Raggie Jessy Rithaudeen
(بوقتي كوكوه ڬوان اڠ راسيس دان ءباڤق بريتا ڤلسوء ﴿36 داليل
Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng said today that Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) achievements in steering the country’s growth and reducing the fiscal deficit were overshadowed by political news.
According to a news report, the DAP secretary general cum Minister of Finance told Fitch Ratings during an interview that the political buzz surrounding PH is merely “noise”, and that the coalition was forced to expend resources to combat fake news.
In light of this, let us pick a handful of incidences that are either deceiving, inaccurate or downright racist involving Lim in various capacities, including Minister of Finance, Chief Minister of Penang and DAP secretary-general.
This hand-picked list should give you a rough idea what sort of a rotten, lying, and scoundrel of a weasel we’re dealing with here:
The one about the Penang Undersea Tunnel Project and the reason China hates Guan Eng
1. In a 2013 edition of the Penang state government’s official mouthpiece, Buletin Mutiara, then state secretary Farizan Darus, acting on behalf of the state administration led by Guan Eng, announced that the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) awarded the RM6.23 billion Penang Undersea Tunnel Project had a paid up capital of RM4.6 billion.
2. In the same edition, Farizan was quoted as saying that the main contractor of the project, China Railway Construction Corporation Ltd., jointly held a 70 percent stake in the SPV together with Zenith Construction Sdn Bhd.
3. However, when CRCC later revealed that it never held stakes in the project, Guan Eng completely denied ever saying that it did, insisting that the company was only listed as the main contractor.
4. It was also discovered that the Chinese construction giant hadlong stopped work owing to the SPV’s failure to fulfil 95 percent of its obligations, said to be worth some RM69 million.
5. On the 4th of March 2018, I challenged Guan Eng to issue a formal retraction of a 4th of March 2013 report by the Penang state government’s official gazette, Buletin Mutiara.
6. When my challenge went unheeded, I lodged a report with the MCMC and told an officer in charge that not only did the fake Buletin Mutiara news piece appear online, Guan Eng had in fact written in his Facebook that the previous Barisan Nasional administration had resorted to handing out BR1M to “buy votes.”
7. However, following the 14thgeneral election and Gobind Singh Deo’s appointment to the MCMC, I received an email from the agency that the evidences I presented (below) were “political speeches” and did not constitute crimes.
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8. To date, not only has Guan Eng or the MCMC failed to instruct Buletin Mutiara to purge the 4thof March 2013 news report, no formal retraction or apology was ever issued by Guan Eng or the Penang state government for lying to the people.
9. Did you know that Lim’s lies pissed the Chinese government off as it involved one of China’s largest and most reputable construction firms, the CRCC?
10. Ever wondered why Guan Eng is not directly involved with the Chinese Ministry of Finance and had to get Tun Daim Zainuddin to conduct negotiations on his behalf?
The one about the fake RM1 trillion debt and ‘fake’ FDI
11. Lim’s flip flops on the RM1 trillion debt issue left a bitter taste in the mouths of serious investors who could easily get correct figures off the various financial institutions and Bank Negara websites.
12. The lies caused a lot of these investors to lose confidence in the Government of Malaysia’s ability to put up a clean show, worried that the Ministry of Finance under Lim was manipulating figures for illicit purposes.
13. But Guan Eng never seemed to let up and maintained his RM1 trillion debt claim despite telling the Dewan Rakyat, under oath, when tabling Budget 2019 that the national debt was really at RM725.2 billion, not RM1 trillion.
14. On the 13thof May 2019, Morgan Stanley Research forecasted that the ringgit would slide against the greenback compared with (then) current levels for the whole of 2019.
15. Prior to that, on the 10th of May 2019, UOB Research revealed that Malaysia hadrecorded a RM11.2 billion portfolio outflow in April that comprised RM9.8 billion in debt securities and RM1.4 billion in equities.
16. This, according to UOB, was the highest pull-out by foreign investors in 10 months, meaning, the guys abroad weren’t exactly convinced that our economy was doing well.
17. Interestingly, the figures from UOB tied up completely with the position DBS Research took on bonds issued by the GoM.
18. On the 2ndof May 2019, the Singaporean based DBS downgraded our bonds to “neutral” by citing rising valuation and mounting risks.
19. That’s just another way of saying that the GoM was at a higher risk of defaulting its obligations to people who lent it money and partly explained the RM9.8 billion debt security pull-out by foreign investors at the time.
20. That effectively meant people from abroad were scampering even though the securities they were leaving behind were mostly government guaranteed.
21. But Lim told us an entirely different story.
22. On the 18thof May 2019, he announced that our country had achieved the highest realised FDI in history, citing a 94.8 per cent jump in its worth from RM11.2 billion the first quarter of 2018 to RM21.7 billion during the same period in 2019.
23. According to him, the improvement demonstrated the ‘strength’ of the economy and the rising confidence that foreign investors had in Malaysia and its government.
24. However, it was later revealed that RM8.4 billion of the so-called RM21.7 billion ‘feat’ was in fact from Japan and amounted to proceeds from the sale of Khazanah Nasional’s stake in IHH Healthcare Berhad.
25. It was also discovered that another RM3.7 billion was from Austria and comprised proceeds from the purchase of a 50% stake in Sapura Upstream Sdn Bhd by OMV Exploration & Production GmbH.
26. So why did Lim need to lie? Why not just tell us that the GoM undertook to sell its own assets during the fourth quarter of 2018 instead of lying about the increase in investor confidence by referring to proceeds from those sales as FDI?
The one about the fake Debt-to-GDP ratio
27. On the 13thof June 2018, a month after the 14thgeneral election, Moody’s Investor Service rubbished Guan Eng’s Debt-to-GDP ratio ‘setting’ by maintaining that Malaysia’s direct government debt was at 50.8 per cent GDP, not 80-plus percent as claimed.
28. In response, Guan Eng said the agency did not reveal the “true extent of government debt” but admitted that the direct government debt was RM687 billion, not RM1 trillion.
29. In other words, Guan Eng was talking rubbish, given that Moody’s was not at all focused on the government debt or what one minister thought how debt should be calculated, but the actual value of our Debt-to-GDP ratio based on international standards.
30. Truth is, Lim was simply attempting to divert attention from Moody’s actual claim by confusing people with things the agency never said.
31. As a matter of fact, Lim never once denied Moody’s 50.8 per cent Debt-to-GDP claim, meaning, the 80.3 per cent ratio he announced was an outright lie which has yet to be retracted to this day.
The one about Christians not being able to observe their religious rites under PAS and Barisan Nasional.
32. During the recent Tanjung Piai by-election campaign, Guan Eng told a DAP congregation in Muar, Johor that a vote for the MCA was akin to a vote for UMNO’s and PAS’ “extremist religious philosophies” which prohibited Christians from congregating for prayers.
33. I lodged a police report against Guan Eng on the matter and branded him racist, anti-Islam and pro-evangeslist.
34. I am made to understand that the police filed the case under Section 502 (c) of the Penal Code.
35. What is so interesting about the whole affair is the fact that Guan Eng’s father, Lim Kit Siang, came right out after the by election to seek police investigations into people who threatened unrest.
36. The way I see it, the senior Lim should instead have reprimanded his own son by reminding him that his incessant rants on racism was cause for concern among investors who were probably shocked that a minister could issue such an irresponsible remark.
Should Lim challenge these findings, I’d be more than happy to publish another 36 reasons why he is among the greatest of liars who ever lived in Malaysia.
There is a lot more where all this came from….
