Monday, April 29, 2013

Najib's 1MDB And Cayman Islands: The Skunk Cabbage

Hantu Laut

They have implicated he and his wife in the murder of Mongolian model Altantuya Shaariibuu, now they say he carted away RM7.0 billion of the people's money and hide it in the Cayman Islands.

The oppositions must be really desperate to spread its hate campaign against Prime Minister Najib. The implausibility is deafening.

Cayman Islands is an off-shore financial centre not a pirate's cove as made out by some opposition's leaders out to demonise the PM for their own political mileage. 

Cayman Islands is a British overseas territory and administered by Britain and is the 5th largest banking centre in the world. It has almost 300 banks, 800 insurers and 10,000 mutual funds and have global financial institutions such as HSBC, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Goldman Sachs and over 80 other administrators stationed there.It is also the world leading off-shore hedge funds jurisdiction.

The opposition is trying to paint a frosty picture of the operations of 1MDB and insinuated that Najib is planning to steal the people's money as per this loathsome article in Malaysiakini by the equally loathsome "Sang Kancil" called Rafizi. 

Cayman Islands is not a money laundering centre where one can park one's ill-gotten gains without questions asked. It is a bona fide international off-shore financial centre used by the world's big mutual and edge funds and serviced by equally reputable banks and financial institutions.

There have been various articles written on 1MDB as regard its investments and business activities that appeared in numerous blogs and news portal across the country.

The articles are targeted at the laymen who had little understanding of global investment and high finance, in another word, the nitty gritty world of international finance and investment. It's a political stinger to sucker the minds of the ignoramuses.

1MDB was set up as a sovereign vehicle wholly owned by the Malaysian government to raise funds and seek high yield investments in the global market. Naturally, there are and there will be many companies incorporated under the mother company as subsidiaries to take care of the various type of investments.

I am not sure how 1MDB obtain its working capital, whether it is direct from the government or from the market, or a mixture of both. From the little that I read, I presumed they obtain their funds from the market by issuance of foreign currency dominated bonds.

An article "Putting RM7.18b in Cayman Islands is beyond 1MDB's mandate" written by one M.Shanmugam, managing editor of the Edge, questioned the rationale of 1MDB depositing the money in the Cayman. The amount in question was the US$2.318 (RM7.18b) redemption of bond issued by PetroSaudi International (PSI). 

Before I get to the point let me ask whether there had been actual physical cash payout by PSI to 1MDB for the bond redemption, or was the bond a PIK bond?  I'll explain what PIK bond or PIK loan later.

The article also mentioned that as of 31 March 2012 the Islamic bond value had ballooned to RM6.8b including profit receivables, or interest payments that are due but not paid to 1MDB by PSI. 

Now, let see, if it is the same bond, how could after accrual of interests or dividend payments the amount is less than the original principal amount?

The same article also mentioned that on 1 June 2012 1MDB took up 49% equity stake in PetroSaudi Oil Services Ltd (PSOSL) at value equivalent to the outstanding amount due to 1MDB and an option (I  guessed) to buy the balance 51% at a token of US$10. 

The 'shares for bond' exchange he says had rendered the Islamic bond redeemed and no further cash transaction was required.

This is where I suspect the bond between PSI and 1MDB was a PIK Bond.

A PIK (Payment In Kind) Bond pays interest not in cash but in additional bonds or shares.It is a deferred coupon bond as there are no interest cash payments during the bond's term. Interest is only paid on maturity of the bond. Due to its high risk this kind of bond pays higher interest and are for sophisticated investors such as hedge funds, is not for the boys, or companies seeking cashflow.

My dissection here is only on the particular transaction with PSI and should not be construed as on the whole operation of 1MDB.  I do not have enough inputs to comment on the whole operation.

I agree, 1MDB should have more transparent disclosure of its dealings as it is wholly owned by the Malaysian government and the Malaysian people. 

I also believe Najib has no intention of cheating the Malaysian people, but if left in the hands of incompetent people disaster could happen. 


Friday, April 26, 2013

A Dangerous Personality Cult Favor

Hantu Laut



A growing personality cult, as dangerous as in the making of all the world's past fascists and dictators. Not only personality cult, a political dynasty is also in the offing, husband, wife and daughter in the same political party and all three holding the reins of top leadership.



How did Adolf Hitler come to power? Did the German people foresee that he would one day turned out to be the biggest mass murderer the world have ever seen?

They didn't, but somehow supported him.

Let me be as brief as possible on the rise of Hitler to power.

Hitler rose to leadership through his emotional and captivating speeches. A good orator he could go on for hours captivating his audience with his rhetoric.

In 1919 he joined the German Worker's Party. A year later he became its leader, the Fuhrer.

Read more here.






Personality cult is a dangerous thing. Dictatorship is built on such miscarried supports. The only country that still engaged in it is North Korea.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

If You Want To Win This Election,Take Care Of The Kampongs

Hantu Laut

If you want to take over the government, you have to win the rural seats.

In the kampong, people only care about food and money. They have no time for the luxury of intellectual talks, promises of bed of roses that may never bloom, or promises of cleaning up the country of corruptions, which they do not understand.

Simple kampong folks have simple needs and the least difficult to please, unlike their urban counterparts, where hypocrisy rules the waves.

The party that embrace this georgic doctrine will be the first to past the post and take the chequered flag.

The rural areas are where the real battle should be and where most of the seats are located. Canvassing and campaigning are made much easier due to smaller population of voters in each constituency. However, logistic cost could be much higher due to remoteness of some of the places. 

While PR leaders are pampered by the urbanites, BN knew the nook and cranny of the back country and knew what the people want.

Based on the result of the 2008 general election where BN won 112 of 139 small constituencies, they only need roughly 19% out of the total number of voters to grab enough seats to form the government. In 2008, the smallest constituency was Putrajaya with just over 6,000 voters and the biggest was Kapar with a staggering 115,000 voters.

The backcountry is BN territory, or rather UMNO territory, where the tentacles of the Internet had not yet reached out and ripped the marbles out of the village folks. After over half a century of running the government, BN knew where the feeds for the bastion of power come from. The rural areas hold the key to Puterjaya.

On the other hand, Pakatan Rakyat, a coalescence of divergent old and new political aspirants appealed to the intellectuals, pseudo-intellectuals, the Internet savvy crowd, who fully depend their source of news and information on the alternative media, but ignored the rustic interior. 

In the urban jungle, many are youths who have had no inured journey to adulthood with leaders of the time, young and impressionable, they are strongly attracted and influenced by PR's promise of fabulist's list of goodies and promise of death blow to corruptions in government should they win the elections. 

Anti-corruption and calls for free and fair election is the paradigm of Anwar Ibrahim's campaign to wheedle the people to support him and Pakatan Rakyat, which worked well in the urban areas but failed to stir the rural population.

BERSIH, an NGO headed by former President of the Bar Council Ambiga Sreenevasan is suspected to be covert operation for Pakatan Rakyat, but she vehemently denied the allegation, albeit, some of her actions betrayed her declaration of BERSIH non-aligned status. Many suspected her of lying. The connection seems obvious. 

One 28 April 2012, Ambiga organised a pre-planned demonstration called BERSIH 3 (she has organised 2 previous ones under same name) that attracted a massive 200,000 people on to the streets of Kuala Lumpur, demanding free and fair elections. Skeptics believe without pre-arrangement of the oppositions help she won't be able to garner more than a thousand let alone tens of thousands of people. Many that came are members and supporters of opposition political  parties and onlookers out for festive mood. Many in UMNO suspected it to be a rehearsal for the real one, the Malaysian Spring, that may come should PR lose in the 13th GE. Anwar is known for his street culture from his heydays as student and social activist. BERSIH is a culmination of his mutinous ways.

Pakatan leaders like to bathe in the limelight of the urban jungle where amassing crowd of tens of thousands is not as arduous as in the rural areas, if you hang the right carrot. They miscalculated that one urban constituency can equal to as many as 5 or more rural constituencies. 

There is nothing illegal in the delineation or gerrymandering of electoral boundaries as made out by Amiga and Pakatan leaders to hoodwink the people. 

Due to better logistic, urban areas with better roads and communication facilities are easier to cover than rural areas and higher population density make for bigger number of voters in the constituency.  

Listen to Ambiga's fuzzy lecture misleading the people:



Most of what she said in the video are half-truths and double-speak. 

In the U.K the same prevails, there are small voices that complained but generally the people accept the system that have been with them for few hundred years. No British political party had ever complained or made a big issue of the seemingly unfair 'first past the post' system. Everyone accept defeat in their stride.

It's a system we inherited from the British colonialists.

Below is the result of the British general election in 1997


UK General Election 1997
CandidatesVotes
PartyStandingElectedGainedUnseatedNet % of total %No.Net %
Labour6394181450+ 14563.443.213,518,167+8.8
Conservative6481650178–17825.030.79,600,943–11.2
Liberal Democrat63946302+ 287.016.85,242,947–1.0
Referendum Party54700002.6811,849N/A
SNP72630+ 30.92.0621,550+0.1
Ulster Unionist161010+11.50.8258,3490.0
SDLP18301–10.50.6190,814+0.1


The table shows Labour gets 43% of the popular votes but 63% of the seats to form the government on their own and there had been many elections like this in the U.K, yet there was never accusation of cheating or unfair electoral practices.

The Malaysian electoral rolls may be not all that perfect, but I doubt there have been massive cheating by the government to deprive the people of choosing the government of their choice. 

In spite of allegations of cheating the oppositions won 5 states and 82 parliamentary seats and deprived the BN of two-thirds majority in 2008. It was unpremeditated, accidental and unexpected. No one expected the result. Many expected a strong oppositions showing but never expected BN to lose 5 states.

Today, things are different, the new man is not the same as the man who "rest on his laurel" and had perennial fascination of his landslide victory which precipitated in political disaster for him and his party in 2008. 

Najib, in spite of all the odds against him is working hard to change the face of Malaysian politics and bring reforms to the party and country. Given a strong mandate, I believe he can and will do it.

While Najib is romancing the poor and the economically challenged, our much loved opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim prefers the glitz and glittering lights of the city where tens of thousands of his fans can applaud him. He is also fond of transversing the globe to meet other world leaders to prepare himself to be "Lord Of The Flies" (read William Golding's book of the same name, if you don't know what it is) in a soon to be paradisiacal nation?

He must have a huge war chest, but can he wins the elections.


  

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

SABAH: Anwar's Big Blunder






  • HAS ANWAR BLUNDERED IN SABAH, AGAIN?
    By Raymond B Tombung, Borneo Post, 21 April 2013

    It has become glaringly obvious that the PKR supremo, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, has mishandled Sabah, not once but a few times. It's no secret that he had seen Sabah as a critical source of parliamentary seats to ensure the Pakatan Rakyat's takeover of Putrajaya. He had stated the importance of Sabah not in mere words but in the oft-repeated and now famous PKR campaign jingle: "Tanya sama Najib, apa sebab goyang? Nanji jawab Najib, Sabah nak hilang!"




    Ironically, we maybe at a point where the song can be sung by Datuk Seri Najib Razak, "Tanya sama Anwar..." for the reason that the hope for the PR's capture of Sabah may now have been ruined, all due to Anwar's blunders in dealing with the opposition parties and his own party compatriots in the Sabah. First there was the monumental loss of Datuk Dr. Jeffrey Kitingan's massive influence following Jeffrey's departure and the exodus of KDM leaders from PKR as a consequences of back-stabbings in Sabah PKR which Anwar failed to control or rectify in time. There was also the factor of Anwar's own reluctance to accept Jeffrey's rise in influence within PKR Sabah, being loathe to seeing Christian Jeffrey ever becoming PKR Sabah chief despite the latter's support from a majority of the division chiefs. It was an unforgettable loss with lasting sting which hurts until today when PKR Sabah still suffers from its inability to have a from grasp on KDM areas. He tried to compensate this loss through Datuk Wilfred Bumburing's affiliation but the losses from Jeffrey's exodus was to massive to recoup.

    Anwar's belief at one time that no Sabah PKR leaders were qualified to lead the party at the state level was testing the limits of Hj. Ansari Abdullah's and Thamrin Jaini's respectful tolerance. The belief that Azmin Ali and later Datuk Seri Azizah Ismail were better able to lead Sabah PKR -- on a remote-control mode -- was a direct insult on the intelligence and dignity of Sabah PKR leaders. This leadership presumptuousness and condescendence did more damage than repair to the local leadership uncertainty that then troubled the party in Sabah. It marked an unprecedented 'irregularity' that lowered the party's esteem within the political milieu. The unprecedented leadership arrangement, never before practised by any Peninsular parties, stamped a mark of incompetence on the faces of the local PKR leaders.

    Then a worse blunder was made with the parachute appointment of a greenhorn, Uztaz Pajuddin Nordin, as state liaison chief. The 'rationale' from Azizah then was that it was to pick a compromise leader to mollify the war going on between Ansari and Thamrin, each having a group threatening to leave the party if the other were to become the state chief. So the solution was to appoint a too-young leader without wherewithal nor teeth to control the other leaders. The best option was to go for an extraordinary general election, but this idea wasn't even broached, perhaps due to the reluctance to go through the hassle and to spend money on the exercise. The embarrassingly comical backlash came soon after. Under pressure of being ousted or replaced, Pajuddin sold himself to Umno, making it to the front page of a daily paper for the wrong reason. (Pajuddin has come full circle and is back as vice chairman of now rebellious Tuaran division).

    Anwar also failed miserably in handling the series of negotiations with local opposition parties, STAR and SAPP, which both accused him of playing the superior instructor's, rather than the equal-standing negotiator, role. This monumental failure arising from the PKR's superior Malayan attitude had resulted in the multicornered fights throughout Sabah, which is now working in favour of Barisan Nasional.

    Will Anwar ever, ever learn anything from Sabah? Errors committed a year or two before a general election can be corrected or forgotten with the luxury of sufficient time, but Anwar may have committed another major blunder in Sabah in the throes of the post-dissolution-day period, with nio more time for correction. After much heated arguments in his series of meetings with Datuk Wilfred Bumburing and Ansari in Kuala Lumpur, and in the face of Ansari's pre-emptive announcement of seven parliamentary candidates ahead of Anwar's announcement, Bumburing was eventually chosen to contest Tuaran parliamentary and Tamparuli state constituencies. The fallout has been nothing less than explosive in Ansari's camp!

    Last Thursday's afternoon meeting of the Tuaran division which started at 4.00 pm dragged on to more than four hours due to the overheated discussion, dominated mostly by expression of bristling anger and burning frustration by Ansari's supporters who see him as a hard-working leader who had piloted and strengthened the division for 14 long years, but now sidelined in favour of a new party ally who is not even a party member. "It's like someone who had built and maintained the house is kicked out and asked to live on the ground below it," said Ansari supporter Tarmizi Sandhu. The overall sentiment was to get Ansari to contest as an independent candidate regardless of the consequences.

    There has been longstanding argument by Ansari's supporters that despite Bumburing's stature as an experienced leader, his electoral support pales in comparison to Ansari's because Bumburing had won the constituency in 2008 due to support from Tuaran BN members from Upko, PBS and Umno. "Now that he has left BN he can no longer claim to have the same support, and now that the PKR division is in revolt and has decided to boycott him, he will have a very thin line of support. He can depend only on his APS (Angkatan Perpaduan Sabah) members," said Tuaran PKR member, Richard Libun Adou who also picks on Bumburing's previous pledge that he is "not keen on contesting but want only to help PR takeover Putrajaya."

    But for some reasons Anwar had turned a deaf ear on all these arguments. Is the fact that Ansari had once organized a petition for the replacement of Azizah as PKR Sabah state leader, and that he was said to have been blamed by Anwar for Jeffrey's departure from PKR, thorns in the flesh that made Anwar frustrate Ansari at a critical juncture? Are there some other unknown factors in play? On Friday another impromptu divisional meeting was held to deliberate on Ansari 's next step in the traumatic turn of events. (The meeting was again without the presence of divisional deputy chief Gaibin Ransoi who was devastated by Ansari's decision to snub him and chose novice Rhodes Panilau instead to contest Kiulu, Gaibin's long-time turf (since1985)). Ansari told the meeting he had decided not to contest on a loner's ticket, much to the disappointment of his still-angry and dejected supporters. But on nomination day (yesterday) the pro-Ansari PKR group was at the Tuaran town padang accompanying Ansari's lawyer daughter Erveana who debuted into the election game as an independent candidate!

    This surprising development has confirmed Ansari's decision to challenge PKR's Bumburing, on a proxy arrangement but on defiant confrontation nevertheless. He is going for broke knowing well the ultimate consequence -- sacking from PKR -- but having weighed all options, he is taking the action as the most appropriate alternative. Several questions arise from this development, not the least of which is how far Erveana can go in the attempt to outdo PKR's Bumburing, Upko's Datuk Wilfred Tangau and STAR's Jasmin Dulin in the contest. Will she (and his dad) command the support of all the PKR members and other voters in Tuaran to carve a significant mark? Tangau and Bumburing have low support from the Tuaran Bajau voters while Ansari had long established rapport with them. Will this play out in favour of Elvina?

    The grapevine is abuzz with the excitement that Ansari has already launched an all-out war against Anwar, promising a daily serving of explosive revelations about Anwar's misdoings and shortcomings until election day. "I have spent years going throughout the constituency to defend Anwar against many accusations and explaining the party's vision, but now it is payback time!" he told his supporters. He said that within days he will officially launch, through a press conference, a co-operation with Jeffrey's STAR and Datuk Yong Teck Lee's SAPP to further hammer in the Borneo Agenda for state rights and autonomy, something which Anwar's is still pathetically ignorant about as pointed out by Jeffrey recently. (Interestingly, how will this affect STAR's Jasmin Dulin's candidacy in P.170 Tuaran?).

    This can be fatal for PKR in Sabah and source of embarrassment for Anwar at the national level. Even if this doesn't come in the way of PR to take over Putrajaya, it will still prove to be a severe blow to significantly downgrade Anwar's stature as a national leader. It will also seriously affect the performance of all the PKR candidates in Sabah. Ansari's aim is no less than to give PKR a disfigured image, it's face painted with the mark of Malayan colonialism and Malay supremacy. This colonialism and supremacy mantra may sound like a monotone coming from Jeffrey and Yong, but coming from insurgent Ansari as a former close ally of Anwar, it will hit like a whiplash and stick like a permanent ink! What a price to pay for a 'small' blunder in Tuaran!
    Borneo Post

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Ambiga's Propaganda Of Hate.

Hantu Laut

She is a lawyer and should know the law and our parliamentary system well, yet she intentionally decide to mislead unwary Malaysians with lies and half-truths. Rabble-rousing that can have  dire consequence.

Our parliamentary system inherited from the British is what it is today.It had never been changed to give advantage to the BN government. 

In Britain, the law also required the government to conduct a general review of all constituencies every eight to twelve years. In Malaysia it is the same, only the period of review may be different. 

Gerrymandering is not illegal. They are practised in many Commonwealth countries, but she wouldn't tell you that because she has other agenda.

Below is the result of the British 1997 General Election.Labour Party only garnered 43.2% of the popular votes but collected 63.4% of the seats in parliament.

UK General Election 1997
CandidatesVotes
PartyStandingElectedGainedUnseatedNet % of total %No.Net %
Labour6394181450+ 14563.443.213,518,167+8.8
Conservative6481650178–17825.030.79,600,943–11.2
Liberal Democrat63946302+ 287.016.85,242,947–1.0
Referendum Party54700002.6811,849N/A
SNP72630+ 30.92.0621,550+0.1
Ulster Unionist161010+11.50.8258,3490.0
SDLP18301–10.50.6190,814+0.1



In 2001, Labour got 40.7% of the popular votes and collected 62.4% of the seats.

UK General Election 2001
PartySeatsGainsLossesNet gain/lossSeats %Votes %Votes+/−
Labour403-1062.3840.710,724,953
Conservative165-125.5431.78,357,615
Liberal Democrat51-17.8918.34,814,321
SNP4-10.621.8464,314
Others233.577.5

[edit]



In 2010, the British general election saw no clear winner. It was a hung parliament. 

She accused the EC in collusion with BN of manipulating the electoral rolls.Has she given any proof, solid documentary evidence of her allegations? All she did was babbling away agonizing the unsuspecting crowd with her lies and half-truths. If  they are Malaysian new voters they have every right to appear in the electoral rolls.

Let me ask this spunky and rackless lady, let say, if Pakatan Rakyat wins the 13th GE with less than 50% of the popular votes, would she by, her silly argument, call it null and void and fresh elections should be called? 

Would she? 

Pakatan can also win on the same that's already ingrained in the system.

Listen to her bullshitting the Chinese and Indians:



If the camera have shown the faces of the audience I bet my bottom dollar they are mostly Chinese and Indians.

She said she is non-aligned and not siding with anyone but her curled brain soon forgets what she just said and went on to compare BN government with Pakatan government.

She is nothing what she says she was, she is Anwar's lackey, loud and clear.

The lady is a liar and troublemaker.