COMMENT30 Apr 2016
‘Seditious’ cartoonist Zunar gives his take on the Sarawak scene
Blatant and jaw-dropping
bribery, bullying and law-breaking by the ruling BN party have reached
unprecedented levels, even for Malaysia, as every day reports of new
excesses continue to shock.
But the desperate Prime
Minister plainly does not care. He has personally taken charge of the
whole charade, touring around the state handing out money “from BN” to
everyone he wants to bribe.
Meanwhile, opposition
leaders and activists are being openly barred from the state or told by
the score that they have to leave in advance of the election, so that
they cannot be present to assist in monitoring the count. So much for
Adenan reforming the bad old ways of Taib Mahmud.
Postal votes from thousands
of absent West Malaysian soldiers are being utilised to flood
constituencies they are not from; the practice of refusing to issue ID
cards to opposition communities persists and of course the
gerrymandering alone means that the opposition would have to win over
70% of all votes to even gain a simple majority of seats.
Browbeaten and exhausted
opposition folk, who have no money, compared to resources of hundreds of
millions of ringgit, fleets of helicopters and all the apparatus of the
state in the hands of BN, can only stand by and protest.
Public money from 1MDB is being thrown at Sarawak
RM2 million for St Jude’s Church in Bunan Gega
– even more for mosques Gifts of a couple of million ringgit to a church here, cheques of thousands of ringgit to schools there, crackly notes for every voter…. The fact that these gifts are peanuts, compared to what BN’s politicians have looted from the people of Sarawak, in terms of their natural resources and land rights, is something they have taken care to hide. During their decades of cynical exploitation this ruling clique have sneered that Sarawakians are “blind” to the wealth of their own state.
Likewise, promised
‘projects’, handed out illegally during this election period in the name
of BN, will almost never be fulfilled. Only ‘contracts’ will be given
to the movers and shakers of these communities, who instruct their
longhouses what to vote. They are threatened that if their communities
don’t vote for BN, then they will be treated as enemies of the
government – and that will make life hard indeed.
To observers from the outside world it is all, therefore, a total shocker: a sham election if there ever was one.Najib no longer cares about appearancesHowever, Najib has plainly ceased to care about appearances, if he ever did. In his looking glass world it simply doesn’t matter that he is blatantly indulging in such outrageous abuses and illegalities, because he will make sure his client Malaysian media reports a completely different story for his domestic audience.Those who don’t comply are already being harassed and threatened by Najib’s stack of new laws designed to ‘protect a democratically elected government’ from ‘seditious forces’ etc etc. 
Adenan bought in
The Association of
Journalists has protested at this persecution of their members, trying
to report the truth, but Najib, supported by Adenan, has shown no
hesitation in abusing his authority over the Election Commission, the
police, the civil service and even the once independent judiciary to
ignore all such complaints.
Thus he determines to
bludgeon a “great victory” in Sarawak. If in the end this also demands a
further bit of cheating at the ballot box, so what? The opposition can
always be banned from the count or their officials bought over by huge
bribes, the logic goes. It’s all happened before.
Najib will then announce
through the looking glass world of his Malaysian media that the glorious
result has entirely vindicated his position – it a nutshell he has been
“cleared” by the electorate. “Foreign” critics and domestic
“subversives” will be told to take a hike.
The fact that the world
knows that the money Najib has been lavishing in Sarawak was stolen from
the public purse will be ignored – presumably the Saudi Royal ‘donor’
will be said to have returned back what was previously allegedly
returned, who cares? The Prime Minister will present himself as an all
Malaysian hero and the whole of the domestic media will be forced to
report the matter in this fashion – or else risk jail.
Maybe this ‘victory’ will present him with his widely mooted
opportunity to slam his own former party leader, the 90 year old Dr
Mahathir behind bars, for having dared point out his grand theft from
1MDB?
The opposition leader,
Anwar Ibrahim, has already been trapped in jail for over a year, for the
sin of being far too effective an opponent for Mr Najib …. another
outrageous advantage granted to BN over the leaderless PR coalition in
Sarawak.
To Najib’s way of thinking it simply doesn’t matter if the world
knows the truth, even most Malaysians, because as long as he can
mobilise huge sums of cash then he can control the party leaders in
charge of UMNO and control the electoral charade he calls democracy.The reality is differentHowever, in the real world on the other side of the looking glass from Malaysia, an entirely separate scenario is starting to unfold, which Najib Razak appears determined to ignore, in a triumph of wishful thinking over stark reality.Najib and those around him have lost their judgement if they think Malaysia can defy the rest of the world economy, along with the global regulators and enforcers of law and order, simply to save the position of one man, who has been caught stealing vast sums from his own country. Yet whilst he has cavorted around Sarawak the past few days, handing out cash, the Prime Minister cum Finance Minister has failed to issue one word about the fact that the instrument of this theft, 1MDB, has now gone into default. A US$6 billion cross default looms large and he stays silent. Add to that the demand yesterday from Bank Negara that 1MDB further repay the US$1.8 billion it deceptively ‘invested’ into PetroSaudi.
And to that the
blood-curdlingly deadly investigations that are daily progressing in
Singapore against the managers of BSI Bank, who processed the cash
stolen through Good Star by Jho Low along with other key accounts for
1MDB, SRC and Aabar Investments PJS Limited.
Not only has the Singapore
Commercial Affairs Department described this BSI investigation as the
most complex cross-border money-laundering exercise they have ever
undertaken, they have also highlighted the “staggering amounts of money”
involved.
The rest of the world,
Luxembourg, Abu Dhabi, Switzerland, the United States and a growing list
of other investigating jurisdictions are all shocked too – and they
clearly mean business given the actions and statements of recent weeks.
Now the wheels are in motion does Najib seriously think he can stop
this process in a wider world, where he has no powers whatsoever?
This is money that was
taken out of 1MDB and then laundered through a network of companies
managed by Jho Low and later his accomplices from Aabar. A great deal
of this money went to Najib and his step-son’s Hollywood production
company.
The details are complex and
need to be teased out, but sooner rather than later players are going
to be prosecuted and the money trail revealed.
Does Najib think he can
escape the situation by continuing to say black is white in his looking
glass bubble of Malaysia and handing out yet more of the stolen public
cash to his client party fixers?
What happens when the
global economy inevitably reacts to the revelation that Malaysia is
being run by a master thief and criminal, whose bank accounts are frozen
world-wide and whose pet fund is billions of dollars in the red?
How will Malaysian business
respond to a plunging ringgit, which this will inevitably trigger?
Suddenly, Najib’s cash will seem less helpful to his crony clients and
business borrowers.
Malaysians will discover
that their country has become an international scandal with a world
record thief for a leader, taxes rocketing to bail him out and a
plunging currency to boot.
So, although Najib thinks
he can use all his concentrated powers to force black to be called white
in the domestic media, the truth is that this Prime Minister has lost
control. He can no longer steer events, even though he tells himself he
can….. because the alternative is something he fears to contemplate.
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