Hari Raya buzz

Returned early to our hometown on Tuesday to escape the traffic jam. That enabled us to visit few elderly relatives. Mostly the old, the ill, the lost loved ones, or the less fortunate.

Interestingly, the same questions that kept propping up in conversation was the Low Yat Plaza fracas.

There have been many highly seditious statements made by oppositions, left wing activists and super-liberals against the Malay and Islam's status, rights and practices, but yet it is the racial fracas arising from the stolen handphone that got the Malay's attention.

The Raya festivities is a significant event in the Malaysian calender and an important occasion from the perspective of propaganda. If events in the last few days of Ramadhan could dominate the Raya conversation, then they managed to create the Hari Raya buzz.

Low Yat fracas

To the law enforcement official, the Low Yat incident was a clear cut case of theft. IGP Tan Sri Khalid blamed the accused of talking to the social media and spreading the version of cheating.

Khalid was trying to control the situation by not mentioning that groups of Malay got agitated when the kid was beaten up by a group of young Chinese salesmen. That resulted in Malay groups converging by the thousands at Low Yat. There were fracas that resulted in several Chinese media journalist was reported injured. Situation was only control in the wee hours of the morning.

To date, 24 were held and released.

Blogger Papagomo, an UMNO division chief and activist Ali Tinju were held by police and to be charged under the Sedition Act. This could lead to another discontent as Chinese politicians and media social players were equally guilty of the doing the same alleged seditious act.

The lawyer for the accused openly questioned Khalid's statement as judgemental and raised issues on the date of the CCTV video, non-availability of the alleged stolen Lenovo handphone as proof, denied the accused spoke to any social media, etc. [read here].

Despite being an issue of theft and racial incitation, there are segments in the Malay community that saw it in a positive light. They claimed it as a unifying factor for "oppressed" Malays. Many were impressed with the accused brevity to return to the scene of the crime and Malay gangs managed to drive out Chinese gangs in their own territory.

Already Low Yat's business had been affected by the incidents as police raided to capture those involved in beating up the accused and social media is calling for boycott till they are out of business.

The Chinese retribution could be the buzz for Hari Raya.

Plot to topple    

The opposition anticipate the Low Yat incident to be the buzz for Hari Raya and was quick to lay blame on UMNO.

Bar Council activist, Eric Paulsen accused PM of using Low Yat to detract attention away from 1MDB [read MMO here]. In the joint press conference by the opposition and left wing NGOs, Rafizi warned that the 1MDB issue will not go away by this incident.

He is quite aware that PAC is due to meet in early August. The past and present CEOs, Dato Shahrol, Arul Kanda and Dato Hazem are due to appear on the 4th, 5th and 6th. After the sessions with Auditors, PAC have found few issues to raise to the CEOs.

The Auditor General have given their interim reports and MoF II, Dato Husni Hanazlah was quick to point out that it was concluded that the missing RM42 billion and the transfer of USD700 million to a certain individual, presumably Jho Loh's alleged company, Good Star Limited [read Rocky Bru's here].

1MDB have clarified and repeated several times in the blog with documents that Good Star is a subsidiary of  Petrosaudi. Tony Pua claimed Husni did not mention of some questionable issue raised in the report.

Some bloggers like SatdD, Jebat Must Die and Freddie Kevin inferred the USD700 million is linked to the alleged campaign fund that was deposited into Dato Najib's three personal account with Ambank and is the diverted invested fund into Petrosaudi.

Their reaction generally arise from lose in trust with government for being late in clarifying the 1MDB issues and several statement by Ministers have been caught being wrong on several issues.   

Thus far, Taskforce have frozen six accounts but said none belongs to Najib. There is no specific statement on the alleged Dato Najib's account except that it is closed. When was it closed? Does it tally with the dates of the transfers as alleged by Wall Street Journal?

As far as the documents revealed by WSJ, there have been discrepencies with the Swiftcode as pointed out by Badlisyah Abdul Gani, CEO of Islamic CIMB. Embarassed by Badlisyah's statement, WSJ-Sarawak report have divert attention on Datin Seri Rosmah.  

Badlisyah has just submitted his resignation [read here] in the midst of rumours that Dato Nazir Tun Razak have approached the G18 PAS-offshoot group [read here]. It reaffirm Nazir's long believed political aspirations, biasness and undemocratic tendency to personal opinion by others' than himself. 
   
Question is: Was there such sum of money being transfered allegedly into Najib personal accounts?

One source with linked to certain Minister claimed no such transfer and no such accounts existed. All will be eventually be revealed. While one source linked to a government outfit claimed of it's existence, but it's unthinkable for the source to be trusting of Sarawak Report, The Edge, and WSJ.   

Last week, rumours broke out that opposition leaders - Tony Pua and Rafizi, The Edge's Dato Tong Kooi Ong and Ho Ko Tat, Sarawak Report's Clara Rewcastle and Xavier Justo met in a Singapore Hotel.

In the latest development, Dato Rahman Dahlan made a police report on the meeting and conspiracy to topple the government [Read Rocky Bru here and here]. An editor of Sarawak report, Lester Melanyi made a confessed to the conspiracy:

Rafizi's butt is burning, wrote Bujai [read here]. Clara is at her lying best [read MMO here].

Only few days back, an NGO, CAGM made a press statement of an unnamed SD of an ex-Ambank staff claimed to be force to effect the alleged transfer [read FMT here]. Yesterday, CAGM denied the SD and it is experiment to prove Malaysians are gullible to believe such an allegation [read here]. Will the conspiracy and experiment create enough buzz to take the heat of Dato Najib?

Lim Sian See see the walls are coming closing in on Najib's critics [readhere].

However, the silent buzz in certain circles are seeing the resumption of onslaught by Tun Dr Mahathir after Raya and the new target deadline to bring down Najib has shifted to August. Already a new allegation surfaced in Australia by The Age on allegation of counterfeit money. Najib made a statement to sue.

At least, he is fast on this. 

Tabung Haji

A certain blogger have been attempting to revive the Tabung Haji-1MDB issue through his blog and maybe other avenues too. [Read Apanama here and FMT here.]

His intention was to create a viral of distrust among gullible depositers of TH. This is an insidious intention to destroy an important Islamic institution through lies and deception. The blogger's posting is devoid of any decent facts on the subject matter and shows his lack of understanding on any non-political issues.

The fact as taken from Bigdog here is the land purchase was made at a discounted valuation, far cheaper than a nearby last done transaction. TH bought the KLFID land at RM 188.5 million as compared to international valuers figure of RM194 million.  

The land is not sold yet despite receiving several any offers and there have been suggestions by MPs as to not sell the land. Consideration will be made based on long term return to depositors and not so myopic political play.

The choice for TH is between a one off RM5.5 million profit versus developing the land for potential estimated RM177.5 million profit over 3 years.

On the issue of halal or haram, someone unschooled in Islamic jurisprudence has no legitimacy to comment. Buying and selling of the said KLIFD land or any land transaction are halal in Islam.

TH has got decades of experience in property investment. They are far more conversant on halal or haram matter in protecting their 8.6 million depositors than politics-only blogger. In comparison to other institutions, they have the most stringent halaalan toyyiba criteria.  

Certainly, depositors money cannot be simplistically assumed as bailing out 1MDB. Unknown to 
many, the process to evaluate the KLIFD proposal begin since 2013 and had undergone several level of scrutiny.

The leakage of information has been detected and the information trail identified. Some member of the board of director and members of evaluation committee have been unprofessional in their conduct.

Nevertheless, TH issue is not likely to be a buzz for Hari Raya small talk. There is a bigger political story in the happenings in the now defunct Pakatan Rakyat. But, it could not outshine the attention and issues being championed by Tun M.

Looking forward for after Hari Raya. 

In the meanwhile, to all readers:

Selamat Hari Raya dan Maaf Zahir Batin. 

Drive safely.

-Another Brick in the Wall