trying. The CM’s ardent defenders can crow that his every shot back at BN is a match-winning goal, but the truth is that his behaviour has started planting doubts in some, and the DAP can hardly afford that when there is internal dissension in the party.

Something does indeed smell from this whole business, and really, after nearly eight years as Chief Minister, Guan Eng is reaching past the point where he can point at the “previous state government” for every failure in Penang. From now on, if there is any deal that has even the slightest hint of corruption, he can be sure that Gerakan will be on him like a bloodhound. Ironically enough, that was how DAP doggedly chased Gerakan when it held power in Penang.