Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has dismissed reports that his wife Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor had spent RM325,000 on a shopping spree in Sydney recently.
means the describing of something and making it more that means her shopping is true
“It was a wildly exaggerated story deliberately fabricated to affect people’s perception of their leaders,” he said in a posting on his official Twitter account last night.
He was responding to a question from one of his followers about recent reports from Australia that Rosmah’s estimated bill for designer label clothing by Carl Kapp was around A$100,000 (RM323,000).
She must fulfill the freebies promises made in Najib election manifest is raining freebies in Malaysia once again. If Najib does not give you,Rosmah) will.If Najib promis anything free, rosmah will get you the same twice over. According to political analysts, the tipping point in freebies came during the las electionsIt is generally believed in political circles that the offer offreebies, B.N which was voted to office.Having tasted success, the think-tank within the ruling party sincerely believe whatever be the quality of administration, law and order, growth trajectory of the state, power and water crises, quality of infrastructure, and corruption charges hurled against it by the Barisan they can get away.
CORRUPTION WAS HUGELY ADVERTISED FOR INFORMATION AND ENTERTAINMENT OF PEOPLE,'THIS TIME' AROUND, IN ALL THE LANGUAGES OF UMNO, OVER DOZENS OF TV CHANNELS AND CATCHY ARTICLES WITH CARTOONS AND ILLUSTRATIVE PHOTOS AND VIDEOS, ALSO BROUGHT HOME TO THE PEOPLE THE SHEER BRAZENNESS AND THE UNPRECEDENTED SIZE IT HAS ASSUMED THROUGH THE BARISAN NATIONAL AT THE CENTRE, STAGING The popular psyche within UMNO has been undoubtedly impacted with indignation and frustration at UMNO. which was perceived as having vastly damaged UMNO's reputation as believed by the Malays. There was corruption, all the time, and there will be corruption all the time. This, whatever we as people and our various campaigns and NGOs may do, since democratic politics seems to attract only dacoits who are capable of only routine corruption colluding with administration and high value scams colluding with bureaucrats and accountants and UMUNO operators. Rosmah and Shahrizat Abdul Jalil will indeed have to make no mistake about these facts, the National Feedlot Corporation (NFC) scandalin scams and corruption, will need to live a 'new life' as leader of a party given mostly to vendetta with its rival, and get down to business for the uplift of the majority of masses suffering under the yokes of poor policy and administration in all spheres in MALAYSIA. She must not take more than one year to fulfill the freebies promises made in he election manifest
Promise of providing freebies like mixies and laptops to the people by political parties in Tamil Nadu is a “disturbing” trend, Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi said here today.
“We have been hearing news of parties in Tamil Nadu promising mixies and laptops to people in an attempt to impress them...this is a worrying trend and the public has been taking notice of it,” he said addressing a lecture on ’Sustaining Electoral Process- India’s initiatives’
On March 19, the ruling DMK in the State said it would distribute free mixies or grinders to women, free laptops to SC/ST students and free rice of 35 kg to BPL families if voted back to power.
The main opposition party AIADMK, on the other hand, promised 20 kg of free rice for ration-card holders, laptops for students from classes XI, free fans, mixers and grinders to all and mineral water to BPL families, besides four gms of gold for ‘Thali’ (mangalsutra) free of cost to poor women and cable TV connections at subsidised rates.
Mr. Quraishi said that his office could do little to curb this trend as the parties had chosen the distribution of freebies as their election manifesto but the Election Commission would act if “there was any distortion in the list of expenditure of candidates” at the end of the campaigning process.
He also said that those indulging in “unnecessary extravagances” in an attempt to “seduce the voters” would be reprimanded.
“Recently an observer caught a truck carrying chicken for a briyani party by one of the candidates in Tamil Nadu. Such ways to seduce the voters will not be encouraged,” he said.
Prime Minister Najib Razak has broken his silence on the firestorm created by news of his wife's latest shopping spree in Sydney, where she allegedly swept up 61 piece of clothing items from a top-notch boutique worth about RM323,000.
"It was a wildly exaggerated story deliberately fabricated to affect people's perception of their leaders," Najib said on his Twitter on Wednesday.
Najib confirms daggers are out for him
She is unpopular and an easy target due to her aggressive and brash ways. While well-educated and strong-willed, her penchant for the high and expensive lifestyle has been her Achilles heel. That Najib assigned to her a lot of discretionary power, especially over huge business deals, has also created more enemies for her, with many corporate captains complaining in private of her demanding ways.
"I have said it before and I will say it again. It is time Najib controls her. He must bring her to heel. She is upsetting people and they are poking all sorts of fire to get at him. But in the end, it is Malaysia which gets the bad name. Nowadays, do you know people look for Imelda Rosmah, and they say she is from Malaysia. Is this good or bad?" Zuraida Kamaruddin, the PKR Women's chief, told Malaysia Chronicle.
Backstabbers from Umno
Indeed, the Pakatan Rakyat led by Opposition Leader Anwar is gaining ground each day, but the greater danger to Najib lies within Umno, where his deputy Muhyiddin Yassin and former premier Mahathir Mohamad are believed to be plotting to unseat him.
Speculation has swirled that the powerful Mahathir may team up with either Muhyiddin or Najib's own cousin Hishammuddin Hussein to wrest the Umno presidency from Najib. Mahathir is keen for his son Mukhriz to take over from either of these men after they have spent a term in office.
By convention, the Umno president is the prime minister it is the largest party in the ruling BN coalition. However, this applies only if BN wins the 13th general election, widely expected to be held soon.
"From what we read, it s obvious the leaks are from someone with very close information about Rosmah's personal schedule. That can only mean an inside Umno job," PKR vice president Tian Chua told Malaysia Chronicle.
Who lied - Rosmah, the designer or the journalist
Carl Kapp only insisted he never mentioned the sum AUD100,000 or RM323,000 but did not say if it was true Rosmah spent such an amount. He also confirmed the shopping spree but denied he was coming to Kuala Lumpur to take a special order soon.
Hot on the heels of that clarification, Australian fashion journalist Patty Huntington disclosed in detail in her blog several email exchanges between herself and Kapp, in a bid to defend the veracity of her original article that sparked the brouhaha.
That prompted Malaysians to again wonder if Rosmah had tried to cover up the matter by persuading Kapp to soften his comments to Patty.
Rosmah, a former banker, is no stranger to controversy. She has denied buying a US$24 million diamond ring, but till now the details provided by the Customs and Excise department are hazy and most Malaysians believe the speculation is true.
Her husband's administration is the weakest so far in post-independence Malaysia. Not only is racism and religious bigotry at an all time high due to intentional race-championing to garner votes, free-for-all corruption has broken out as Najib and his party mates rush for a last grab at national goodies before the GE-13, which could see their party booted out from power - the first time since 1957.
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This election season, Tamil Nadu’s political parties are promising voters all sorts of freebies if voted into office, from blenders to sheep, as WSJ reported today.
- Amol Sharma for The Wall Street Journal
- Retired school cafeteria worker E.S. Dhandapani says he wants long-term benefits, not freebies.
Just who would be footing the bill for all these gifts, you ask?
Tamil Nadu taxpayers, of course. And the bill could be quite hefty.
Neither of the two leading parties has estimated the cost of their pledged handouts, but for a sense of how costly such populist gift-giving can be, just look at the free color television program of the incumbent Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government.
Since 2006, the DMK regime has purchased 15.3 million TV sets to give away as freebies, costing taxpayers a whopping $773 million so far, according to the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu Ltd., a state government-controlled entity that tracks information technology programs.
Each 14-inch TV set costs about $50 or $60, and the vendors include well-known manufacturers like Videocon Industries Ltd. as well as many small players. The official reason for giving away free color TVs is to provide “entertainment to women and to enable them to acquire General Knowledge,” ELCOT says on its Web site.
Given that most blenders and grinders – which have been promised by both M. Karunanidhi’s DMK and J. Jayalalithaa’s rival AIADMK this year – are priced in about the same range as the TVs, one can expect the state to be dishing out hundreds of millions more dollars on those gifts. Not to mention the additional costs of laptops, gold necklaces, and all else that’s being pledged.
A DMK spokesman could not be reached for comment. An AIADMK spokesman did not return a call seeking comment.
Though most Tamil Nadu voters won’t likely refuse free items, many say they are nonetheless upset with all the short-term political gamesmanship and wish their leaders would instead focus on solving real problems.
“We’re not aiming to get freebies – we want the government to give some long-term benefits” like a better old-age pension plan and more jobs for youngsters, said E.S. Dhandapani, a 61-year-old retired school cafeteria worker in Thiruvennainallur, a village in Villupuram district.
S. Subramaniam Balaji, a Chennai-based lawyer who is fighting to curb election-time giveaways on the grounds that they are thinly-disguised attempts to bribe voters, says the state is compromising worthy development programs to finance the handouts. “Everything gets sacrificed – education, hospitals, social security, infrastructure” he said. “You just can’t throw away money like that.”
Mr. Balaji’s petition to put a stop to the TV program is waiting to be heard, perhaps next year, in India’s Supreme Court. He also recently filed a complaint about this year’s Tamil Nadu electoral promises with India’s Election Commission.
Last month, India’s DNA newspaper reported that a right-to-information request by a Tamil journalist had revealed that about $16 million in state funds meant for lower caste welfare programs was diverted to buy color TVs.
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