Chump, chimp, champ ... whatever

Extracted from the New Straits Times today:

GEORGE TOWN: It has turned out that the phone call which led to the closure of the Penang Bridge came from State Works and Public Utilities Committee chairman Datuk Koay Kar Huah.

Koay yesterday admitted that he received a call from a friend who was stuck in a traffic jam enquiring if there was a bomb on the bridge.

"I got the call and instructed my staff to check and verify if it was true. They then called the Malaysian Highway Authority," he said at a specially called Press conference by Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon.

And this is the extract from theSun today, a report by Opalyn Mok:

PENANG (April 5, 2007): The chain of events that led to the closure of Penang Bridge yesterday afternoon was apparently set in motion by a query from a bridge worker to a state executive councillor, and was not a bomb threat.

Datuk Koay Kar Huah, who is the exco in charge of public works, utilities and transportation, said today he received a call from a friend, who is a staff at the bridge, asking him whether it was true there was a bomb at the bridge.

Koay said this when asked by reporters about talk that it was his call to the police that led to the bridge's closure for two hours and 40 minutes that resulted in a gridlock for peak-hour commuters.

"I called up my staff to check it out and the staff then called the Malaysian Highway Authority (LLM) to verify the information," he said in a joint press conference with Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon.