Recession is at the door and Najib is doing what he does best - NOTHING!

“The world economy is slowing sharply, and the euro region headed for recession this year, the International Monetary Fund predicted Tuesday in a bleak update of global conditions. Overall, the world economy is expected to expand 3.25 percent in 2012 - down from the 4 percent projected by the IMF in the fall. 

That figure includes 8.2 percent growth in China, still the world’s most quickly expanding economy, and 7 percent in India. U.S. growth is forecast at 1.8 percent, the same as the fund projected in the fall.  In those cases and for the rest of the world, growth was being crimped by what remains the world’s major economic risk - the ongoing financial crisis in the euro zone. In a trio of reports released Tuesday morning, the IMF forecasts a “mild recession” for the 17-nation euro zone this year, and warns that matters could easily worsen”.

The above is indeed a grim outlook from the world financial body and will definitely affect the Malaysian economy, but what is Prime Minister Najib Razak doing about it?

Well, it looks like he is going to do what he does best - NOTHING!

To understand the man, you need to know his background

Having been brought up with a silver spoon, the 58-year-old Najib is oblivious to the actual predicament and hardship faced by the people, both hardcore poor and those who can hardly make ends meet.

As he is constantly being surrounded by all the good things in life, he can never understand what the word poor means. There may not be a good correlation for such an inference but the fact is - Najib is not able to and does not care for the people.

His main concern now is to ensure that UMNO-BN wins the 13th general election so that he can remain the prime minister of Malaysia. It is a simple one-item priority.

The rest is of little concern to him as he seems to show no worry at all about the state of our economy. He continues to hand out more goodies to the people with the latest being the RM500 per household that earns less than RM3,000 per month. How caring can this be when it is a one-off aid meant to entice votes for GE-13?

Long list of flops

Then the award of Proton to DRB-Hicom, which immediately said they didn't have money but must borrow from Maybank, which in turn has to borrow from somewhere else. What if the whole exercise flops and Maybank ends up with a huge bad debt? By the way, if you have guessed that the Employee Provident Fund and PNB are among the biggest Maybank shareholders - which ultimately translates to the ordinary Malaysian worker and the poor Malay fishermen and farmers - then you are right.

The Ministry of Defence is also going to waste money on some exorbitantly expensive naval vessels, similar to the useless Scorpene submarines that Najib ordered in 2002 and allegedly received a RM570million kickback from. No wonder, current Defense minister Zahid Hamidi has had his eye on the Typhoon jet fighter for a while now. What a juicy piece of steak this must be for him!

MRT Corp, set up under the Ministry of Finance is expected to raise bonds soon for financing the RM50 billion Klang Valley MRT project. More money has to be borrowed and interest paid. Of course when the project starts there will be economic activities, but like all previous mega projects it is just a transient rise and will abruptly disappear once the money-making scheme is completed. Malaysians will then be treated to the same sour ending with the National Debt ballooning dangerously, while UMNO leaders and their cronies smile all the way to the bank, pockets bulging even more than ever.

The future is plain to see. The people will suffer from the poor service and with the maintenance of the KVMRT deteriorating so rapidly, the project will eventually need a bail out. No surprises for Malaysians used to this by now. With all due respect, history has shown that all the Malaysian LRT lines were bailed out because of bad planning and poor construction.

But for the KVMRT - the mother of all potential bailouts - this project is not going anywhere, and the completed structures will end up as white elephants, with the overall system only be partially completed. Due to its myriad problems, the entire system won’t be able to work and function properly. The KVMRT is doomed from the start. Don't forget - you read it first here!

The Iskandar project in Johor has been hailed by UMNO as being a huge success. But sad to say, that is only on paper. UMNO has been on an advertisement propaganda to show the people that all is fine on the southern end. But basically, it is mere photo-shoots, nice photos, charts and statistics but Iskandar, like the KVMRT, will only benefit select contractors and be of limited economic reach because the project will hang halfway due to poor planning.

Not economic projects but money-making schemes

You see, only the 'first mile' is important. This is where the crony contractors and developers get their hands on the juicy government contracts. What doe they care if the entire project fails to integrate with both the local and national economy? After does Najib, the PM and also Finance minister care? No, he is even more busy than they are excavating the economy for his benefit and those of select UMNO allies.

UMNO and Najib have succeeded only in launching money-making schemes. This is why Malaysia is slowly but surely going bankrupt. The people are not getting richer. Only a certain group have become fabulously rich. This is the problem with all UMNO economic activities. Because of their short-term nature, there is no lasting effect and in the end they create more trouble and burden for the people.

The IPPs are milking TNB and Petronas dry and that directly hurts the people who have to pay high fuel and energy tariffs. The completed highways are still collecting the ever increasing tolls and the effect is hiking the cost of everything. Again, this is another example of the UMNO money-making schemes, the worst and most clumsily covered-up example being the RM12.5billion Port Klang Free Zone scandal.

Praised for doing nothing

So, what a joke it was when the World Chinese Economic Forum (WCEF) crowned Najib the Father of Modernisation and Transformation when he has not even completed a single term in office and he has not even won a mandate of his own to lead Malaysia.

Despite all that, MCA president Chua Soi Lek put on a great show of support, tapping contacts in the WCEF group to honor Najib. But the joke was on them because the WCEF actually gave Najib an award for doing nothing!

What an achievement indeed! Were they being sarcastic by awarding Najib such a “grand” accolade that even the mainstream media did not dare to play up for fear it might spark nationwide sarcasm and boomerang on the BN.

But if ridicule, empty promises, giving more burden to the people, leading Malaysia to the brink of bankruptcy, whitewashing financial debacles like the RM250mil Shahrizat-NFC scandal and indecisiveness are the basis for the award, then Najib truly deserves it. What say you?

by  Nawawi Mohamad
Malaysia Chronicle

Najib disappoints with self-praising speech: Pakatan bashing, hints again of GE-13

As expected, Prime Minister Najib Razak had little to offer but bombast and bluster during his policy speech for his ruling Umno party. The 2011 Umno general assembly is regarded as a watershed meeting as Najib is expected to call for snap national elections early next year, but even so, all he could do was to bash the Pakatan Rakyat led by Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim and insist that Umno was the most democratic party in the country.

Najin, the Umno president, repeated his hint that the 13th general election would be held soon, but again failed to give any concrete indication of when Malaysians could expect to go to the polls. His insistence on not giving any advance notice to the opposition is against democratic norms and would be looked at with scorn and contempt in developed democracies.

"It is a disappointing speech, it gives no direction for Umno and only underscores little Umno has changed under Najib. In fact, it is worse now than even under Abdullah Badawi. Or Mahathir Mohamad, where at the very least, there was some underlying economic growth to offset the plunging civil liberties . Now in 2011, Malaysia is not stagnant but actually declining in economic growth and Najib is resorting to blatant lies. How much reform has Umno undertaken, you tell me," PKR vice president Chua Jui Meng told Malaysia Chronicle.

Malaysia now the worst-off country in ASEAN for freedom of assembly

Jui Meng was referring the centre-piece of Najib's sadly-hollow speech, where he insisted Umno was more democratic than the opposition parties PKR, PAS and DAP.

Ironically, just days ago, Najib went down in history as the leader who turned Malaysia into the worst nation in Southeast Asia by ramming through a controversial Assembly Bill that effectively clamps down on citizens' rights to peaceful gathering to express a point of view. Apart from local politicians, the Bar Council, civil society, international bodies including LawAsia, Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch have condemned the bill as oppressive, against human rights and contrary to democracy.

Yet Najib - in his trademark fashion - completely ignored all these factors, insisting that Malaysia was on track to becoming the world's best democracy thanks to Umno and his administration.

We allow many people in Umno to choose their leaders and Umno is not a party that is afraid of democracy, compared with our competitors. We are not like the opposition parties. In fact, Umno embraces democracy as in the English saying, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, he told the 2011 Umno AGM held at the Putra World Trade Centre on Thursday.

“We have never dominated or intended to dominate other component parties. We are not a racist party, but work towards national development. Furthermore, in PKR, the party president is the wife of the de-facto leader and their eldest daughter becomes the vice-president. We do not need to say anything.

Having walloped his nemesis, Anwar's PKR party, he then took a swipe at the DAP and PAS.

Is it democratic when only branch delegates choose 20 central committee members and then they in turn select the party leaders? Certainly, this is not representing the will of the members," said Najib, referring to DAP.

"This person (mursyidul am) is more powerful than the president, he added, referring to PAS.

Back-biting bluster

Many Malaysians found it strange that with Malaysia on the cusp of either a new beginning or a major implosion, Najib would choose to focus on what happened in his opponents' parties, compounding the view that he had run out of ideas and had no more room to move. As such, the haste to push through the Assembly Bill to deter street protests should his BN coalition be seen to falsely claim victory at the GE-13.

"It is a shock that at such a critical time, Najib wants to compare his party with ours. Either he is feeling very insecure or he knows a lot of Umno members have been signalling their wish to come on board Pakatan. But to answer him, how can Umno be more democratic than PKR? We have a one-member one-vote system, whereas only a miniscule percentage of Umno members get to vote directly for their leaders. They have to go through delegates who will surely take advantage of money politics and vote the way the elite wants," chided Jui Meng.

"As for PAS' Nik Aziz, their internal structure is that the Spiritual Adviser is higher than the party president. So what is Najib talking about? As Umno president and PM, he should be telling his party how they will pull Malaysia out of the economic rut, how they will clean the party from corruption and not defend corruption. He will tell all of Malaysia what a grand party Umno is by envisioning a future of real democracy and hope for all the people especially the poor and down-trodden. Not back-bite and bitch!"

Game changers or mere verbose?

Najib also resorted to fancy terms like "game changers" but gave little explanation of what it really meant or entailed, other than that it included the new media, new political reality and new thinking amongst voters.

However, as he defended Umno's ways in the same breath, his comments were waved off as mere verbose intended to sound nice but not meant to be acted on. It was indeed telling while Najib urged 'unpopular' candidates not to cling onto their seats, he did not once touch on core issues that have wrecked Umno - corruption and power in the hands of the elite.

The 2011 AGM comes as Wanita chief Shahrizat Jalil is accused of abuse of power and her family of corruption in the RM250 million NFC debacle. Yet a day ago, Umno Youth was urged to defend Shahrizat, rather than advise her to undergo a complete probe to clear her name. That Umno was resorting to abusing the institutions especially the police was clear, when Deputy IGP Khalid Bakar suddenly issued a statement this morning that there were no 'elements' of corruption in the police probe on NFC so far, prompting cynicism that Khalid was just being a lackey for Najib to save face for Umno.

Not a word on corruption as M'sia sinks on graft index
Critics said it was also strange that while Najib professes a desire for a new and better Malaysia, for his own party, he does dare to even mention the 'C' word - referring to corruption.

Meanwhile, to underscore how much damage the rot in Umno is causing the country is news that Malaysia had plummeted again in the internationally-followed Corruption Perception Index to 60 from 56 last year. This is the 3rd straight year Malaysia was rated as being more corrupt than the past year.

"We must realise, if Umno still fails to understand and appreciate the factors that become the 'game changers'... and not take steps to re-frame the 'game plan', which is our planned movement, then we will become tragedy. If Umno does not understand the new realities of the national political landscape, how are Umno and BN going to succeed? Secondly, the new media," said Najib.

"Like it or not, Umno should take control of the new media because today, at this moment, it can determine victory or defeat. It can level out the playing field as well as make a battle unequal. Thirdly, Umno should also appreciate that there is new thought among all segments of the electorate, so we must attract their support. Umno cannot have the attitude or be seen as insolent and arrogant, or else the voters and the people will shun us."

Not racist or crowning hypocrisy

But perhaps Najib's 'crowning' hypocrisy was when he declared to the Umno assembly that Umno was not racist. This, when he did not even rebuke his information chief Ahmad Maslan, who just days ago had uttered some of the most racist comments so far for this year.

Umno is in reality a catalyst of the co-operative spirit between races which finally created social stability and brought about national harmony,Najib said. Umno was willing (even) back then to vote candidates not from their own race, for a bigger purpose, for winning elections, forming a government and then independence."

Ahmad Maslan, a deputy minister in Najib's department and the Pontian MP, had lamented the loss of political space to non-Malay leaders as unacceptable. He especially picked on the Chinese and warned that should the Pakatan do well enough in GE-13 to force a 'hung' Parliament, Malays stood to loose their language rights and Islam would be sidelined by the Christians.

Critics hit Najib hard for "daring to make such a thick-skinned claim" that Umno was not racist.

"This must be the biggest joke of all. No wonder Umno has to cheat at the polls. They keep twisting and turning the truth rather admit and correct their wrongdoings. It gets worse and worse each year," said Jui Meng.

"It is no point talking about 'game changers' or using fancy jargon. Just go back to basics. Serve the people well, listen to what they want, recognize it's what the people and not what the Umno elite wants that counts. Sweep out corruption although it may be a bit too late. It will engulf us and bankrupt us. Punish racists in Umno including Muhyiddin Yassin and Mahathir Mohamad before insisting that Umno is not racist. Then we will say, you are not a hypocrite!"






Malaysia Chronicle.com

Even more shocking, NFC paid for Shahrizat's RM10mil luxury Bangsar condo

This is one skirmish that Umno Senator Shahrizat Jalil is bound to lose.

Despite calling on her friends - Prime Minister Najib Razak, Agriculture minister Noh Omar and Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin - to counter the "political agenda" of the opposition that she alleges is aimed to weaken her Women's wing, all eyes are now how she will explain an RM10million super-luxury condo paid with funds from the NFC beef production project.

“They said the RM250 million loan for the project was in a tightly-controlled account. Is the condominium for cows to live in?” PKR secretary general Saifuddin Nasution told a press conference in the Parliament lobby on Thursday.

Cast-iron - it was a cash purchase

Saifuddin, who is also the Machang MP, Nasution said the luxury apartment at One Menerung, Bangsar was recorded by in the books of the NFC or National Feedlot Centre as part of a RM83 million “loan” to NMLC, which is controlled by Shahrizat's family.

The project aimed to raise local supply of beef to 40 per cent of consumption was awarded to Shahrizat's husband Mohamad Salleh Ismail and cher hildren to manage and oversee.

PKR has been sounding the alarm bells on the project, but was snubbed in Parliament by the BN MPs. However, a recently released Auditor General's report for 2010 confirmed PKR's allegation. The AG said the project was in a "mess" and had fallen far short of its production target.

On Tuesday, PKR revealed that more than RM83 million was siphoned off from NFC to companies controlled by Shahrizat’s husband, such as NMLC and RPC. It also questioned the RM3million discount granted to RPC, which in turn owns Meatworks, a fine-dining outlet also owned by Shahrizat's family.

Saifuddin told reporters today that RM9,758,140 was transferred from NFC’s CIMB account in Taman Tun Dr Ismail, Kuala Lumpur to Bandar Raya Developments Berhad on December 2, 2009 as full payment for the One Menerung condo.

“It was not from a special trust account. So the Umno Youth chief and minister’s explanations are false. If strict monitoring had occurred, surely RM9.8 million cannot be transferred to buy a luxury condo that has nothing to do with cattle farming. This is a clear breach of trust by Shahrizat’s family,” said Saifuddin.

Khairy the most two-faced?

Just Wednesday evening, Khairy - whose supporters claim the Oxford-graduate is now a 'transformed' and 'cleansed' Umno leader - insisted that the soft loan could only be disbursed after the NFC tabled a working paper and the transaction was approved by the Finance ministry.

Noh had also said that only RM135 million had been drawn by the NFC as the funds have been placed in an escrow account. Najib, the Finance minister, too denied the government soft loan had already been fully disbursed to NFC.

"Khairy's justification of the inter-company balance of RM83 million owed by National Meat and Livestocks Corporation Sdn Bhd (NMLC) is the weakest," PKR strategy director Rafizi Ramli had said in a statement.

"If his claim that there were proper authorization procedures in place before a withdrawal from the “escrow account which is not an escrow account” can be made is true, there should not have been personal expenses charged as inter-company transactions. Unfortunately, our scrutiny of the bank accounts points to numerous personal transactions unrelated to the meat business that should not have been authorised for withdrawals."

Using brains to bluff rather than defend the people

According to Rafizi, if NFC and RFC have to rely on public subsidies in order to remain commercially competitive, then the whole "grand design of a national feedlot project should not have been approved from the onset as it is clearly not commercially viable".

If the whole point of spending RM250 million of public funds on this national feedlot project is to cut reliance on imported meats, it is common sense that the locally produced meat must be cheaper than imported ones! But it is not, Rafizi added.

Meanwhile, PKR Women's chief Zuraida Kamaruddin has called on Shahrizat to resign and prove that "women have more integrity than the others in BN".

But it highly unlikely that Shahrizat, who is well-known for her 'baggage', will heed her advice.

“The honourable thing for her to do is to resign from government and leave politics given that there will be more exposés on this scandalous project. Only her resignation can save the honour of Wanita Umno members who have become embroiled in this scandal,” said Zuraida, who was also at the press conference with Saifuddin.

"She should be above the rest of her Barisan Nasional and show that women have more credibility and integrity.”

Maria Begum, Malaysia Chronicle