Having managed to articulate my views and feelings about the difficult situations in Malaysia and Canada, I finally feel able to continue addressing the particular scenario on Lelu Island. A lot has happened, ranging from conflicting scientific opinions to contrary statements from native leaders involved, and most significantly delayed decisions from the liberal government of Justin Trudeau. I will try to encapsulate and respond to these things in the next few posts.

Its Monday in Malaysia and there is no news of yet of the interest  payment by IPIC anticipated by Arul Kanda. However, according to the Malaysian Chronicle, Arul has indicated  that given that 1MDB’s default to  IPIC took place in Dec 31, 2015 (when payments were purportedly made by 1MDB to Aabar BVI), IPIC should not have waited till now to make the announcement.The implication is, at the very least, of some kind of negligence. In fact, it is claimed that US$3.5 billion was paid by 1MDB to Aabar BVI. Arul is reported to have said that there could actually be a massive fraud with a possible “collaboration from our side”. This is the first acknowledgement, however nuanced, of possible wrong doing by parties within 1MDB. It could be that Arul is the first casualty of the standoff and the ensuing ‘shootout’! He is reported to have said, “I’m very tired. I’m doing over and above what I had signed up to do.” With all of this, and with the WSJ report about American Pies in mind, it seems that the bullets are flying and one can begin to envisage a bloody end!

Depending on how old you are and perhaps on your gender, regardless of where in the world you grew up, you will probably be aware of the great cinematic artistry of the spaghetti western. My 1970s boyhood in St. Johns Primary involved regular collective viewings of violent and engaging cowboy films. There were no good guys, no bad guys – just guys you identified with – no matter if it was the Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach  or Lee Van Cleef – we collectively learnt that there was small difference  between the good, the bad and the ugly – In Malaysia, today we are having to learn that same lesson all over again, as adults! One classic plot device or trope in this Cowboy genre was the Mexican standoff where parties face each other at gunpoint. There is an inability of any party to advance its position safely. At the same time no party has a safe way to withdraw from its position, thus making the standoff permanent, at least until there is an external event. In the 1MDB/IPIC standoff both sides want the other to pay although both sides will benefit, neither side acknowledges the liability. The external event is the ending of the default grace period – that is today in Malaysian time!

I link to this video not because I endorse its compelling message but because I want to decode or deconstruct its reading and further my Duck You Sucker thesis of Malaysian politics. The speaker, Matthias Chang was the private secretary of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamed and, regardless of the veracity of the message he appears to have been taking around the financial world, was on a mission of political and financial consequence for Malaysia when he was charged as he describes at the start of this piece.  This video, this verbal dynamite (Duck You Suckers!!) is quite brilliant in the measure and control of its demolition. It is very articulate in a very Malaysian way! It is very convincing and  makes very clear and arguments. However, I must note some points of interest and criticism. My first point can be summed up as ‘kuncu-kuncu’ – Malaysia’s truly interracial and religious model for finance, politics, shenanigans and friendship! the speaker, himself Chinese, uses a racial slur  to index two purported Chinese associates of the Malay UMNO leadership which he alleges to be corrupt and spineless.  While this slur appears to belie the fact that he himself may be just such an associate of Malay primaries, it actually underscores that fact. Secondly while all the questions he wants answered seem legitimate, and have in fact, been raised by highly credible third parties in Switzerland and the United States, his sense of timing leaves a lot to be desired, when viewed in terms of a nuanced search for truth. His attack on the 1MDB/IPIC default seems to be flawed as it obscures what 1MDB  boss Arul Kanda has described as a grace period for the payment – few short but critical days in which Kanda believes that IPIC will give in and pay up! Regardless of any corruption at the heart of the 1MDB enterprise, if Kanda is correct about this grace period, and he is holding firm in the stasis of an amazing Tarrantinesque standoff, it is seems to me that it is, at the very least, a little premature to cry default with such finality before the grace period is up – it is up this Monday.

Last August, in a conversation with my friend and journalist Ismail Lim that he later developed into his Do You Want Mahathir to Shut Up piece in Free Malaysia Today, I had said ”Mahathir is the father and mother of modern Malaysia. Without him, the Malays would still be struggling to get out of the backwater and everyone else without exception would be in a sleepy Third World idyll…He may not be good, but he is smart. And he’s taking responsibility for the monster he created. The ‘old man’ is a player and Malaysians need to play hard ball now to get out of this mess … I think Mahathir’s principle is success and not necessarily goodness or fairness. Malaysia must succeed. If not, he will bring the skeleton back to the dock anyhow” I was responding to Ismail’s reference to the allegory of the fish from Hemingway’s The ‘Old Man’ and the Sea. Since that conversation, there have been so many gambits, ripostes and revelations in what is turning out to be the ultimate UMNO gundown. The latest of these is a Wall Street Journal report that in 2013, a certain Malaysian financier sent a BlackBerry instant message to an employee at a Kuala Lumpur bank that a number of ‘American pies’ would soon be arriving from overseas. While it is becoming harder and harder to doubt the evidence of corruption at 1MDB, there have been many indications that the integrity and motivations of its detractors are, regardless of the truth of the alleged corruption, questionable or political at the very least. In the contemporary Malaysian analogy, the valiant struggle to bring in the fish seems to have been superseded by the feeding frenzy around its carcass, and the sharks seem to be of all stripes. Indeed, money and politics, truth and expediency, appear to have become inextricably enmeshed and ‘means’ have become ‘ends ‘ in contemporary Malaysia.

Image: http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/highlight/2015/08/29/do-you-want-mahathir-to-shut-up/

The Wall Street Journal has today asserted quite categorically that investigators believe that US$681 million was transferred via intermediaries to British Virgin Islands based company, Tanore Finance Corp. and from here into Prime Minister Najib Razak’s bank accounts. The Prime Minister has in turn threatened to sue and is insisting that the US$681 million,  was a political donation from a member of the Saudi royal family. The Malaysian Attorney General has confirmed this and further asserted that US$620 million was returned unused after the 2013 general elections. This is  corroborated by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation which has published a letter from a Saudi prince pledging that a sum of US$375 million, and referring to previous pledges as well. Further the  Bernama news agency has reported Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir as saying the funds wired into the Malaysian Prime Minister’s personal bank account were a “genuine” donation originating from Saudi Arabia. So which millions are which?

There has been a spate of teenage suicides on the native reserve of Attawapiskat. It is not abating . A state of emergency has been declared. This growing phenomenon has been in the news, taking headlines next to a celebration Canada`s generosity to Syrian immigrants. Indeed, as an immigrant myself, I can vouch for this nation’s generosity to and inclusion of newcomers regardless of race, religion or any other aspect of difference, still, somehow, this conjunction of events – the juxtaposition native despair and immigrant salvation, has hit me like a freight train. It brought to the surface my deep sense that our homemaking was founded on someone else’s displacement. This supplanting of one people by another is the historical reality of all nations, but it is an uncomfortably contemporary phenomena in the Americas. A deep malaise came over me, with respect to my own project and to this blog, and I am only just finding my way forward. This impetus has come to me by way of the crystallization of an idea – that in Canada, my new home, native suicide is a residual or attenuated iteration of a founding genocide. Suicide as Genocide.

I have been unable to move ahead with this blog in the last 8 weeks as I have been at a loss for words …. literally!! Although a lot has been happening in the this time I could not find the motivation or the words to comment or reflect on either the Malaysian or the Canadian situation. In Malaysia the financial and political funk that stimulated this blog in the first instance has become even more funked up – all sides are looking disingenuous as truthfulness and opportunism seem to have become inextricably enmeshed. All I can say on this topic for the moment, addressing especially those who are the foot-soldiers of the various generalissimos is – ‘Duck You Suckers!’ – after Sergio Leones’s tragi-comic cry of political disillusionment  ( I saw it as A Fistful of Dynamite decades ago in Malaysia). Friends struggling with the politics at home may not find this amusing, but the Canadian conundrum that has weakened my resolve is even less amusing …. I will try to find the words … please wait for my next post …