It is important to understand that the Canadian Constitution gives provincial governments jurisdiction over matters like education, language, civil rights and land. Given this high level of autonomy and the logistical and infrastructural implications of Canada’s expansive land mass, the provinces seem to operate like small countries under a loose federation. PETRONAS, the 68th largest company in the world today (Fortune Global 500, 2015), is coming to British Columbia! PETRONAS is a company with regular annual revenues of over USD 100 billion and this arrival in the waters of Lelu island is analogous to Admiral Diogo Lopes de Sequeira sailing into the port of Malacca in 1509. Drawn by the fabled wealth of Malacca, Manuel I, King of Portugal, had sent the admiral to make a trading agreement and the rest of this story is the colonial history of Malaysia. One can only imagine how this mighty corporate intrusion appears to the Lax Kw’alaams, the people who have occupied and preserved their pristine and unceded territories for over 10,000 years.

Koboi Balik Kampung, Archival Chromogenic Print, Copyright 2015 by Niranjan Rajah

I want to fill in some background information about my own stake in this complex junction of interests …  I am a Malaysian living in Vancouver, British Columbia. In June 2013, I visited Kuala Lumpur, after being away for 13 years. It was a very exciting return for me in so many ways, not least because the fallout from the closely fought 13th General Elections was still in the air. This excitement was compounded for me as there was at this time hot news from British Columbia, news that the provincial government had just announced a 36 billion Canadian dollar investment by the PETRONAS Group of Companies in the local LNG industry. I had returned  ‘home’ to the news of a potential Malaysian hegemony in the prime future industry of my ‘home away from home’. There was a lot at stake economically for British Columbia and politically for the provincial Liberal party that governs BC. As a Malaysian resident of British Columbia, I was very excited by this news … but even in the hubris of the moment, I sensed, with deep unease, the foreshadows of territorial, economic and environmental strife.

The latest move in the Petronas – First Nations – BC liberals – Federal Liberals standoff is that the first nations are taking taking their case to the UN. Hereditary Chief John Ridsdale,of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, said the Petronas project undermines Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pledge to protect the rights of indigenous people, made at the very same UN. The Trudeau Cabinet had delayed its decision on an environmental assessment covering the Petronas owned Pacific Northwest LNG plant till late June and the tension is mounting. The recent announcement of an indefinite delay in a similar Shell project in Kitimat does not bode well for the Petronas investment. It seems that the first serious move in this standoff has been thrust upon the unwitting Federal Liberals. Petronas who may already have decided again pursuing this newly untenable investment can play it cool and see what the Feds come up with! The Lax Kw’Alaams, meanwhile, are building on Lelu in the hope that this strengthens their claim in law, and if not in law, it will certainly strengthen their claim  in fact. Its gonna take one hell of a showdown to get them off the island.It seems that all the BC Liberals can do is wait and see…. just like in Leone’s The Good the Bad and the Ugly, some of the guns are not even loaded! My call, at this point  – is that the fish are going to be just fine!!! Image from acrossthestreetnet

Image: 7 Cash is King, Visualization for photograph by Niranjan Rajah based on an original image by Zig Zag at https://warriorpublications.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/indian-act-chiefs-and-idle-no-more-snakes-in-the-grassroots/

In the ongoing tussle between past and present Prime Ministers of Malaysia, our social media has disseminated Mahathir Mohammed’s claim that for Najib Razak, ‘Cash is King!’ Mahathir’s insidious meme insinuates that Najib is corrupt, and insists that under him, money has become the determining factor in Malaysian politics. All else…  justice, community, nation… is swept away by this ‘money’ politics. While the evidence of illegal practices in or around the state run 1MDB have grown exponentially in the last 6 months, my own response to this agitation was, and still is today, to say that, whether or not Mahathir is correct, money politics is not a new phenomenon in Malaysia and neither, for that matter is corruption. Indeed, it must be noted that from a moral standpoint, the ascendancy of money in post independence Malaysia has been realized via many types of transactions; some of which may indeed be illegal but most of which are not. Regardless of legality, the attractions and temptations of big money are degrading to human integrity and morality. From this more ethical vantage, I must say that it appears that of late, what’s true about cash for Malaysians at home – Cash if King! may also be true for Malaysian operations abroad! Yes… today, way across the Pacific Ocean, here, in the Canadian Province of British Columbia … it seems that Malaysian cash may be pretending to the throne!

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/