I would like to apologize for any disgust caused by having to put this picture on my blog (man he’s ugly isn’t he?).Unless you are utterly clueless I don’t think I have to inform you what happened so let’s just jump to my take on it.In one of the earlier Star reports I spotted this: 

A visit by The Star to his house in Taman Robina in Butterworth showed that his luxury bungalow, complete with a swimming pool, had been torn down. Letters were left uncollected in the letterbox.It is learnt that Ahmad and his family are now staying at a penthouse in a guarded condominium in Tanjong Tokong, pending the construction of his new bungalow. 

If you have followed the issue closely enough, you’ll also note that Koh Tsu Koon had stated that Ahmad has had a personal vendetta against him since 2006, when KTK refused to bend the rules and reappoint Ahmad as an MPPP councillor after he had exceeded his four-term limit. Not only that, but it would have been a major conflict of interest, since Ahmad had close links with the PORR project.Further digging leads to some old posts [here and here] from Chow Kon Yeow ( the new Tanjung MP )’s blog. Ahmad had been declared a bankrupt in 2006, in fact it would seem that KTK had had to cover his sorry ass for him back then! A rough chronology is found here.

Rags to riches in 2 years

My question is how the effing hell does one go from insolvency to not one but two luxury bungalows in 2 short years? Dear Ahmad, if you could teach your method to all the Malays out there we would no longer need the NEP. 99% of the Chinese that you rant against don’t even come close to matching your wealth. Why accuse us of hijacking the economy - it’s either a) evident that a Malay can easily make it rich, or b) you are corrupt and the only way you can drum up support is to play up religion and race.If you have read the Malaysiakini article, take the time to read the full press statement he made - chock-full of references of him and “umat Islam”, as if this issue had anything at all to do with religion other than him dragging it along!

Gerakan screwed

The real loser out of this is Gerakan unfortunately. There is simply no way they will ever win back Penang without UMNO support - in the unlikely event that PR screws up enough. Honestly is they really wanted to serve the country they would merge with PR.

Step up la you dumbasses

God, Pak Lah and Najib, time to grow some backbone already. If Ahmad is not sacked tomorrow then it’s clear that you have lost all control of BN.

Popularity: 39% [?]

There I said it. If you watched it last night then do drop a note and tell me what you thought. Will update with youtube links once they are up.

Briefly, LGE opened with a flurry of accusations, touching on 5-6 “land scandals”. As the night went on though they focused on one particular scandal, the “40 million loss” related to the awarding of land to a private quarry contractor.

Koh managed to defend himself very well imo. His points were:

- The root cause of the confusion was a slipup made in the land dept 40 years ago.

- He had not met with the government privately to discuss the issue as they were constantly “going public” with new claims of “land scams”

- The “40 million” figure was merely the court amount. The contractor is apparently willing to settle for 1.5 mil.

- He had not fired the individual involved, as he had ordered investigations not once but twice against him but there was no concrete proof that there was criminal intent involved. The new government had not fired the official either.

- He had not gone public as the case was in court and he would be committing subjudice.

LGE made glaring errors in the debate:

- During the cross, Koh pointed out that the contractor was willing to settle for 1.5 mil; presumably the new Govt knew this as well. He asked why the 40 mil figure was constantly bandied about when the case was still being contested in court. LGE didn’t answer the question but did some pandering instead.

- Koh pointed out that the new govt had earlier accused of having come into an empty office with the state documents missing, but in fact while the office of the CM itself was free of documents, they could all - “thousands and thousands of them” - be easily found in the private archives on the same floor. LGE didn’t respond directly to this.

LGE did a lot of pandering to the crowd, which I thought was a waste of time. It made him look as if he were running for reelection. The constant tirades against the old govt instead of focusing on the topic at hand made Koh’s points seem more valid.

Koh on the other hand only focused on the 40 mil issue. Although he handily rebutted LGE’s accusations on that issue and definitely came out looking good, I would have liked to hear about PGCC.

For my part, the debate did a lot to convince me that the current govt is going down the wrong path in constantly going after the old administration. I remember after Koh’s gentlemanly concession in March, they were initially planning to consult him on governing the state. Gerakan was once an opposition party, and recent events hint that some within the party are dissatisfied with BN. I’d try to build bridges, not burn them.

[update]Lim Guan Eng also made an extremely bold statement during the debate: that his government would eradicate hardcore poverty in Penang within one year. That’ll definitely come back to bite him if he doesn’t deliver.

Popularity: 56% [?]