A helicopter accident happened in Nibong Tebal on 30 March 2006. The newspapers reported how Dato' Patrick Lim was so sad about the loss of his friend, Mr Joseph Chan Sum Foo, the general manager of Abad Naluri Sdn Bhd, killed when the rotor blade struck him unexpectedly. Dato' Patrick is executive chairman of Equine Capital Berhad, and known to the cogniscenti as Patrick Badawi, and the Chinese face to his son's Scomi Berhad, one of whose subsidiaries has got the double tracking contract for Malaysian Railways. This company has no experience in rail way construction, but does it matter in Malaysia? Scomi came into the news a few years ago when the United States objected to Scomi making tubes for a Pakistani nuclear scientist for ultimate resale to Muslim countries of the Middle East as a component of nuclear weapons. here Front page photographs of Dato' Patrick crying over his friend's body near the helicopter are staged, but that is normal when they believe they are some body or want others to believe they are.

But would Sime Darby or Permodalan Nasional Berhad threaten its critics with defamation if they enquired too closely with its activities? ECM Libra, which has much to hide and will not explain itself, would. It can only threaten defamation so long as Pak Lah is prime minister. His son-in-law, Mr Khairy Jamaluddin, has bought into ECM Libra for RM9.2 million, which he could not have earned in office. He is son of a ambassador, is not from a wealthy family. and has no access to wealth if he had not married Pak Lah's daughter. He had put his friends in high places. The talk in town is that the cabinet reshuffle, which Pak Lah should have done a year ago, will be done this year as Mr Khairy wants it. Many in UMNO do not like his insiduous role in Pak Lah's government. It is even said Pak Lah is finished as prime minister if the cabinet reshuffle, when it comes, is what Mr Khairy had in mind.

It is therefore in a quandry. It depends on more tourists from China, but its agencies and departments illtreat them at the airport or once they have entered the country. Malaysia depends on tourists from China. It has built the facilites for them, but about two thirds less have come here compared to last year. Earlier this year, Chinese tourist high rollers refused to visit the casino at Genting Highlands for two days because some of them had been illtreated earlier this year. Genting Highlands Berhad, which owns the casino, lost millions of ringgit plus the daily takings from these tourists for two days. It should have been a warning sign. Instead, the present crisis, which started with a MMS videoclip showing a naked Chinese woman doing a ear squat in PJ District police station. It was against the rules. The Seputeh MP produced the videoclip at Parliament House, and she is investigated by the police on how she got the tape. The secretary-general of the DAP went to jail for helping a Malay woman who was being harassed by the government. There has been conficting public statements, similar to the National Front government statements now. The hope is this would be forgotten. But it would not. Malaysians have been illtreated by the police. The Indians who have got the short shrift when they approached the Malaysian Indian Congress or the People's Progressive Party, as the Chinese when they approached the Malaysian Chinese Association or the Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia. UMNO would not touch it. So the Malaysians badly treated by the police know they have been, their dignity and self respect had been destroyed in the process and they kept quiet. They have been told they are lying at the police abuses they endured a long time ago, as the Chinese tourists have told Chinese mainland newspapers they have also been manhandled by the police.

TENAGA NASIONAL Berhad (TNB) continues to be an example of a privatised utility taken control of by cronies of the Establishment, in this instance, the most powerful 30-year-old in Malaysia who doubles up as the Prime Minister's son-in-law, Mr Khairy Jamaludin. The professional management of TNB is not allowed to run the electricity utility as it is capable of; instead, it is at the mercy of the cronies of this 30-year-old, who line their pockets and destroy what was once Malaysia's best run utility. It was privatised on the flawed principle that the government should not concern itself with making money. But it is here to be robbed and pillaged by its present management because the government did a good job of running it well for all its life.

POS MALAYSIA Berhad IS, like Malaysian government-linked companies, on the rip-off trail. It has peculiar notion why it is around. It is not to serve the public or provide a service, but to make money for its senior executives and, if there is enough change left, for the postal service. The first step is to computerise its operations, done not to make it easier to deal with those who use it, but as a religious offering in the temple of computerisation and modernisation. So it would stop any but the most determined, the contract is usually given to an Umno-based conglomerate of well-connected near-bankrupts with doubtful credentials and supervised by well-connected politicians of similar intelligence and reach. Their aim is profit for little or no work, and hand it down to the lowest bidder for a system that in due course would not work.

That looks a reasonable request, but it is not. Like the constitutional crisis in 1984, Tenaga Nasional Berhad forced to buy power from independent power plants after a manufactured power crisis, and the privatisation of water resources after a manufactured water shortage, plans for federal control of forests were decided a year earlier. The speed with which "experts" approved the plans and talked authoritatively about it suggest they had been primed long before the crisis blew in Selangor. In other words, there is bad faith in the central government's dealing with the states. It does not keep the conference of rulers informed, unless it has no choice.

This is the norm. The bright young Oxonian UMNO kid, Mr Khairy Jamaluddin, appoints his coterie of self-appointed bright young kinds, to create havoc on all he touches. Smaller ripples of the coterie's coterie rape their way to wealth in similar ways, all to prove that the Ali Baba system has gone high tech and is at the cutting edge of greed and power. No where is this as blatant as in Tenaga Nasional Berhad, the plaything of Mr Khairy. One of the subspecies of coterie is controlled by two former TNB staff, the Baba conduit for an outside Ali cartel to work with the TNB Ali cartel within to rape and pillage.

He cuts a broad swathe in business too. His nominees hold the highest posts in Tenaga Nasional Berhad, and he appears to decide who gets the TNB contracts. The Selangor mentri besar, Dato' Seri Mohamed Khir Toyo, found this out when he wanted a crony get one TNB contract. The 50-year-old TNB wiring contractor was asked to see a Mr S. who demanded RM100,000 for an hour's meeting with Mr Khairy. Dato' Seri Khir is furious. He should have known the rules by now. But items like these inevitably divides UMNO, even the supporters of Pak Lah, into two camps. And with this comes the scandal in TNB, where a group of young Turks, appointed at Mr Khairy's behest and who takes orders from him, has divided that once much vaunted utility turned into a pitched confrontation between the technical branch and the outside executives brought in for political reasons to all but destroy it. The recent spate of blackouts is one indication of it.

But since the government assets are all in crucial and critical areas where in the past the private sector was not interested in, the government has no choice but to take it back. In Malaysia and, no doubt, elsewhere, privatisation has a dirty name and future: the ruling party and its acolytes muddy the pool as its untested management in their twenties and thirties run into debt and for personal gain. The crisis in Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) reveals how it is done. It is a shoddy tale of all that is wrong with privatisation made worse when it would not respond to the growing public clamour.

THE ORACLE HAS SPOKEN: The Tenaga Nasional Berhad is as much in the dark as many Malaysians yesterday about the blackout which hit them. The TNB deputy CEO, Dato' Abdul Hadi Mohammad Deros, is puzzled: "It has never happened. Should not have happened. Cannot happen", nor why or how. He is in the same boat as Che Mat Endot, Kuppuswamy, and Ah Chong who does not what happened and why, and, like him equally puzzled. But Dato' Abdul Hadi should know, and if he knows, not saying. This, no doubt, is a cardinal rule in the code of transparency that the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, wants. To be fair, he did say a little more, in gobbledygook, which I translate: A switching gear tripped at the Sultan Salehuddin Abdul Aziz power station in Klang, caused a shortage of 1700 MW, and loadshedding from Kuala Lumpur to Johore Bahru.

For the UMNO supreme council, the Sabah chief minister, Dato' Musa Aman offers RM1,000 a delegate in three tranches of RM200, RM300 and RM500; the Selangor mentri besar, Dato' Mohamed Khir Toyo offers RM1,000 or RM500 a delegate, depending on where he is from; those offering RM500 a vote are the Titiwangsa MP, Dato' Astaman Aziz; the deputy finance minister, Tengku Putra Tengku Awang; the deputy tourism minister and a former UMNO youth chief, Dato' Zahid Hamidi; the works deputy minister, Dato' Mohamed Zain Mohamed; the deputy rural and territory development minister and the former Tenaga Nasional Berhad chairman, Dato' Awang Adek Hussein.

But if he is not, Pak Lah faces another crisis at the UMNO general assembly next month, where one likely subject for discussion is why the UMNO-led BN government denies a PAS-led Malay state government its contractual right to oil royalties, while bending over backwards so its Chinese cronies are given carte blance to make money in grossly uneven contracts in their favour. One comes to mind: the contract that the YTL group signed with Tenaga Nasional Berhad to provide electrical power at eight cents over TNB's own price and whether TNB needed it or not, and to whom TNB now owes a not inconsiderable sum.

A contract is signed this week for the Jimah power plant in Negri Sembilan. It should have been stopped, but it is not. One key figure in this project is the MP for Titiwangsa, Dato' Astaman Aziz, an electrical engineer, who had the unusual luck of being given two independent power projects. His foreign partner is the Japanese company, Sumitomo. He was given the Lumut power project, which he promptly sold to a favoured Malaysian company, Malakoff Berhad, for a reputed RM20 million. He was involved in the Tanjong Bin power project in Johore, out of which his share was RM30 million. Those in the know say his latest project will earn him twice that.

But Mr Khairy Jamaludin, 28, is back in the political limelight. After he left his father-in-law's office, he was tipped to head the RM150 billion Khazanah Holdings Berhad. An untimely news leak put paid to that. He is a bright young man, intelligent as they come, but without an understanding of what Malaysia is all about. His original intent to stand for deputy leader of UMNO youth was resisted strongly within the movement. He was then to be part of a ticket with the mentri besar of Selangor, Dato' Seri Khir Toyo and he as deputy. He was forced to back off. Now he is back in the fray. UMNO Youth did not want Dr Khir. And that was that. Now that Dato' Hishamuddin is back in the fray, Mr Khairy has a new lease of life as his deputy.

This RM800 billion represents RM40,000 owed by every man, woman and child in Malaysia for which the interest alone is RM3,300 a year. Malaysia has started selling off the family silver. Petronas is run to ground, its huge reserves cannibalised to fund the Mahathirian profligacy. Recently, the government stake in Tenaga Nasional Berhad, the power company, is sold to Petronas, and in a power station in Teluk Kemang to Sime Darby, for cash. Public works projects is at a standstill for want of funds to pay for them. The government does not pay its bills, and when it does, only a part of it. Since many creditors are Malay petty contractors, the political problem is the more severe. This is the Achiless hell of this administration. Pak Lah must resolve it as speedily as keep the disunited UMNO united for an UMNO-led BN administration to continue in office. If he were to take Malaysians into his confidence, ask for forgiveness, and help to avert a calamity, he might just pull it off. Could he? Would he?

MAIKA HOLDINGS Berhad BEGAN life as an investment company of the Malaysian Indian Congress, to harness Indian capital for the common good. Hundreds of thousands of working-class Indians borrowed money to the hilt to buy shares and soon, like investment companies run by UMNO, MCA, Gerakan and other political parties in the National Front (BN) went bankrupt or firmly on the road to it. The Maika Holdings Berhad mismanaged - and politically interfered by the MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu - from the start, saw the value of its RM1 shares reduced to about ten sen. It was re-organised, the original shareholders lost their money, many went into bankruptcy, and the new Maika Holdings Berhad went into areas it knew nothing about, and quickly ran into debt. When shareholders asked about how the company is doing, they were either shouted down or warned.

The finance ministry has yet to announce the award. It allowed the successful bidder to do so. Why? The transport ministry, which had overall charge of the project was not informed and knew of it after the fact. Was Pak Lah aware of the mess? He was informed by one of the two ambassadors involved who wrote to him before he took over. He could do nothing at this late stage. He had other problems on his mind, including if he would take over. But Datuk Jamaluddin has much to answer for. He was brought into the finance ministry for his stalwart service when, as chairman of Tenaga Nasional  Berhad [TNB], he rescued the Mahathir children from bankruptcy. TNB has ordered a wide-ranging internal inquiry on its board's misuse of fiscal authority under his chairmanship. When push comes to shove, he would be forced to account for his role in this needless trade war with India and China, especially if he believes he has a future in politics.

But this masks a larger problem: The MIC is irrelevant in the national picture as the PPP and IPF are. The UMNO secretary-general, Tan Sri Khalil Yaakub, said yesterday (10 November) the Indian parties must united under the MIC, which he extols as an important vote gatherer for the BN, but little of what it has done for the community. In other words, the MIC is in the BN so it would be kept quiet and docile, allowing its leaders to enrich themselves at their members' expense, allowint it to fester in its small irrelevant pool of like-minded Indian political parties, all out to ensure what they can garner from being associated with the BN. It is not a happy picture. This irrelevant mudslinging in which the MIC comes out badly is what is wrong with the party. It addresses every slight against its leader as a major offensive, and ignores Indian issues and problems that needs urgent correction. All Dato' Samy Vellu has done in his 24 years in office is to show Malaysians how efficiently Malaysian Indians can mismanage affairs so thoroughly - the MIC's much touted and vaunted Maika Holdings Berhad is now a private company controlled by its president, but not after its Indian shareholders losts tens of millions; every MIC venture is a disasterf - that the government no longer gives the MIC first crack of projects and shares reserved for the Indian community.

On the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange, two companies on the second board, have been star performers: Scomi Group Berhand, in oil and gas; and MTD Infraperdana Bhd, in food, tolled roads and other miscellaneous industries. They have consistently outperformed the stock exchange since their recent listing, often recording the highest turnover on the day, with Scomi Berhad more than three times more higher now. Both are controlled by a Kamaluddin Abdullah, obviously a tycoon on the make. He graduated from Cambridge University, and made a quite splash in the business world shortly after he went down, helping to win a company his uncle owned and controlled the right to provide rations for the armed forces for 15 years and, recently, to take over the catering services of Malaysian Airlines System for ten years.

The New Straits Times' Business Times supplement on 02 August 2003 surveyed the renumeration of the chief executives of the 448 listed companies whose highest paid executive is paid more than RM300,000, and published the top 20 highest paid. Top of this list is the nonagenarian CEO of Genting Berhad and its offshoot, Resorts World Berhad, Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong, who received a total of about RM110,000, which with his stake in the two companies, brought it up to RM133.5 million in 2002. Both companies are associated with gambling and leisure, and is proof how important gambling is to the Malaysian economy.

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