Dear Honourable Prime Minister,
Firstly, even as I type these words and address you as our Honourable Prime Minister, there is a conflict of thought or must I say confusion in all four of the words that I have used. Neither are you ‘dear’ to me, neither do I have full conviction in the usage of the term ‘honourable’, neither do I believe you are at your ‘prime’ and finally, neither do I believe you have been ‘minister’ing anyone. I use the words because I have no choice. Whether I like it or not you are the Prime Minister, even if you have been appointed via the back doors for not receiving the popular vote, protocol demands it and so be it.
The noose is tightening. Although it is his former bodyguards who are on death row, Prime Minister Najib Razak is feeling the heat as his alleged former mistress Altantuya Shaariibuu returns to haunt him via a trial due to begin in France within the next two months.
The Turks in UMNO are already eyeing the prime minister’s post. And before anyone starts pointing fingers at Najib's immediate successor, Deputy Prime Minister Muhyidden Yassin, they should cast an eye at Khairy Jamaluddin, the Umno Youth Chief.
PM by 40
Khairy is no ordinary Youth leader. He is not only enormously wealthy but also richly connected. Khairy is the son-in-law of former premier Abdullah Badawi and has previously been reported to have said he wants to be PM by age 40. The Oxford graduate is now 34.
There is widespread belief that during the 2006 Altantuya trial, Badawi was prepared to take Najib out of the picture. It would have worked if not for the insistent hand of Mahathir Mohamed, who still itched to control and govern the country despite retiring in late 2003.
Dr M wanted to ensure that Najib, who was then the DPM, would replace Badawi, whom he hated for scrapping several of his beloved mega-projects and thereby stopping the tap of benefits accruing to these deals from flowing back to him.
The grandfather of Malaysian politics was pulling strings to eject Abdullah and his hand is evident in how the whole trial was mismanaged by the Malaysian judiciary and police department. A fact which was clearly stated in the US Embassy cables released via WikiLeaks, with one cable calling it, “prosecutorial misconduct”.
The cables also drew attention to an attempt by Badawi to use the Altantuya trial to sink Najib. It was an attempt which Najib fended off successfully with help from the powers that be in UMNO and their corrupt hold on the various institutions of government, such as the police, the immigration and even the judiciary.
Fast forward to 2011. French investigators are now preparing to bring to trial a case against French arms-dealer DCNS for allegedly giving bribes to secure the Malaysian acquisition of three submarines, of which Altantuya and Razak Baginda are alleged to be involved on behalf of Najib.
Unable to break into the UMNO old-boys club
The role that Khairy Jamaluddin is alleged to have played in opening up the Altantuya case to the public has come into focus as a result of renewed interest ahead of the French court hearings due to take place soon.
Khairy’s immediate link to the Altantuya case can be found in a written report by military intelligence that was allegedly passed to Abdullah Badawi and to himself for safe-keeping.
And though Badawi’s attempt was foiled by Najib and Mahathir, Khairy’s current push up the UMNO ranks may not be so easily foiled. Especially now when the stakes are much higher and Najib in a precarious position after two years in the top job that has yielded little results.
Khairy married into UMNO, but Badawi is not part of the elite such as the Razaks, the Husseins and the Mahathirs. Anyone other than a scion from these families will have a tough time breaking in. Even Badawi was merely meant tobe a seat-warmer.
But Khairy is much more ambitious than his dad-in-law. As an outsider, he has the appeal that attracts the Malay intellectuals. A fresh voice, despite being tainted by corruption and past racist politicking. Shut out by Mahathir and of course also by Najib, Khairy is the only Youth Chief not to have a ministerial or deputy ministerial portfolio.
Recently, he has tried to strike out on his own, calling on the Najib administration not to hike fuel prices. Instead, Khairy called on the government to cut down unnecessary projects, but for his troubles, he was slammed by his own party colleagues although it won him a modicum of respect from the general public.
It is highly unlikely that Khairy Jamaluddin would be on the list of those the French courts might invite to testify. But certainly, he would be the last person, Najib would want on the witness stand.
Will Khairy spill the beans - one way or another
Even without the French probe, there is speculation Khairy has the trump card that could drive the final nail into the coffin for Najib and even his wife Rosmah.
Bear in mind, Najib’s fingerprints are all over the Altantuya murder.
As Defense Minister, he had the biggest say in the acquisition of military equipment. It is on Najib’s advice that the government agrees to purchase equipment using public funds. It is on Najib’s advice that contracts are negotiated, approved and signed.
If it is proven that a shady deal was in place, then Najib has to be responsible for it. If the so-called military report were to suddenly surface, Najib would really be in hot soup.
In the kill-and-be-killed scenario of UMNO politics, perhaps a player with massive destructive power has emerged. And it looks like this person could be Khairy Jamaluddin.
Would Khairy step up to the plate and hammer the final blow to an embattled and war-weary Najib?
This remains to be seen but the spectre of Altantuya would stay on until she has received the justice that rightfully belongs to her.
Here are a few pictures of a big titty chick being circulated via a chain-email with a story that she is the wife of some Malaysian politician. I don't believe the story but still would like to share the photos... I don't believe the story mostly because I don't believe any Malaysian politicians have a wife this attractive with the bolt-ons. If the story was that she is the mistress of a Malaysian politician Amid growing belief that PAS will replace UMNO as the party of choice for the Malays, Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin condemned Hadi Awang for the "extreme, un-Islamic, baseless and ill-intended" scolding that the PAS president dished out to his UMNO counterparts over the weekend.But at the same time, the UMNO deputy president made haste to let Hadi know that UMNO was still sincere about wanting a merger.
"If that is its stand, never mind then. But Umno is still leaving the door open for cooperation with PAS. Our call for cooperation is not for politics, but for the well-being of the ummah," Bernama reported Muhyiddin as saying.
In the months leading up to the PAS party election and annual congress, pundits have accused UMNO and its organs such as Perkasa and Pembela of drumming up Malay nationalist fervor as well as anti-Christian sentiments in a bid to push PAS back into its fundamentalist Islamic shell.
But UMNO leaders failed to get the response they hoped for. Instead Hadi gave them a shelling for putting at threat national unity and stirring up trouble such as the sodomy trial and the Datuk T sex video at the expense of the national economy and credibility.
Hadi also warned the UMNO elite not to turn the Malays into a stupid and dishonest race.
“UMNO as a Malay-bumiputera majority party was entrusted with leadership but the wealth of the nation has been turned into the private property of its leaders, while the ordinary people struggle to make ends meet," PAS president Hadi Awang said in a blistering speech at the 57th Muktamar on Friday.
“Umno has created a flock of Malays and Muslims who are blind and deaf to money politics, with entertainment and media used to turn Malays and Muslims stupid."
Corruption and old-boys club
The political blooper of this decade must have been this. The minister of this ministry says we can’t do anything to reveal the details of the IPP agreements.
I think this reaction is shared by many people in Malaysia. We almost fell off our chairs in disbelief. The government has no power to reveal the details of IPP contracts. If the government cannot declassify, who can?
I hope this minister will not be selected as a Cabinet member the next time around IF the BN retains power.
Two, this absentmindedness is increased further by the equally bizarre statement by the TNB CEO. By the way, he takes home a RM1.2 million pay packet per year and we pay him to come out with this kind of statement.
Profitability depends on being able to increase a take-it-or-leave-it price. You no pay you no electricity. He was thankful; the government has agreed to raise tariffs. TNB made RM4 billion on revenue of RM30 billion, he’s thankful rising costs will not eat into the profitability. Yet he was practically crying throughout 2010, urging the government to review this and that.
He ensures profits by raising tariffs but not by tackling the costs centres. Where is the source of much increase in costs? Do they come from increasing wages of its employees or payments to IPPs? Or business misadventures in Indonesia.
The hike in power tariffs is a reprieve for TNB. Pray tell us then, where is the qualitative difference between a TNB CEO and a kacang-puteh seller if both depend on a price INCREASE to be profitable? The answer none — because both their profitability is the result of raising prices. Anyone can increase profit by raising prices.
This isn’t what we expect from a CEO who earns maybe close to RM100k a month. We expect him to be profitable because of efficiency, because of cost-cutting measures, because of streamlining operations and because of far-sighted procurement policies. So the current TNB that he helms hasn’t moved qualitatively from the TNB he started to lead. A few years ago, he justified the massive losses in coal-purchasing deals that went awry as being not worrying because TNB’s earnings are humongous. TNB earns billions each year.
So, because you earn a lot, it’s OK to lose a few billions of public money.
We therefore hope his contract as CEO will not be renewed. Nothing personal, just business.
As a first start to cost-cutting measures, we suggest therefore the top TNB bosses volunteer to take a pay cut, and that portion be distributed as wages to lower-income staff members. Why? Because TNB staff are some of the lowest-paid workers in the country.
The big chiefs in TNB, whose only managerial prowess nowadays seems to be able to pressure the government to raise tariffs, are shocking. Che Khalib Mohamad Noh earns RM1.8 million a year in total. TNB’s second executive director, Azwan Mohd, who was appointed in April 2010, received a total remuneration of RM755,320.22, including his basic salary of RM457,440.
What of the TNB “Indians”? While paying the big chiefs the above amount in the same year, TNB kept its minimum wage at RM750 a month, only slightly higher than Pos Malaysia’s RM635.
The wage difference is scandalous. Che Khalib has been responsible for some heavy losses and he has presided over some bad deals over the purchases of coal fields in Indonesia. He should have his salary reduced or even relieved from his post. But as usual, government-linked companies, which tended to be top heavy, pay their CEOs huge salaries, seemingly to reflect their managerial talent.
Hadi also announced a landmark shift in policy that focuses on making Malaysia a "welfare state" so as to temper the concerns of the other races and faiths that PAS would not be able to rule a multiracial and multireligion country.
But Muhyiddin again downplayed this shift, saying that BN had already been operating a welfare state based on Islamic concept. However, the DPM did not dare to over-berate PAS of abandoning an Islamic state, lest Malays ask that UMNO fill any religious void left by PAS, which UMNO itself is not inclined to do.
Already, UMNO leaders are trying to deny what many Malaysians believe will become the trend - that PAS will replace UMNO as the main party for the Malays. In the past, Malays had a simpler choice. Those who were modern and progressive would plump for UMNO while those who frowned on Western lifestyle or were more religious, would go to PAS.
But due to the endemic corruption at UMNO and the fact that it is basically a closed-door old-boys club at the highest echelon, many young Malay professionals have turned to PAS. With the latest transformation, more young and middle-ground Malays are expected to join PAS, which at one time was perceived as an extremist party whose members were religious zealots.
"If PAS today says that it is abandoning its struggle for the establishment of an Islamic state and wants to set up a welfare state, Malaysia has already done much more than what PAS means by welfare state.
"We do not practise the welfare state concept of the West but we've taken the Islamic approach by helping the weak, poor and destitute, and by giving subsidies, free education from the early to the secondary level, and health and medical assistance at the government hospitals, among others."
The winds of change blow through PAS
PAS members followed through on Hadi's speech by electing a new lineup of senior leaders, who were mostly professionals and regarded more as "centred" liberals rather than the right-wing conservatives that UMNO had hoped for.
UMNO believes that the ulama or religious scholars would be more inclined to accept their merger proposal. PAS spiritual adviser Nik Nik Mat last week revealed that UMNO had even promised as many as 3 Cabinet positions and 5 chief minister posts.
True or not, the bait did not succeed. PAS members who spoke at the assembly were fiercely critical of UMNO, lambasting it for its smear tactics and anti-Anwar Ibrahim campaign.
But Muhyiddin chose to stay in denial mode, focusing his anger at Hadi.
"I've read carefully what had been stated by the PAS president at the muktamar against Umno and BN. He totally denied all the good things and blamed the ills happening in Malaysia on the alleged tyranny and the absence of a proper Islamic education system," said Muhyddin.
"To me, the statement is extreme, unIslamic, baseless and ill-intended because political expediency is above everything. It is a political statement. As a religious leader, one should make a statement based on facts and not deny what is right. Speaking the truth makes one a credible leader."
Other leaders cheered the PAS decision. They pointed out that most telling of all, it was PAS members themselves who wanted the change. And this is something that UMNO would do well to take note of.
"The wind of change in Malaysia continues to blow strong and hard 39 months after the 308 “political tsunami” – this is the most important message from the weekend’s PAS party elections," DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang said in a statement out on Monday.
"I have confidence that there will be one million youths in Malaysia to defend Putrajaya ala Tahir Square – not to defend Najib, Umno and Barisan Nasional but freedom, democracy and political change in Malaysia by democratic and constitutional means." -
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