JULY 26 — The grand tradition of MIC rage is in full play as shameless self-promotion revs up in the lead-up to the fight for the No. 1 post.
Suddenly, certain party leaders have bolstered their courage to take on hot-button issues, the latest by Senator Jaspal Singh on the MIC’s debt-ridden investment arm, Maika Holdings.
The MIC treasurer decried the fate of Maika as a prime example of greed and mismanagement. Why now, when the game’s over?
In raising the issue in the Upper House earlier this week, Jaspal came across as publicity-seeking, unhelpful and to be seen to be working. He said: “Those who were credulous enough to trust in Maika’s voluble promoters and entrust their savings to them underwent a bitter experience over a 25-year period.”
Can we now expect Jaspal to chain himself to a coconut tree until the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission opens a file on the deal between Maika and a special purpose vehicle, G-Team?
G-Team, controlled by a prominent businessman, was allowed a general offer to buy back all Maika shares at 80 sen per share. Why did Jaspal keep silent on this filthy laundry all these years? Surely, it’s a display of utter contempt for the Maika stakeholders upon whose trust the MIC depends.
Clearly this saga is set behind the bitter, looming MIC presidential contest. It is hard to believe there is real concern over Maika’s failure to increase the wealth of the Indian community.
This column had at the height of the negotiations between Maika and G-Team in 2009 argued that the deal was contentious. Many like me had raised moot points that while each shareholder would get back their original investment, the inflation rate since the early 1980s when Maika was set up would result in the investors losing close to 50 per cent on their outlay.
G-Team’s commitment to the deal was to buy Maika shares for RM103 million and find a new investor for its assets that included the prized insurance company, Oriental Capital.
Early this year, the Tune Group bought Oriental Capital and renamed it Tune Insurance which has since been listed on the Malaysian stock market and is now worth close to RM1.8 billion.
Debating the royal address in the Dewan Negara, Jaspal said an asset (Oriental Capital) belonging to the Indian community was handled so ineptly by the Maika management that its value got “halved after 25 years and increased 18 times its value within two years.”
Jaspal is a close associate of present party chief Datuk Seri G.Palanivel and he had obviously trained his gun at S. Vell Paari, who was the last to helm Maika. Vell Paari, the son of former MIC president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu, was recently booted out of the powerful central working committee by Palanivel and that effectively split the party.
The tension is escalating between the two camps ahead of the presidential polls and raising the Maika issue now is a sign of desperation by Palanivel’s boys.
Still, both factions are aware that public revelations of the true scale of the Maika fiasco would be hugely embarrassing to the party.
Still, give them the knives — go on boys!
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
