the three of us, ts ming, nadzru and myself, just met again, this time at as sa'adah, ts ming's palatial home on the hill somewhere in melawati, over nasi kerabu with 'daging bakar' and 'ikan panggang', done in grilled santan , ala kelantan style.
7 years back it was over briyani in pavilion, kl.
now, puan sri herself was there serving us ,to make sure our berbuka puasa was nothing less than perfect.
a perfect dinner host indeed!
tq puan sri.
time has passed all of us so fast. to me it was just yesterday when we were passionately discussing about bringing the federal government of najib tun razak to court.
it was not najib's fault , this one.
he was just carrying over tdm's legacy of the 90's:
to kill a rat, drain everything dry and leave it starving.
starving the kelantanese did went thru....but after 25 years they still vote pas!!
with two million usd war chest pledged by ts ming, i was then quite impatient when nadzru was dragging his feet over details.
[ http://drnikisahak.blogspot.com/2011/03/from-libya-to-tok-bali.html ]
it has been 7 long years ago,omg!
we were even thinking of having a qc from london.
then husam , our principal witness, got knocked off from his exco position.
shortly later persona non grata to the kubang kerian istana.
then the whole state exco joined the 'dedak list' of najib.
we lost our locus standi.
a private citizen's case has no standing in najib's court.
tonite, 7 years later, we were still on tok bali.
" we have come one whole circle ts ming. what we cannot solve, allah have solved for us.
tdm has atoned for his 30 years of crime to the kelantanese. he has promised 20 % in wang ehsan.
what i cannot comprehend ts is why your chap in kb is just happy with 5? ", i quipped.
" i mean these pas people must have all their heads examined! they think they can only get 5 % because they still must insist they want to remain out of goverment.....and this bring me to another logic which i cannot comprehend. i cannot believe that the 90 million rm lose change that najib handed to them binds them so much to amenu that even ''in sickeness we do not part''.
"amenu is a sick man now and will be sick for many many years to come howk!..they have not recovered from the shock.... they are still in denial phase!", nadzru added, quite impatiently as he was in a hurry to move on to his favourite agenda on the list : ecrl.
" all the more ru that pas should abandon them....politics is like a typical 'kelantanese' marriage...if it does not work one usually move on quite early! in pas case, even a 'polygamy' is practical and possible. they should join the government now. leave amenu to settle her problem. if they are worried about the 'talak' with pan in pakatan harapan, they should'nt. why should they?.
their separation is only talak satu.....even if is three, they can do a 'cina buta'.......i am sure people like dr zul in pan are magnimanous and generous enough to aceppt them.......poliitcs is the game of the possibles......one dont just sleep and be monogamous.....no one partner is permanent...if need be one can even sleep with one's enemy....only aspiration and vision remain permanent."
" to me it is 'sambil menyelam sambil minum air' tansri.....not only it will prosper kelantan and terengganu but in one swift act, pas will also strenghten the muslim content of the government. dap will be made to know its place in the scheme of things...", said i
" i think the main issue nik howk is not pan but i suspect it is dap...", ts ming gave his view, after much thot.
"i think tdm is a very pragmatic man and in a hurry to leave a cleaner legacy this time around, ts ming. allah has prolonged his life up to this point for him to clean up the mess he left us.....you know and he knows beggars dont choose. with 65 % malaysian being malays and muslim, dap even having more than 40 in the dewan is not exactly strong. if their mp's are arrogant they will not be in government next time around....no ts, the problem is telling pas what is the right thing to do. the whole pea brained leadership has lost their hala tuju....they still think they can control putrajaya...they are delusional".....
after half a dozen more 'kopi kao', our subject moved on to ecrl.
nadzru suddenly became more animated and lively.
obviously his favourite subject.
" 2 years ago i bumped into tdm at an oil and gas conference in dubai. i was surprised. he at 90 plus and still interested in things like this....we both attended a round table discussion amongst experts on issues surrounding railway and land transport linkages. a well known expert in the field opined china has it right extending land bridges in the far east namely in thailand and even in africa. ecrl is part of their game plan as well a railway link they are building in the south east industrial corridor of thailand linking bangkok to the extreme south east of thailand.
it is a busy emerging industrial belt.......blah blah blah", nadzru rattled on like a mail train.
"their game plan is to move oil from the west thru klang or a port in south thailand and in the east from the sprately field which they assumed is theirs, and from the look of things will be theirs unless we want to go to war with them.
china is in the process of connecting kunming in the north thru a terrain gap between the Tennasserim South mountain range and the Titiwangsa North. West China economic activities in petrochemicals must be linked to the Thai EEC and the Kertih-Gebeng corridor and together to a West side Port. It has to happen.
if we cancel the ecrl, china will look for an alternate port on the western side of the isthmus of kra and our port klang will be a dead duck!
ecrl , ts and nik howk, is about connectivity , connectivity and connectivity.
it is a good idea.
but when najib came into the picture he sees 30 billion rm coming back to him to cover up his 1mdb debacle!
......from our perspective, with natuna oil and gas reserve, and it is a very big one, just some 10 kilometres from our kelantan basin, nik howk, ecrl is not just about moving your kerepok lekor and nasi dagang business. it is very relevant to us!
the quantum is not whether we cancel ecrl or not. the quantum is rather can we reduce the construction cost and scale it down.." nadzru was almost out of breath, churning out the figures and drawing map and plan on the table trying to impress both of us 'non expert' to comprehend his ideas.
" ru, i got priveledged information from my good friend dato rahim who has been a significant railway player over the past 40 years locally. he and his friends could build ecrl for below 25b......but unfortunately on ecrl i think china must already have us by the balls. it is already a done thing. we need to get them to sympathise with us. i do not thing we can bully them like what we did to sinapo....", i added.
" i think it remain for tdm to get robert kuok to convince china that they have to scale down the price. it is still dowable. kuok has got a lot of leverage with the chinese president.
it make sence for china to not want us to be too poor. unless they want us to be like sri lanka....we have been very quiet on the sprately islands querrel unlike the phillipines and the vietnamese.....so there must be some form of quid pro quo....", ts gave his valuable and 'worldly global' contribution to the discussion.
" i feel ts, if you ever happen to meet your neighbour tdz, you could perhaps intimate to him for him to dwell on this within the council of elders....that one practical proposal to get us out of this ecrl mess is perhaps for china to build, finance wholly, the whole project themselves and own the railway.... we need not own the railway despite it being on our land ... they own it.... ..perhaps we can agree on a 30 year lease or so...that way they will make sure they use the linkage and in the meantime we malaysians can be their passengers! ", occasionally my friend ru does show his brilliance. in the oil business he is second to none from the malaysian perspective.
" either that ru or the chinese has to scale down the price to 50 % or less. we can of course get people like dato rahim and his friends do it for less the half the price but the issue of finance is still ours......i like your idea of the lease to china. it also solve our potential problem of underusage at the same time....", i added.
after more coffee, we moved on to dsai incarceration over 10 years in sungai buluh.
" nik howk, 10 years is a long long time......tdm has apologised but i am sure deeper down the acrimony within dsai family and himself remained...", ts ming appeared pensive with this comment, we getting sleepy any way.
" ts, i just had the preveledge of talking to a jailbird recently who came to my hospital.
he was in for 4 years. not semi vip like dsai though who has his own room and spent most of his time at the sick bay...that in the malasysian prison system is very rare.....this chap stayed in a cell of 6 people. i asked what he did to kill his boredom, 18 hours a day in the cell in between breaks.....he told me each of them 'play with their minds'.....it has to be a mind game otherwise they become insane! he said.
omg! ts and ru......i would go mad even if i have house arrest for 10 years let alone in a prison.
even if i go on zikr mode, how many 100,000 thousand zikr would there be in a day?
dsai must have finish reading all the books in the prison library and what books are there in a prison library!!?? "
" i think nik howk,it is must have being the hope of the reformasi that keep him sane all these years..tdm cannot turn back the clock. dsai cannot turn back the clock. so can none of us",ts ming said after much thought
"just may be ts , just maybe...insyaallah that will a positive thing when dsai takes over from tdm. experience maketh a man. i sincerely hope all that solitary confinement will change him towards becoming a better man......
this is a malaysian tragicomedy. insyaallah things will get better for him and for all of us as time unfold...tdm would not be there for very long. he had pulmonary oedema last year and nearly died in langkawi....with htat kind of heart,he is certainly a candidate for sudden cardiac death...then dsai will find he really missed the old man!"
i cannot help being a heart doctor, always reading things 'in between the lines'.......
insyaallah...only that we can say!!!!
allah give power to whom HE choose
allah takes power from whom HE choose as well
to HIM we all shall return.
HE is the journeying and the anchoring.
we ended our pow wow at exactly 2 am, as we sleepily crawl back to our respective home in subang and klang from ts ming's palatial home in melawati.
post script:
nadzru just added , to further our discussion on ecrl, natuna, kelantan basin et and etc
TS and nik howk,
I believe both of you are pleasantly surprised at the South China Sea geography! It must have been rather bizzare for both of you to hear from me that the Natuna platform to platform at nearest point is only 8 nautical kms from the PM3 North Block Offshore Kelantan. PTT(EP) who has 22% equity in the main Natuna gas field is thinking of linking the subsea pipeline from the Natuna to PM3 North and then to the MTJDA platform to join the main pipeline at Erawan platform to go all the way to Rayong. When a branch is landed at Tumpat, it is South China Sea natural gas, not Malaysian waters alone nor the the joint development areas. The potential is tremendous for Kelantan and South Thailand, even if we just sit back and do NOTHING.
Unfortunately all the nice natural gas from the South China Sea cannot be the sole feedstock for petrochemicals at Kertih-Gebeng, petrochemicals still need naptha and intermediates which have to be imported from the Middle East and that has to be offloaded at some point on the West Coast. I have to repeat, the ECRL is a must to carry the feedstock in those rail wagons like we see in the US and the EU, then to carry the products back to the West Coast and north to KunMing and Rayong.Yeh has been trying to get me to do a logistics layout for LNG receiving terminal at Lumut and then trucking the LNG over to the East Coast and South Thailand. I told him that it is not feasible as compared to what is best , rail wagons ! If I can recall the people who approached him are Canadians.
Ru
I believe both of you are pleasantly surprised at the South China Sea geography! It must have been rather bizzare for both of you to hear from me that the Natuna platform to platform at nearest point is only 8 nautical kms from the PM3 North Block Offshore Kelantan. PTT(EP) who has 22% equity in the main Natuna gas field is thinking of linking the subsea pipeline from the Natuna to PM3 North and then to the MTJDA platform to join the main pipeline at Erawan platform to go all the way to Rayong. When a branch is landed at Tumpat, it is South China Sea natural gas, not Malaysian waters alone nor the the joint development areas. The potential is tremendous for Kelantan and South Thailand, even if we just sit back and do NOTHING.
Unfortunately all the nice natural gas from the South China Sea cannot be the sole feedstock for petrochemicals at Kertih-Gebeng, petrochemicals still need naptha and intermediates which have to be imported from the Middle East and that has to be offloaded at some point on the West Coast. I have to repeat, the ECRL is a must to carry the feedstock in those rail wagons like we see in the US and the EU, then to carry the products back to the West Coast and north to KunMing and Rayong.Yeh has been trying to get me to do a logistics layout for LNG receiving terminal at Lumut and then trucking the LNG over to the East Coast and South Thailand. I told him that it is not feasible as compared to what is best , rail wagons ! If I can recall the people who approached him are Canadians.
Ru
