Oldtown Fiasco – Ismail Sabri Screws Invisible Man, Not Wonder Woman

Superman was kinda bored so he just started flying around looking for something to do. He’s flying over Wonder Woman’s house and sees her bedroom window is open, with the gorgeous girl lying on her bed naked. He thinks to himself “I’m faster than a speeding bullet, I could fly down there, take care of my business and be gone before she could blink an eye”. So, in he goes, wham-bam and he’s out of there.

Sensing the commotion, Wonder Woman cries out “What was that?”. Invisible Man replies innocently “I don’t know, but all of the sudden my ass hurts”. You should have heard of this old joke since dinosaur age. Still, it’s a good joke when you replace Superman with Ismail Sabri and Invisible Man with UMNO. Wonder Woman in this case is of course, Oldtown White Coffee.

Ismail Sabri, one of Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak’s bloated minions, who happens to be the Agriculture and Agro-based Industries Minister thought he was very clever and could screw Wonder Woman by calling ethnic-Malays to boycott Chinese businesses, starting with Oldtown White Coffee.Apparently, Ismail believes that since the majority consumers are Malay, the Chinese businesses would suffer if get boycotted.

Superman Ismail Sabri had singled out the OldTown White Coffee café chain owned by OldTown Bhd, because he claims that opposition DAP Ngeh family owned shares in the company. That’s quite amusing, because from the rumours we heard, heavyweight Rosmah actually owned Oldtown White Coffee through her Chinese nominees (*grin*). Well, in case Ismail didn’t realise it, the chairman of public-listed Oldtown is a Malay – Datuk Ahmed Tasir.

For the financial year ended March 2014, Oldtown registered revenue of RM382,171,650, of which RM16,038,755 in taxes were paid to the government. If Oldtown goes bankrupt because of Malays’ boycott, Najib administration would have less RM16 million in taxes to plunder. And where would be the Malays’ next destination of boycott? What about McDonald’s and Starbucks? After all, Vincent Tan, a Chinese, owned these restaurants.

Going by Ismail’s brilliant logic, McDonald’s and Starbucks should be boycotted as well. McDonald’s hamburgers were less tasty but more expensive than Ramli Burgers. And Starbucks latte beverages were crazily priced, so much so that a Grande Latte costs more than 10 glasses of Mamak Teh Tarik. There’re more – all the 4D / 5D / 6D betting outlets are also Chinese-owned, of which the Malays are crazily in love.

UMNO hypocrites such as Ismail Sabri conveniently targeting Oldtown even though he knows very well that all public listed companies are also partly owned by UMNO-Malays. We mention UMNO-Malays because the ordinary Malays do not get the chance to receive free shares in such companies, the same way UMNO warlords such as Ismail himself does. So, has Ismail just joined the proxy war between PM Najib and tycoon Mahathir?

The fact is Oldtown business relies on other cost factors. Oldtown is the second tier business entity which passes cost to the consumers. There is transportation cost, of which PLUS needs to be paid. There is electricity cost, of which TNB needs to be paid. There is labour cost, of which under table money needs to be paid in order to secure the Bangladesh workers. There is raw material cost such as sugar and rice, of which Syed Mokhtar needs to be paid.

So, why only targets the second tier but not the first tier suppliers such asPLUS, TNB, Tradewind, Bernas, Petron Malaysia Berhad, and whatnot? Ahh, because all these first tier corporations are heavily owned by UMNO. Needless to say, these suppliers will not start the chain reaction of passing the benefits of cheaper gasoline to the average Ahmad, Ah Seng and Ramasamy.

Obviously, Mr. Ismail Sabri was barking the wrong tree. He should have called everyone, regardless of race, to boycott PLUS, TNB, Tradewind, Bernas and whatnot. And if Oldtown refuses to do the right thing even after electricity, rice, flour and sugar prices are lowered, then it’s time to boycott Oldtown and other similar businesses. To be a racist, Ismail is no better than Ibrahim Ali or Mahathir who had called for boycott on American products.

Perhaps Ismail Sabri and other minion ministers should think twice about trying to be Superman wanting to screw Wonder Woman. For every time they wish to satisfy their lusts, there’s always an Invisible Man (UMNO) already lying down doing nothing but milking easy money from various cashcows. Unless Ismail Sabri doesn’t mind, what he gets is only the Invisible Man, not Wonder Woman (*tongue-in-cheek*). -financetwitter