Umno leader linked to Alstom bribery scandal?

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Umno leader linked to Alstom bribery scandal, says Singapore daily

 By Debra Chong

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 5 — Already on the backfoot over a national cattle farming scandal, Umno is now rocked by allegations that a former leader took kickbacks from French engineering giant Alstom for a power plant project in Perlis.

Singapore’s Straits Times (ST) reported today that Malaysia’s Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) officials raided last week the offices of Teknologi Tenaga Perlis Consortium (TTPC), which is partly controlled by former Dewan Negara president and ex-Perlis Mentri Besar Tan Sri Abdul Hamid Pawanteh (picture).

The newspaper said the Umno veteran was directly implicated in Alstom’s indictment for bribery in securing foreign contracts.

Abdul Hamid is said to have been paid 7.5 million Swiss francs (RM25.5 million) to help Alstom secure a contract to build a power plant in Perlis in the late 1990s. He was the state’s mentri besar from 1986 to 1995.

The Singapore daily said both Abdul Hamid and his former business partner, Ti Chee Liang, were singled out in the criminal summons against Alstom.

According to ST, Alstom was fined €31 million (RM130 million) by the Swiss Attorney-General two weeks ago for failing to implement proper controls to prevent bribery by company executives in Malaysia, Latvia and Tunisia, an offence under Swiss law.

Alstom is a major player in Malaysia in the power business, and is credited with supplying key equipment for nearly 7.5 gigawatts of the country’s installed power generation capacity, the paper added.



Citing government sources familiar with the investigations, ST reported that the MACC will be questioning local Alstom executives in the days ahead.

Last month, Alstom’s Malaysian office denied it was aware of local investigation regarding the RM133 million fine by Swiss authorities involving contracts awarded to the company here.

“There is no probe ongoing in Malaysia that we are aware of and Alstom have co-operated fully in Switzerland. The fine is for corporate negligence in the past and not for bribery,” Alstom Malaysia president, Saji Raghavan, said in a statement.

“In fact, investigation confirms there is no systematic bribery and sufficient controls are in place,” he pointed out.

The company had described itself as a “subcontractor of a consortium” and a “victim of the actions of some of its employees, who would have benefited from kickbacks”, according to a previous Reuters report.

Alstom is the second French company in as many years to be fined for bribing government officials in Malaysia, after telecommunications firm Alcatel-Lucent paid RM435 million to resolve US criminal and civil probes in December 2010.

The four-year probe centred on payments made by Alstom Network Schweiz AG to middlemen — termed “commercial agents” by the company — in return for securing government contracts to build power stations in 15 countries since the 1990s.

Alstom was awarded a RM2.8 billion contract by Tenaga Nasional earlier this year to provide key power generation equipment to Southeast Asia’s first 1,000-megawatt (MW) supercritical coal-fired power plant Manjung, Malaysia.

It also won turnkey contracts in 1994 and 2000 to build four power plants including the 1,300MW Lumut and the 670MW Kuala Langat plants and deals in 2003 and 2004 to install environmental control systems for the Tanjung Bin and Jimah coal-fired power plants.

Alstom was also appointed by Tenaga to supply two 125MW hydro power turbines, a generator and ancillaries for the 250MW Hulu Terengganu hydro power plant in 2010.

Alstom says it is “the largest original equipment manufacturer in Malaysia” having supplied key equipment for nearly 7.5 gigawatt (GW) of the country’s installed power generation capacity.

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Is The Chinese Economic Model The Way Of The Future?

 

Ralph Benko, Forbes Contributor

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Economic growth policy, especially the gold standard; and populism.

This writer’s standard stump speech, on the conservative lecture circuit, used to begin “I love Barack Obama.”  (Dramatic pause.  Confusion mounts.)  “Not since the days of the Soviet Union, which I enjoyed a minor but not quite trivial role in helping to bring down, have I had an adversary worthy of my powers.”

In the event, Mr. Obama turned into a disappointment.  He combines a smug, supercilious hectoring with a record of accomplishment somewhere between pathetic and perverse. Not a worthy adversary after all.

Therefore, imagine the excitement of finding, published on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal, no less, Andy Stern extolling something very like … well, communism.  Stern, together with its international Vice President Eliseo Medina, grew the SEIU into a behemoth of organized labor, even splitting the AFL-CIO, leaders of the historic stature of Reuther, Lewis and Meany.  Finally, a worthy adversary!



Stern begins with a quotation from former Intel CEO Andy (“Only the Paranoid Survive”) Grove:

Our fundamental economic beliefs, which we have elevated from a conviction based on observation to an unquestioned truism, is that the free market is the best of all economic systems – the freer the better. Our generation has seen the decisive victory of free-market principles over planned economies. So we stick with this belief largely oblivious to emerging evidence that while free markets beat planned economies, there may be room for a modification that is even better.

Referencing a recent trip to China, and extolling its rapid growth, Stern delivers his indictment:

The conservative-preferred, free-market fundamentalist, shareholder-only model-so successful in the 20th century-is being thrown onto the trash heap of history in the 21st century.  In an era when countries need to become economic teams, Team USA’s results – a jobless decade, 30 years of flat median wages, a trade deficit, a shrinking middle class and phenomenal gains in wealth but only for the top 1% – are pathetic.

This should motivate leaders to rethink, rather than double down on an empirically failing free-market extremism. As painful and humbling as it may be, America needs to do what a once-dominant business or sports team would do when the tide turns: study the ingredients of its competitors’ success.

This indictment understandably threw a number of my co-fundamentalists into rage.   The irrepressible Rush Limbaugh:

Folks, just like with the communists in the Soviet Union or the ChiComs, the ultimate goal of the Democrat Party is to discourage anyone from getting anything unless it comes from The Party … Let me sum this up for you: Andy Stern says capitalism and free markets have been shown not to work, they are a fraud; that what we need to do is to become China.  China is communist.  That’s what we need to do.

NRO’s Reihan Salam on Andy Stern’s Peculiar Idea:

To really learn from the Chinese, and to enjoy such staggering growth rates, we should go about things differently: let’s have a Maoist insurrection followed by a civil war that lasts for several years. Then let’s destroy most of the wealth in the country, and drive out millions of our most enterprising and educated citizens by launching systematic terror campaigns during which millions of others will die in violence or of starvation. Next, let’s have a modest economic opening in coastal regions: impoverished citizens will be allowed to launch small-scale township and village enterprises and components will be assembled in a handful of cities by our stunted descendants. Then let’s severely curb those township and village enterprises because they represent a potential political threat and invite large foreign multinationals and state-owned enterprises [let's not forget those!] to work our population to the bone at artificially suppressed wage rates, threatening those who complain with serious reprisals up to and including death. Let us also initiate a population control policy designed to improve our dependency ratio for a few decades.

Jeffrey Folks in American Thinker: A Stern Vision of America:

State planning has led to inefficient steel mills that have collapsed under the weight of their unsustainable cost structures, oversupply of housing (including those 700,000 units going up in Chongqing annually), high-speed rail networks that have had to be shut down, and state-sponsored banks with opaque balance sheets masking undisclosed losses.  It is not state control and planning that have resulted in economic growth.  That growth has taken place in spite of the state’s efforts to plan and control the economy.

Nor is China the edenic land of income equality that Stern wishes to foster in the U.S.  Under revised guidelines, China has just quadrupled its estimate of the number of its citizens living in poverty.  Political corruption is rampant throughout the party apparatus that governs the economy ….

The American Spectator’s Ross Kaminsky writes, in “Stern Idiocy”:

Stern is at his most aggressively Marxist when he says that the “free-market fundamentalist” economic system “is being thrown onto the trash heap of history in the 21st century.” He says that capitalism is “empirically failing” simply because China and other rapidly developing nations have a higher growth rate than the U.S. does. But there are plenty of poor nations on earth to compare and the real empirical evidence is the incredible correlation between economic liberty and national prosperity.  As Professor Jacques Garello explained in an excellent 2004 speech, “freer countries are always more developed” because more freedom brings more private (especially foreign) investment, more knowledge, more entrepreneurial spirit, and the development of human capital.

Well, it is one of the paradoxes of our epoch that the same hand engineered the policies that led to vibrant economic growth both in America and in China.  Shake the hand of Robert Mundell, a Nobel Laureate in economics who, as prime author of “the Mundell-Laffer Hypothesis” was the chief architect of the Supply Side economics pioneered by Jack Kemp and implemented by Ronald Reagan. It led to the creation of 40 million jobs under Reagan and Clinton. Mundell is so esteemed by the Chinese that he has been made an honorary professor at 30 universities there.  According to Ahead of His Time by Laura Wallace, a profile for the IMF’s F&D:

Bob (says his former student Michael Mussa) has always been an enormously stimulating and unorthodox thinker. So there has been a consistency. His contributions were related partly to his willingness to think outside the box.’ Actually, Mundell doesn’t see himself as a maverick economist, insisting that his work has stayed steadfastly in the tradition of the great economists from Adam Smith through the founders of the IMF, including Keynes, who believed in fixed exchange rates based either on gold or on a world currency.

Stern, whom this writer views as an authentic humanitarian (with whom he has some principled disagreements), now is a senior fellow at Columbia University’s Richman Center.  Columbia is Mundell’s home base.  Of course it is pleasant to gaze at the cranes in the skyline of Chongqing and dream about how it must have been the “streamlined government” of “aggressive and popular Communist Party leader Bo Xilai” that brought this about.

But Andy?  Since Mundell’s your neighbor, now, you might just want to go right to the policy taproot for those skyscrapers and share a glass of wine with the economist whom this writer has elsewhere called the “greatest living humanitarian.” Find out what the grand architect of the present world economy himself thinks is the solution to “a jobless decade, 30 years of flat median wages, a trade deficit, a shrinking middle class and phenomenal gains in wealth but only for the top 1%.”  You might even ask him what Ms. Wallace meant when she summarized his prescription:

[I]f Mundell could have his way, the entire world would be one big optimum currency area, sharing a global currency. But he admits that political rivalries make it difficult for this to happen because a necessary condition for the creation of a monetary union—global or otherwise—is the creation of a security area. He believes that, in a world where war is a possibility, an international monetary system based on a fiat world currency wouldn’t work unless it were backed by one or more of the precious metals.

Stern tells us to “study the ingredients of our competitor’s success.”  Andy?  Yes indeed, please do! You may well find the haute chef of world prosperity-with-equity residing very nearby and generous in sharing with you those ingredients.

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Experts urge Europe to look toward Asia-Pacific

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By Zhang Haizhou and Hu Yinan (China Daily)

BEIJING / LONDON - As the world's center of gravity shifts toward the Asia-Pacific region, concerns are growing in Europe that the former center of global geopolitics may be sidelined.

European politicians and analysts have urged Europe to shift its focus increasingly toward the Asia-Pacific, following Washington's strategic adjustment toward the region.

The rationale for Europe today is about power, which, in one aspect, is about being "able to play in a world that will otherwise be dominated by America and China", said former British prime minister Tony Blair. Image by Medienmagazin pro via Flickr

A "strong Europe" is needed to leverage the collective power of European states, all of which are relatively small in size, Blair said in Beijing last week.

"Unless you come together, your individual countries - and that includes the UK - are not going to be strong enough," said Blair.

Commenting on what the US' ongoing policy shift towards the Asia-Pacific means for Europe, Blair said Washington "has always had a strong presence in this part of the world and continues to do so".

One of the things a strong Europe can do, he said, is to help the relationship work between the United States and China.



"I believe the relationship between America and China - a good and strong working relationship - is a vital part of making the world work today," Blair said.

As Europe's sovereign debt crisis intensifies, US President Barack Obama's foreign policy shift toward Asia - later acknowledged by European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, who said the 21st century "is going to be a Pacific one" - has left many in Europe worried.

In a speech on Nov 9, Van Rompuy declared that Europe has a major role to play in the Asia-Pacific region, both as a trading partner and as "a potential major factor contributing to (Asia's) stability".

He emphasized that this "should also be reflected in higher political attention paid to and political activity shown in the region".

The European Union was not invited to last month's ASEAN and East Asia summits in Indonesia, which the US and Russia took part in for the first time.

The absence has left the 27-nation bloc sitting on the sidelines in arguably what is the most important region, while its major ally and trading partner, the US, asserts a stronger foreign policy role there.

This was not the only important conference the EU has been absent from in the region.

Catherine Ashton, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs, has not attended any major multilateral meeting in Asia since taking up the post in 2009.

It is "essential" that Ashton attends the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) "each year", Frans-Paul van der Putten, senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations (Clingendael) in The Hague, pointed out.

"Ashton cannot afford to stay away from the ARF, given that the ARF is the only major trans-Pacific forum of which the EU is a member," he said.

"While the EU cannot be a trans-Pacific power, it should strengthen its visibility in this strategically crucial region with a focused and active Asia policy."

Suggesting the EU should also cooperate closely with the US to "strengthen its economic competitiveness", Van der Putten, however, suggested the 27-nation bloc "adopt a neutral stance with regard to US security policy in Asia".

Obama said during his recent visit to Australia that the US was "stepping up its commitment to the entire Asia-Pacific".

Up to 2,500 US Marines will deploy in Australia in the coming years.

Hillary Clinton last week visited Myanmar, the first trip by a US secretary of state in more than 50 years.

Tom Kane, a senior lecturer in International Politics at Britain's University of Hull, said he thinks the US "is likely to continue to balance its Asian interests against its European ones".

During World War II, the US government formally agreed to give Europe priority over Asia and the Pacific, "but, in practice, fought actively in both areas of operations from the very beginning", he said.

"Happily for all concerned, it will usually be able to cooperate productively with Europe and Asia, both at the same time," Kane added. 

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Insap forum on Hudud leaves public still grappling with fears

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Chua: Be clear on hudud

WANI MUTHIAH, FLORENCE A . SAMY and JOSEPH KAOS Jr at the ‘Hudud and its Implications on Non-Muslims in Malaysia’ forum in Kuala Lumpur

MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek has challenged Pakatan Rakyat to include its stand on hudud and its implementation in its general election manifesto and common agenda.



Pakatan, especially PAS, he said, should be transparent in its stand.

“Right now, there are conflicting signals from Pakatan leaders. Hudud should be in their common agenda since they always never do anything without consulting their partners.

 

Making a point: Dr Chua delivering his keynote address during the forum at Wisma MCA Sunday.

“If the rakyat votes for PAS, DAP or PKR knowing full well that they will implement hudud law, then we should respect it as it is the voters' choice,” he said at a forum entitled “Hudud and its Implications on Non-Muslims in Malaysia” yesterday.

Dr Chua lambasted DAP for its contradictory stand and for misleading the Chinese community, especially with its “agreeing to disagree” statement.

“On one hand, DAP says it opposes hudud. On the other hand, in the last general election and subsequent by-elections, DAP campaigned vigorously to ensure the PAS candidate won,” he said at the forum organised by MCA's Institute of Strategic Analysis and Policy Research.

The forum was moderated by Bar Council president Lim Chee Wee.

Dr Chua reiterated MCA's opposition to hudud and its implementation, adding that hudud law would adversely affect both Muslims and non-Muslims.



“It is a lie that it will not affect us. We have the right to talk about it as it does affect us.

“We do not accept hudud and its implementation in a multi-racial country,” he said.

Explaining the ramifications, Dr Chua said that the implementation of hudud law would affect the country's foreign direct investment, revenue as well as rights of non-Muslims, including gambling and drinking activities.

He dismissed claims by Pakatan that hudud law could not be implemented even if it came into power but did not have two-thirds majority.

He said Muslim MPs from both sides of the divide would be forced to support the Bill although they might not agree with the implementation as hudud was part of Islam.

Dr Chua pointed out that hudud law could not be implemented without amending the Federal Constitution.

“How then can the rights and freedom of non-Muslims be safeguarded? Which court will have jurisdiction which involves both Muslims and non-Muslims as hudud law cannot exist without the existence of Islamic law?'' he asked.

In his closing address, Dr Chua urged non-Muslims to reject the implementation of hudud law because it had great implications on them.

“We also heard the panellists say that the PAS version of hudud does not represent the true essence of Islam.

“Malaysians must make a choice of either choosing Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak's vision of a high-income nation by 2020 or a failed state run under hudud law,” he added.

On Saturday, Dr Chua had said in Malacca that he had no problem having a public debate on hudud with Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng provided the latter answered two questions first.

He said Lim must first explain to the people if he could ensure the implementation of hudud law would not affect the non-Muslims.

Second, he said Lim must explain if the implementation of hudud law would affect the norms and life- style in Malaysia, especially the economic, education and social system aspects.

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MCA hudud forum leaves public still grappling with fears

Puline Wong
newsdesk@thesundaily.com

(l-r) Ustaz Fathul Bari Mat Jahaya, Ustaz Mohd Kamal Saidin, Lim Chee Wee, Edmund Bon and Prof Dr Chandra Muzaffar meeting MCA president Datuk Seri Chua Soi Lek during a hudud forum organised by Institute of Strategies Analysis and Policy Research (Insap) at Wisma MCA today.

 KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 4, 2011) : Legal and Muslim religious experts tried to discuss the effects of the implementation of hudud law in Malaysia to a public forum comprising mainly MCA members today but stopped short of of answering the fears of the non Muslims.

The panel of speakers which comprised of International Movement of a Just World (Just) president Dr Chandra Muzaffar, special religious advisor to the Terengganu Mentri Besar Ustaz Haji Mohd Kamal Saidin, and Umno Young Ulama working committee chairman Ustaz Fathul Bari Mat Jahaya was moderated by the Bar Council president Lim Chee Wee.

It discussed the implementation of hudud in the country but stopped short of saying whether it should or should not be implemented.

Chandra stated that although some Muslims in the country are for the implementation of hudud as part of their identity, there are many Muslims who have yet to agree.


He said criminal punishments under the hudud law is not the vortex of what Islam is nor what it means to be a Muslim.

"There is an obsession, and a preoccupation with a literal interpretation of hudud and of Islam," he said, adding that this kind of narrow interpretation does no justice to the religion itself.

He warned that should there be a hudud-obsessed state in Malaysia, we might end up as Saudi Arabia or Sudan.

"In many hudud-obsessed countries, their interpretation of hudud emphasises prohibition and punishment, when it should be educate and enlighten.

"To endorse this hudud-obsessed mentality will mean the destruction of the nation," said Chandra.

The issue of hudud, which crops up occassionally, ever since PAS passed the Hudud Act in 1993 in Kelantan, has seen much debate among the ruling Barisan Nasional and opposition parties.

Hudud is the criminal law under Islamic laws and the main fears by non Muslims are on the various forms of punishment which include cutting off hands for stealing and stoning for adultery. PAS had stated that if it comes to power, it will implement hudud in the country for Muslims.

Fathul Bari, although from Umno which has openly opposed hudud, stated that "a misunderstanding is that in hudud, someone caught committing a crime, stealing for example, will have his arm cut off. But this is not true. Islam is a forgiving religion, and Allah s.w.t is a forgiving God."

The he goes on to say "Crime must be punished but the punishment should be appropriate," he said, dismissing the notion that the punishments should always be "an eye for an eye".

"Hudud practised by PAS does not take into consideration the multi-racial society of the country. They want to implement it on everyone," said Kamal, condemning PAS for not interpreting the hudud laws accurately.

From a legal perspective, however, implementing hudud is not possible, said Bar Council member Edmund Bon,

Bon, a human rights lawyer, said hudud law cannot be implemented because the Federal Constitution has not provided for the punishments listed within hudud, nor has the federal government approved hudud.

"Hudud cannot be implemented unless the federal government approves or allows for it, which is why the hudud Bill of Kelantan, which was created since 1983, is still not law.

"Questions of religions are extremely emotional. Because there are so many interpretations of hudud, a moratorium must be established for calm, careful debate on these issues," he urged.

The forum drew more comments than questions from the 200 strong mostly-Chinese crowd, which urged the speakers to address the issue of whether hudud is fair, or if hudud will be implemented on non-Muslims, to which none of the speakers did.

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Singaporeans earning more

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The Star By Cai Haoxiang

Wages are on the rise and so are the number of elderly employees – and the government hopes to cash in on the situation.

THE monthly salaries of Singapore workers went up this year, for the second year in a row.

Their median income - the mid-point in a range - was $2,633 (RM6,410.88) in June compared to $2,500 (RM6,087.05) a year ago, a 5.3% increase, led by economic growth and a tighter labour market.

The rise is even steeper when part-time workers are taken out of the equation, according to a Manpower Ministry report recently on the earnings and employment of residents, including permanent residents.

 

Wealthy lot: Fuelled by strong employment growth and curbs on the inflow of unskilled labour, the monthly income of Singaporeans has seen an encouraging rise this year. – The Straits Times
 

It shows full-time workers’ median income to be $2,925 (RM7,121.85) a month against $2,708 (RM6,593.49) last year - an 8% rise.

After taking into account projected inflation of about 5%, their real wages rose by an estimated 2.8%, said the ministry’s Singapore Workforce 2011 report.

But for all workers, including part-timers, the real wage increase was just 0.1%, said labour economist Dr Hui Weng Tat of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

Noting the Government’s goal to raise real median incomes by 30% over 10 years, Dr Hui said it would require an average increase of 2.7% a year.

“Attention thus needs to be focused on improving the wages and work opportunities of the 194,700 part-time workers, as they are increasing in number, and half of them indicate they want to work longer hours,” he added.

The report also disclosed for the first time median income figures that include the Central Provident Fund (CPF) contributions of employers.

With CPF, the income of full-timers soared to $3,250 (RM7,913.16), which is $250 (RM608.70) more every month than last year.



Explaining the new move, a ministry spokesman said employer’s CPF contributions form a “significant part of compensation, and can be used for housing and health care”.

Hence, it would publish the figures yearly to give “a more complete picture of residents’ income growth”, she said.

The rise in income this year builds on last year’s increase, which was a turnaround from the decline caused by the 2008-09 recession.

Last year, the strong economic recovery lifted the monthly income by 3.3%, from $2,420 (RM5,892.26).

This year, the increase was fuelled largely by strong employment growth, especially in the services sector, coupled with curbs on the inflow of unskilled labour and stricter conditions on employing skilled foreign workers, said economists interviewed.

“Wages were pushed higher with the big projects like the Marina Bay Sands and Sentosa resorts needing a lot of labour, together with the tightening of foreign worker inflows like increased levies,” said National University of Singapore economist Shandre Thangavelu.

These moves pushed the employment rate to a new high of 78% for residents aged 25 to 64.

At the same time, immigration conditions were tightened, causing a decline in the number of permanent residents.

As a result, the resident labour force went up by just 1.6% to 2.08 million, compared to an annual average of 2.6% in the past 10 years.

On the other hand, more older residents and women are working this year. A record 61.2% of residents aged 55 to 64 are working, up from 59% a year ago.

Similarly, with women aged 25 to 54, the number employed rose to 73%, from 71.7% last year.

Labour leader Cham Hui Fong cheered the increases in these two groups, saying they show that efforts of unionists are paying off.

Said Cham, assistant secretary- general of NTUC: “Companies are now prepared to hire and spend time training these workers.”

Also, more government funds were available, she added, citing the Advantage scheme that helped companies redesign jobs for older workers.

Another is the Inclusive Growth Programme, which gives grants to companies to invest in high-tech equipment and redesign jobs for low-wage workers in return for raising their pay.

“We hope these schemes will continue because we need to build up the momentum,” said Cham.