Three Penang MPs lying low until official Cabinet announcement

GEORGE TOWN: A hush has fallen over the three Penang MPs whose names are in a purportedly leaked list of Cabinet ministers and their deputies.

Bayan Baru MP Sim Tze Tzin, Balik Pulau MP Muhammad Bakhtiar Wan Chik and Bukit Mertajam MP Steven Sim Chee Keong are on that list as Deputy Ministers of Agriculture; Tourism, Arts and Culture; and Youth and Sports respectively.

Repeated attempts to contact them failed, but two were willing to chat on WhatsApp.

“Don’t jinx it. It’s not official till the swearing-in ceremony,” said one of them, asking not to be named.

Of the three, the youngest is Steven, at 36. Tze Tzin is 42 while Bakhtiar is 53.

All three spent time in the corporate world. Tze Tzin worked in California after getting his Masters of Science (Civil) in Highway Engineering from San José State University.

Muhammad Bakhtiar spent nearly two decades in multinational corporations, specialising in human resources. He graduated at the age of 22 from the University of Arizona, Tucson, in 1987 with a degree in business administration, majoring in marketing.

Steven has a computer science degree from Universiti Malaya and was in a multinational corporation for three years before joining the state government in 2008.