PAKATAN, PAKATAN ON THE WALL – WHO’S THE RICHEST OF THEM ALL: MACC’S UPDATED LIST OF MP ASSET DECLARATIONS REVEALED – HERE’S WHAT WAS FOUND

So in the past few weeks or so, while  some issues such as ICERD may have dominated newspaper frontpages, turn to page 3 or 4 and you’d probably see some articles about the MACC releasing a list of MPs who have declared their income and assets.

One such article about the asset declarations. Screenshot from Free Malaysia Today

In case you’re wondering why suddenly so many MPs are declaring their assets, no it’s (probably) not because they wanna show off to the rakyat how much money they have. Instead, it’s actually part of Pakatan Harapan’s GE14 manifesto promises, which said that they would have all their MPs, senators and senior govt officials over a certain rank to declare all their assets, in line with their anti-corruption and transparency drive.

As such, the MACC has collected the asset declarations of these Harapan MPs and put them all in a site for the public’s eyes, which you can access here. We should also probably mention that as MPs submit their asset declarations, there are two things to consider – income per month, and their total amount of assets. We here at Cilisos a bit nosy laa, so we also started looking at the asset declarations – and here’s what we found.

1. Guan Eng earns more than Mahathir… but he’s not the highest earner

Now when the first version of the asset declaration list was published by the MACC, reporters had a field day pointing out that, despite Dr Mahathir being the head of govt, the highest earner among the list was actually the Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng.

Screenshot from The Star, featuring Guan Eng’s forehead

According to the MACC list, Guan Eng declared his income to be RM86,464.92, putting it higher than the Prime Minister’s RM75,861.57. Even Mahathir was surprised, saying:

“My salary is higher than the salary of the Finance Minister. From where he gets that high income I don’t know,” – Mahathir, translated from Astro Awani

Now there could be a possible explanation laa. If you take a look at the MACC declaration website, you’d notice that some MPs have declared their income and assets for both themselves and their spouses. With both Mahathir and Guan Eng did declare their assets for themselves and their wives, it could come down to what their other halves earn monthly. And if we take a look at their wives, then Guan Eng’s wife Betty Chew does seem to make a lil more moolah per month laa.

Guan Eng and his wife, Betty. Image from The Star

Betty herself was once a DUN in Malacca as well as her usual day job working in a law firm. Some websites even list Betty Chew’s total networth as up to USD 10 million, altho we don’t know how reliable that website is, so take that figure with a grain of MSG laa yeah.

That being said, the list has been updated since, and Guan Eng no longer leads the way. While Mahathir might not be top spot for monthly income, he might not need to worry about money, seeing as the top earner according to the MACC list is his son and current Kedah Menteri Besar Mukhriz Mahathir. The PPBM deputy president listed down his income per month at a staggering RM105,641.76, making him number one for income.

*not actual images of Mukhriz taking a shower.

But on the other end of the income list….

2. The MP with the least income knocked out Liow Tiong Lai in GE14

In GE14, there was a minor shock of sorts in Bentong, Pahang, as DAP man Wong Tack managed to defeat Liow Tiong Lai, the then-MCA president and Transport Minister. That same man also has the curious title of ‘poorest MP’, well, according to The Star anyway. That’s because from the MACC list, Wong Tack declared his monthly income to be RM22,412.64 while his total assets was listed as RM0.00, making both figures the least among all the MPs who had declared their assets at time of writing.

Find someone who looks at you the same way Wong Tack looks at Guan Eng. Image from nkkhoo

Wong Tack first made a name for himself as an environmentalist and activist in 2011, forming the NGOHimpunan Hijau which led the protests against the Lynas rare earth processing plant in Pahang, and also found time to stand against Liow back in GE13. Wong actually put up a good fight against him in 2013 too, losing to Liow by just 379 votes. His protests against Lynas almost cost him his chance to battle Liow this year tho, as he stood trial for his protests. However, he eventually went on to win in Bentong, with a decent majority of over 2,000 votes too.

As for the MP with the second least monthly income, it’s actually the MP for Permatang Pauh herself, Nurul Izzah Anwar who comes in at RM24,300.00. Her total amount of assets tho isn’t too shabby at RM643,178.06,which incidentally tops the Defence Minister Mat Sabu. Rounding up the bottom three for MPs with the least monthly income is Tenom MP Noorita Sual.

3. The MP with the most assets has over double of Mahathir’s

So far we’ve mostly only been talking about income, i.e. the amount they make on a monthly basis. However, like we’ve mentioned earlier, there are two things listed down per MP in the MACC asset declaration site, which is income and assets. Do note tho that assets in this case it doesn’t refer to the MPs net worth, as net worth is total assets minus total liabilities, and the MACC site doesn’t list down liabilities. And when it comes to assets, no one seems to be able to beat the current Perak State Assembly Speaker Datuk Ngeh Koo Ham.

Datuk Ngeh Koo Ham. Image from The Star

The Beruas MP comes in with an incredible RM77,011,990.00 according to the MACC list. And that’s not even enough, as Ngeh adds that the figure should actually be around RM80 million (weird flex but ok). However, Ngeh doesn’t think that he’s even the richest Harapan MP out there, despite his assets more than doubling Dr M’s RM32,357,900.00, who had the second most assets. This is because there are still other MPs who have yet to declare their assets (we’ll get on to this later).

“God has been kind to me, and I appreciate life being a series of blessings, so I want to be transparent about my assets, I was working to contribute to the community. However, it turns out that my investments drew huge returns, thus increasing in prices and profits,” – Ngeh Koo Ham, as quoted by The Star

If you didn’t tell us we’d totally think that this is Henry Golding. Unedited image from East West Bank

That being said, Ngeh is not ashamed of his wealth, and instead says that he’s proud of it because he managed it without dabbling in corruption. His wealth instead came from his over three decades of working as a lawyer, and that after his first RM2 million, he began to give back to the community. Hmm, perhaps this writer should have gone for a career in law instead….

“I am quite detached from money as it does not dictate how I live. I live a happy life and simplicity to me is freedom. I still have my RM6 haircut from my Indian barber near my law firm, but sometimes due to lack of time, I do go to a hair saloon that costs me RM15,” – Ngeh, as quoted by The Star

Haircuts aside, going back to what Ngeh had pointed out earlier….

4. Some big names have yet to submit their asset declarations

Despite the Harapan GE14 manifesto calling for all Harapan MPs to declare their assets, there are still three parliamentarians who have yet to submit their asset and income declarations at time of writing. These are some pretty big names – Deputy Federal Territories Minister Shaharuddin Md Salleh, Warisan president Shafie Apdal and PKR president Anwar Ibrahim. On top of that, several MPs such as Mukhriz and Dr Wan Azizah who have declared their income do not have their total assets declared on the MACC site.

Screenshot from MACC’s asset declaration website

For the case of Anwar tho, you could argue that he had just gotten into the Dewan Rakyat, and so could use some time to get back into the thick of things before filling up his papers. At least, that’s what Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Liew Vui Keong said anyway.

“It’s not a very complicated form but then again you need to remember the properties that you have and it requires the wife’s property also, as well as the children’s who are under 21. So they want to have more time to get all these details. Some of them are requesting extension of time,” –  Liew Vui Keong, as quoted by The Edge

Liew Vui Keong. Image from The Malaysian Insight

He also added that more and more submissions from other MPs as the forms are being sent thru snail mail and so could take awhile to arrive. Now some of the more keen observers among y’all might have noticed that Vui Keong himself doesn’t have his assets listed, only his monthly income. As for the curious case of the missing assets, Lim Guan Eng himself seems confused over it as for his case at least, he claims to have listed down his asset details to the National Centre for Governance, Integrity and Anti-Corruption (GIACC) in his original asset declaration form together with his income details.

Maybe the MACC forgot to upload the data, maybe there was a technical glitch, maybe it’s Maybelline.

More transparency within the govt should be welcomed

Incidentally, despite asset declaration becoming something of a trendy buzzword for Harapan politicians today, it was first done by the Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) who aren’t in Harapan. Indeed, they’ve been doing this since 2008 too, the year they first had an MP. As for within Harapan itself, probably the first major person to declare his assets was Rafizi Ramli, who first did so in 2015. It wasn’t a small figure either – according to his 2015 asset declaration, his net worth was RM1.6 million.

PSM members declaring their assets earlier this year. Image from Yahoo News

In any case, one could argue that it’s perhaps not actually that important that people know what they earn and have in assets now, but rather, what happens to their wealth a year from now. The MACC deputy chief commissioner Datuk Shamsun Baharin points out that this asset declaration exercise is just one part of the process, and that a year later the MACC would check again for any ‘unjustified spikes’ in their wealth.

“The most important thing is that the politicians are transparent with the salaries and properties they declared. What they own now is not an issue. We will see what they have now and compare it with what they have a year later. We will look into it if something seems wrong,” – Datuk Shamsun Baharin, MACC deputy chief commissioner, as quoted by New Straits Times

We too should keep tabs on the govt to ensure that they don’t abuse or misuse their power for their own benefits. You wouldn’t want for us to hit the international spotlight again *cough1MDBcough* for all the wrong reasons right?

-https://cilisos.my/