By Ariff Sabri, Raub MP

The UMNO people and their spouses need to tell successive bigger lies to cover their previous lies. The water bill of RM300, 000 a year for 2012 is not a figure picked from thin air; it was a figure given in parliament by Shahidan Kassim and is in the Hansard. So is the RM2.2 million electricity bill. It is also from the answer given in parliament.

So, we are sorry your telephone line has been interrupted but we are really not interested to know whether the PM’s wife swims in a swimming pool either.

The university students to whom Rosmah spoke to the other day need not direct their attention to an issue that does not affect them; rather they should be thinking about the dysfunctional economy managed by a dysfunctional government headed by a dysfunctional PM.

The chief economic apologist for the country, the guitar strumming minister Idris Jala said our economy is heading to safer waters. The minister in charge of trade, the colourless Mutapha Mohamad a few days earlier said rising CPI indicates we are heading for a higher cost of living regime. Tell that to the RM 5000 a month income earner living in KL who is left with RM 200 by the time his salary comes. Tell that to the rubber tapper who earns less than RM500 a month in Raub.

You see, liars forget to tell their partners in crime to speak in the same tune. They contradict each other and tripped over one another.

The blind beggar and his assistant who go from table to table while customers are eating probably collect more than RM20 a day. The BR1M recipient who gets RM650 this year or collects RM1.78 a day has a fate worse than the blind beggar. But these people have not the right to be angry and anguished. They should thank the Lord for getting a government which thinks of the people all the time and distributes beneficence.

We do not need to ask our students to believe everything that is written in the opposition portals. It is sufficient they keep an open mind, read and evaluate the arguments. Using the same principle the students must not believe what is being said in the pro-UMNO portals either. Reading them can cause a diminution of the students’ intelligence.

Water bill.

This thing about the water bill of the PM’s official residence is taken from the answer given in parliament. Unless of course the minister in question, lied to parliament. The answer given in parliament was as follows:

In a written response to Anthony Loke Siew Fook (DAP-Seremban), Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim said RM2,237,788.13 was spent on electricity for the Seri Perdana complex, while RM311,174.25 was spent on water throughout 2012.

So who or what or when whoever and whatever swim and whether the occupants at Sri Perdana are afraid to sleep with the lights switched off are really not of interest to us.

So my advice to the students, they don’t have to believe what the PM’s wife tells them.

This is a sign of a dysfunctional government. It has to continue to tell successive bigger lies to cover up preceding lies. The government can’t lie to the people forever.

Its posturing on Malay ultra-nationalism, for example is nothing but a mask to hide exactly the opposite to what it does. It has sold out the Malays. Go to Iskandar region in Johor, the area is an annexure of millionaires and the rich from Singapore, Taiwan and China. The Malays in Pontian, in Mersing and in Kota Tinggi cannot afford to buy the properties there. So where will the Malays go?

I once asked the PM what he means by his New Economic Model. That was in happier times when I was in UMNO, a former ADUN and a former information chief of his division.

He responded by saying, NEM is market driven affirmative action. Therein lies the catch; market driven affirmative action. It means, the government will respond accordingly to signals from the market. The free market economy as understood in the West as in allowing free competition and allowing each person to pursue his own economic interests is of no relevance in Malaysia. In this economy, market driven affirmative action means- rewarding those already successful in the market economy further. Effectively this will lead to the capturing of the bulk of the wealth of this country by the select few and the fittest economic actors.

In Malaysia, free market means the ones emitting the loudest signals to invite the required response are the rich, the privileged and the politically connected. So, the government will in the end, response increasingly to the demands and pressures from the select few, the rich and the powerful.

Let us illustrate this point in a particular case. Take the case of the redevelopment of the 19 acres of land on which stands the former Pudu jail. The land owner is the Urban Development Authority- fully owned by the Finance Ministry and controlled by the Finance Minister. It’s charged with developing and redeveloping lands in urban areas to unlock monetary values and also to restructure the ethnic profiling in urban centres. Thus the top executives of UDA could at one time, boast that its mission is to enlarge the presence and participation of Malays in urban economics. The leaders of the government then follow up by making pompous declarations that it will safeguard Malay economic interests in urban areas.

Last year, as many of us are aware, UDA entered into an agreement with the Chinese government to jointly develop the Pudu Jail land. China appointed or selected Everbright Construction Company to enter into a JV with UDA to develop the Pudu Jail land which is to be renamed BBCC- Bukit Bintang City Centre. There will a high rise hotel, high rise residential unit, and much much more where patrons could walk along magnificent walkways choosing which vendors they want to have their tired feet massaged. It will rival the prestigious Bukit Bintang enclave nearby where patrons walk the walkways and scout out which masseuses can make happy days.

When news of the JV became known to the public, competing interest groups began to make noise and scare the living daylights out of the PM. The chairman of UDA then was accused of betraying the Malay cause and was also accused to be on the take. Nurjazlan had to fend off attacks from Rottweiler-ish Malay Chamber of Commerce people as far as Penang where the Malays looked like people who seemed to have travelled on boats from somewhere and had huddled closest to the boats engines. He had to fend off attacks from nasty politicians like Tajudin Rahman who was probably angered when the layout of the BBCC did not also include the building of a casino like the one in Genting. Nurjazlan had to receive instructions from the finance ministry on what to do with the Pudu Jail land. He also had to be contented with lukewarm 5-minute of yes-no-all right sessions with the Finance Minister.

After that, the Uda Chairman had to travel up and down to the Finance Ministry to be instructed on what to do. At one time, It was reported that the Government decided to drop of the Chinese developer’s US$1bil (RM3bil) redevelopment plan in favour of splitting the prime site into parcels to be developed by mainly bumiputra companies. Take a note folks- bumputera companies!

Under Nurjazlan, UDA came under fire for allegedly abandoning the bumiputra agenda by not appointing bumiputra joint-venture turnkey investors for the proposed Bukit Bintang City Centre.

Nurjazlan wanted to do business with China-based developer Everbright International Construction Ltd develop the Pudu land with UDA, which has land but not money to develop projects. But several Umno members and Malay developers protested the deal, prompting UDA’s only shareholder, the Finance Ministry, to order a new plan. The Finance Minister, Najib wilted under pressure as usual. the question is , did he capitulate or was he re-assessing opportunities?

The question now is did Najib instruct the new chairman of UDA to hand over the project to Eco World? Where are the strident Malay voices? Where is the Malay Chamber of Commerce from Penang? Where is the walking stick wielding Tajudin Rahman?

There is now disquiet over Eco World getting the project, dubbed Bukit Bintang City Centre, as UDA had called for a tender last September. Suddenly the tender exercise was cancelled. The bidders had bought the RM25,000 tender documents and had deposited a RM1 million earnest money with UDA. The next step would entail short-listed bidders to pay up another Rm25 million earnest money deposits. The RM1 million has since been returned to the bidders when UDA recalled the tender.

The current UDA chairman told his board members that the PM has instructed him to tell members that the BCC project is to be given to EcoWorld. There are no details as to how Eco World got the project. We understand that the Finance Ministry made the decision, not the UDA board,” a source said.

The Finance Minister is Prime Minister Dato Seri Najib Razak while the Second Finance Minister is Dato Seri Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah – both of whom have oversight over UDA, which was set up to redevelop urban areas and increase Bumiputera participation.

Eco World has been scooping up big projects since its inception last year and has among its directors, experienced property man Tan Sri Liew Kee Sin, who resigned as developer SP Setia Bhd’s chief executive officer last April 30. Liew was SP Setia’s group managing director from 1996 and turned the RM200 million-company in 1998 into a multi-billion ringgit international property firm. He quit just over a year after state investment company Permodalan Nasional Bhd bought over SP Setia, prompting rumours he would join Eco World as his son, Tian Xiong, is also a director and substantial shareholder in the company.

Eco World has embarked on a programme to expand its land bank and projects worth up to RM30 billion after a corporate exercise last year. Its joint-venture in the Bukit Bintang City Centre is expected to help UDA trim its debts and raise money for affirmative action projects.

The decision over the Pudu Jail redevelopment will be yet another test of Najib’s commitment to economic liberalisation as the hardliners in Umno, Perkasa and Utusan Malaysia had once criticised UDA for allegedly abandoning the Bumiputera agenda by not appointing Bumiputera joint-venture turnkey investors for the project.

Where are their voices now? Where is Ibrahim Ali? Utusan Malaysia?

UDA, whose assets were estimated to be worth RM2 billion two years ago, is more than RM900 million in debt. It had an outstanding RM104 million land premium for the Pudu site that was due in September 2012 .

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