Deals and last minute sting jobs

I am not going to listen to the usual flippant answer- you don't know? Why it's all designed to fatten the war chest of UMNO and BN- that's why we have all these deals. That is like saying every chicken road-killed is because UMNO is in power and every road-killed chicken in the kampong is the fault of the local assemblyman.

Get a hold of yourself people.

So let's go behind the reasons why for example these people in decision making positions decide to buy over Sunrise Bhd. What they will do perhaps is to create instant billionaires who will invest in China and Singapore. UEM which has its HQ in a very tall building at KL Sentral does not know how to build high rise condominiums? Those people in UEM land must be dullards or what.

With RM 1.4 billion they can go get all the kwailos out there to come work in Malaysia and build all the tall buildings they desire that reach into the clouds. With the same amount of money, they can entice the whole property team at Sime Darby Properties to work for UEM. No, let's go behind and ask more awkward questions.

Let's go behind, why there is a rush to award the RM43 billion job or part thereof to Gamuda-MMC. Obviously some people are getting fabulously wealthy by orchestrating this deal. Why is Putrajaya forming a SPV to finance this project when it was announced the last time, this was to be private sector project financed by private sector? Here is why. Make public the liability, make private the profitability.

Or why now, UEM and EPF who together control almost 70% of the PLUS highways appear to balk at an 11th hour offer by a little kichimayung Jelas Ulung. Maybe there is some collusion and conspiracy to defraud. Or why people in MAS are buying a large number of airplanes without justifying the purchases to the volume of passengers? Because maybe, large amount of commissions exchange hands.

Does the money go to UMNO and BN? Come on, they go to the finders-keepers people.UMNO, BN and the government can always be the bogey-man.

In that spirit, let's play around with the most recent drama unfolded at Khazannah's doors with a little nudge from Jelas Ulung. When the CEO of Khazanah pompously declared that PLUS highways are a critical national asset and the same sentiment was echoed by the choir boys at EPF and UEM, the issue should have come to an end.

But when Jelas Ulung comes forward and offers more meat in the form of explicitly saying they now have firm source of financing and now they won't ask for tax waivers and now they will also reduce or maintain the toll rates- all these sound and appear to be done as if in response to instructions from above.

It suggests for example, people in Khazanah telling some people out there- hey you go back to the drawing board- come back to us with a new proposal at the last minute, with some novel adjustments to pluck the holes in the entire previous proposals.

That would allow those people in Khazanah and EPF and UEM to say in unison, this is a polished deal worth deliberating. We shall now recommend to the shareholders and to impute a disinterested sense of fair play on the whole thing, we shall abstain from voting.

Suddenly, those boys who previously pompously declared that PLUS highways must be retained at all cost because they are a critical national asset are passing the buck to other shareholders. Why the sudden pious retreat?

Its money, money always sunny in a rich man's world.