Pakatan Harapan needs to do some serious soul-searching and ask itself whether this is now no longer about justice and truth but about sabotaging the government even if the country has to suffer billions in loses. This is beginning to look like how the Communist Party of Malaya bombed and killed and caused great loss of property and lives just to win an argument.
Pakatan Harapan wants 1MDB put into administration. This was what the Malay Mail Online reported today:
Pakatan Harapan suggested in its shadow budget today a restructuring of 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) by putting the firm into administration, claiming the rescue mechanism could be one way to help repair Malaysia’s image to the world.
According to the budget presented by Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail and other lawmakers from the federal opposition pact, putting the firm into administration would also restore confidence in the economy.
“The serious legacy issues plaguing 1MDB are tainting Malaysia’s international image as a whole; causing investors to perceive the company as a representation of our country.
“The sooner 1MDB is put into administration, the sooner misperceptions can be corrected and the damage repaired,” according to the 50-page budget.
They also want to block TNB from taking over some of 1MDB’s assets, which will effectively torpedo 1MDB’s rationalisation and debt reduction exercise and push the company into insolvency.
“I have been in the corporate world and I understand that it is up to TNB to make a decision as long as it is an objective, commercial decision that it will add value to TNB,” said Rafizi Ramli, PKR’s version of DAP’s Tony Pua. “However, TNB is owned by the rakyat. We cannot allow TNB to be quietly used to bail out 1MDB.”
Putting a company into administration is basically a move to declare that the company is not able to pay its debts or can only pay part of his debts. This is the first step into winding up a company and then sell of its assets at ‘fire-sale’ prices to service a portion of its debts, which means the creditors would need to ‘take a haircut’ and will have to wipe off a portion of the debts.
1MDB had tabled its rationalisation and debt reduction plan to the Cabinet in June this year, which the Cabinet approved and which is supposed to be completed by the end of this year with more than two-thirds of its debts serviced. Pakatan Harapan, however, is attempting to block this so that 1MDB can be declared a failure before it can be proven otherwise.
And this is Pakatan Harapan’s main worry, that 1MDB may prove viable in the end, contradictory to what its critics are saying. So what is Pakatan Harapan’s motive here? Is it to help save 1MDB, as they are saying so, or is it to ensure that 1MDB fails?
Rather than help ensure that 1MDB succeeds Pakatan Harapan’s attempt at sabotaging the company will technically throw a spanner in the works and will jam the rationalisation and debt reduction exercise. 1MDB is supposed to complete its exercise by the end of the year. Why not wait and see what happens first? Why trip up 1MDB just before it crosses the finishing line?
Pakatan Harapan needs to do some serious soul-searching and ask itself whether this is now no longer about justice and truth but about sabotaging the government even if the country has to suffer billions in loses. This is beginning to look like how the Communist Party of Malaya bombed and killed and caused great loss of property and lives just to win an argument. – Raja Petra Kamarudin
