The Third Force
Lim Kit Siang appears to be rubbing Donald J. Trump the wrong way. Last Saturday, the 11th of February 2017, the DAP de facto chief accused Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Najib Tun Razak of emulating the newly elected president of the United States (US) by using tweets to spread, as he put it, “politics of fear, hatred and lies”.
According to him, Najib frequently engaged in fear-mongering tactics by getting the Malays to believe their rights were in jeopardy. Says the senior Lim, Najib accomplished this by telling the Malays that he (Kit Siang) was anti-Islam and would lead the country in the event UMNO loses the general election.
And this is the same man who, early last December, entered a secret pact with former premier Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, the terms of which guaranteed him the post of deputy premier in the event UMNO loses the next general election. And while Kit Siang denies such a pact was ever entered, Mahathir acknowledges its existence but seems confused as to who wants what.
Yes, Mahathir is a very old man. So old, he tends to be very forgetful. Perhaps that explains why he initially agreed that the DAP had requested for the post of deputy premier, only to backtrack later by saying that an MCA leader had made the request. Now, doesn’t that go a long way to show what happens when two very old men try to agree on a point?
It becomes a moo point.
I mean, it’s just like having two cows meet in the field and moo at each other. At the end of day, it wouldn’t matter who says what, as all you would get is moo and moo. Kit Siang may just as well have mooed at Mahathir, and likewise, Mahathir, Kit Siang. You have a moo here and a moo there, and once the media gets a hold of it, there is a lot of moo to go around everywhere.
Which is why we have tweets. With tweets, the point is short, concise, and gets locked into the voter conscience the minute it is delivered. Not to mention, it works with alibis. For instance, when Mahathir met Kit Siang, he could have created an alibi by tweeting that he was meeting the Pope. That would have preempted any attempt by anyone seeking to expose a secret pact that may have been entered that day. Yes, tweets can be a wonderful thing.
Perhaps that explains why Trump tweets. Perhaps he needs Americans to be informed of decisions he makes the minute he makes them. The fact that Americans voted him as president goes a long way to show why tweets may be a thing of the future. And the future is today, something very old twits like Kit Siang may not be able to fully comprehend.
Speaking of twits, there are a lot of things Kit Siang just doesn’t understand. For instance, he doesn’t understand why Barisan Nasional (BN) ‘propagandists and cyber-troopers’ are accusing him of being Mahathir’s stooge.
“UMNO/BN leaders, propagandists and cybertroopers should straighten out their propaganda campaign of fear, hatred and lies – whether Mahathir is my puppet and stooge or whether I have become Mahahir’s puppet and stooge. It is one or the other, as it cannot be both.”
Yes, it has to be one or the other, not both.
But then, didn’t it occur to Kit Siang that the so called UMNO/BN ‘cyber-troopers’ or ‘propagandists’ were merely echoing sentiments abound? I mean, aren’t the people the ones accusing both the senior Machiavellians of being each other’s puppets? And can we truly blame the people? After all, the antics displayed by these two very old men can indeed be very confusing, can they not?
Seriously, tell me you do not know how much Mahathir hates Kit Siang. Tell me you do not know how the senior Lim spent close to four decades vilifying Mahathir as the face of sin and everything immoral. The duo hate each other so much, the last thing anyone would expect is a government with Mukhriz as Prime Minister and Kit Siang aa his deputy. So can we blame the people for being confused?
So real is this deal, one begins to wonder if there is something we’re not being told. And believe me, there is a lot we’re not being told. I mean, it is not like Mahathir to agree that his son runs the country alongside a DAP politician who spent 36 years turning black everything that read Mahathir. Something doesn’t add up, and it has to do with events that unfolded a little over a week before the recently concluded UMNO general assembly.
And the story goes like this:
Mahathir and Kit Siang were locked in a bitter dispute over a treasure trove of wealth the DAP is currently the beneficiary of. It began when Mahathir came to know of this wealth mid last November and blackmailed Kit Siang by threatening to reveal its source should the senior Lim refuse to do his bidding.
Kit Siang was shaken to the core, considering that the people funding his team belonged to a very notorious group of Hongkies (persons from Hong Kong) and Singaporeans, known to indulge heavily in gambling and money-laundering activity. Mahathir laid out terms of a proposed collaboration he expected the senior Lim’s DAP to comply with. In return, he promised to keep the source of the DAP’s funding secret.
But as luck had it, someone from the DAP came to know a day before the recently-concluded UMNO general assembly that the treasure trove Ki Siang’s funders were siphoning money from was in fact filled with wealth belonging to – and get this – the Government of Malaysia (GOM). The wealth had snowballed from an initial sum Bank Bumiputra Malaysia Berhad (BBMB) extended to a Hong Kong registered entity, the Carrian group, between the years 1979 and 1982.
This DAP man – or insider – came to know of Mahathir’s and Tun Daim Zainuddin’s involvement in a scheme back in the early eighties to generate wealth from the movement of BBMB funds through a network of 232 companies based in Hong Kong, the United Kingdom (UK) and later, the British Virgin Islands (BVI). It is highly suspect that the senior Lim was made aware of the extent of Daim’s involvement in the conspiracy, contrived to rob the GOM of its worth.
If true, this explains why the senior Lim was offered two high-profile government portfolios by Mahathir in the event Pakatan Harapan wins the 14th general election. As it turns out, the senior Lim is said to have threatened to reveal the extent of Mahathir’s wealth in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the UK to the tenth decimal point should he (Kit Siang) be denied the post of Finance Minister. This happened just a day after the UMNO general assembly had commenced.
So the long and short of it is this – Mahathir thought he had the upper hand when he discovered that Kit Siang and his men were receiving billions from a notorious group of businessmen engaged in money-laundering activities. The former premier decided to twist Kit Siang’s arm in the hope that the DAP veteran would help fund Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia’s (PPBM) electoral campaigns.
But the plan went to pot when Kit Siang found out that the DAP was being funded using wealth that may actually belong to the GOM. Worse, much of that wealth was generated over the years using funds Mahathir and Daim had willingly allowed the Carrian group to channel through its fleet of shell companies based in Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands (BVI).
Once the Carrian group went bust, a group of Hongkies began converting the cash surplus generated by the movement of BBMB funds through the BVI network into fixed assets by purchasing property units in mainland China, Hong Kong, the UK and Taiwan.
The Taiwanese assets changed hands over the years before ending up with a group of notorious Chinese businessmen based in Hong Kong and Singapore. These businessmen have been channelling billions to the DAP since 2007 with a mission is to seize control of all port-bearing states in the west coast of peninsula Malaysia, which basically explains why Kit Siang went out of his way to sabotage Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim’s chances at securing the Port Klang state seat during the 2013 general elections.
Interesting, is it not?
What is more interesting is that both Mahathir and the DAP insider were tipped off by the same man, who, to this day, holds a grudge against the former premier for torpedoing the planned purchase of a property unit in Hong Kong, the Gammon House. Yes, there is a very high-profile leader, alive and kicking, who is playing both ends against the middle, keeping his options open by feeding info all around, knowing well in advance that the info would cripple both sides.
In other words, this veteran politician is someone you might call a kingmaker. And he may have had something to do with the murder of Jalil Ibrahim, an auditor from BBMB whose body was found in a banana plantation in Hong Kong back in 1983.
Rest assured, Malaysia Today will embark on a series of exposes later this week, set to take the wraps off the biggest scandal to have ever hit Southeast Asia. As we go along, Malaysians will be delivered jolts of shock as information that has remained buried all these years is unearthed and laid bare for the first time ever in Malaysian history.
Stick around guys. The Third Force never sleeps.