SUNGKAI, Malaysia: The Malaysian plantation district of Sungkai has become an initial — and unlikely — battleground for an election that embattled Prime Minister Najib Razak is expected to call this year.
Sungkai is home to ethnic Malays who work for the national palm plantation operator, Federal Land Development Authority (Felda). Known as “Felda settlers,” they have long been among the beneficiaries of government affirmative action programs for Malays, who form the majority of the population.
The Felda settlers have been a rock solid vote bank for Najib’s ruling coalition, even as urban Malays have poured into the opposition camp in recent years, alienated by a series of political scandals.
Najib’s coalition lost the popular vote in the last general election in 2013, but still won a majority of seats in Malaysia’s gerrymandered constituencies.
Malaysia’s opposition is hoping the settlers could be the next to defect, which was why opposition lawmaker Rafizi Ramli on Sunday night was in Sungkai, a former mining town that now mainly relies on palm oil and rubber planting.
The settlers have been angered by Felda’s decision to purchase a 37 percent stake in Indonesian palm oil firm PT Eagle High Plantations for $505 million, more than a 100 percent premium based on its closing share price on Wednesday.
Felda's debts
Eagle High is owned by one of Indonesia’s richest men, Peter Sondakh, who has done a number of deals in Malaysia and is a longtime friend of Najib.
Najib’s office did not respond to requests for comment about the deal. Sondakh has not publicly commented about the deal in Jakarta.
Just six months ago, Najib’s United Malays National Organization (UMNO) party secured a sweeping victory in a by-election in a neighboring constituency in northern Perak state.
But on Sunday night, more than 300 people gathered on the lawn of a Sungkai resident under a dank tropical night to hear opposition lawmaker Rafizi Ramli tell the cheering crowd: “We will change our prime minister and our government.”
“Felda’s debts are growing ... and the government will use the settlers money to pay it off,” said Rafizi, a 39-year-old lawmaker from People’s Justice Party (PKR).
“If we don’t stop this, the debt will be shouldered by our future generations.”
Felda has said the deal will not impact its existing commitments and programs to improve the well-being of the settlers. Felda itself is planning a series of roadshows to convince settlers in its plantation areas of the deal’s benefits.
Quarter of parliament
Felda settlers are the majority voters in at least 54 of the 222 seats in the national parliament, and has helped bring the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional (National Front) coalition to power in every election since independence in 1957.
Even the opposition’s attempt to highlight a multi-billion dollar alleged money-laundering scandal at state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) that erupted in 2015 did not resonate with rural voters.
The Felda issue, however, affects them directly.
“All this while, UMNO has won the elections because there are 54 parliamentary seats in the Felda (settlers) areas. Now I am sure the sentiment has changed,” said Mazlan Aliman, president of the National Felda Settlers’ Children Society (ANAK).
He estimates that over half of his association members and their families will vote for the opposition party if the Eagle High deal goes through.
“If this happens, (Barisan Nasional) will lose in the upcoming elections,” Mazlan said.
Najib has to call elections by 2018, but a government source told Reuters he may do it earlier, possibly in the second half of this year.
Election headwinds
The prime minister is heading into the next election already saddled with the scandal around 1MDB, which has been investigated in a half-dozen countries for money laundering. His government said nearly $700 million of 1MDB money that wound up in Najib’s personal bank account came from an unnamed Arab.
Yet Najib, who has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing, retains a tight grip on UMNO by commanding a vast patronage system that spreads the largesse among ordinary Malays as well as party apparatchiks.
He is wielding sticks along with the carrots: Anwar Ibrahim, the charismatic opposition leader, remains in jail on sodomy charges, activists and politicians have been charged with sedition, critical news websites have been closed.
Rafizi, the lawmaker who spoke at the Sungkai rally, is himself on bail pending an appeal after he was sentenced to 18 months in jail for leaking a confidential 1MDB document.
But the prime minister is fighting economic headwinds. Although Malaysia’s GDP is expected to grow this year, the ringgit currency has fallen by more than a quarter over the past two years, and prices have risen after state subsidies were slashed and a national goods and services (GST) tax launched.
All that is being felt in rural Malay heartlands such as Sungkai, and is contributing to the sour faces over the Felda-Eagle High deal.
“Despite a sustained campaign by political opponents to undermine Malaysia’s economy, the IMF and World Bank state that it remains on track to grow at 4.5 percent and 4.3 percent respectively,” a Malaysian government spokesman said.
Economists forecast 2016 growth will be 4.2 percent.
Felda's fallen fortunes
Felda, created by Najib’s father and Malaysia’s second prime minister, resettled and employed the rural poor in the palm industry. It helped lead Malaysia to become one of the world’s two largest producers of palm oil, along with Indonesia.
The settlers leased government land for palm cultivation and many also own shares in Felda Global Ventures (FGV), a unit of Felda that raised over $3 billion in a listing in 2012.
But Felda’s fortunes have slumped in recent years — its shares fell by over 60 percent since its IPO. The shares plunged another 5 percent on Dec. 23, when the Eagle High deal was announced.
“This is a waste of money,” said Khalili Kasim, a 64-year-old settler, saying Felda should be providing housing loans, or educational aid instead of putting money into Eagle High.
“Land owners should be rich, but why are some of us still struggling and living under the poverty line?” Khalili said.
But the opposition will be fighting an uphill battle to secure the votes of Felda settlers, who have long been loyal UMNO supporters.
“In the lead-up to the elections, if they (UMNO) can develop measures that can persuade the voters ... then they can still mitigate the concerns arising from the purchase of Eagle High,” said Ibrahim Suffian, director of independent opinion polling firm Merdeka Center.
“But this is not a done deal; it is a developing story.”
Discontent in Malay heartland may spell trouble for PM Najib
Discontent in Malay heartland may spell trouble for PM Najib
Iranian hackers tried but failed to interest Biden’s campaign in stolen Trump info, FBI says
- The Trump campaign disclosed on Aug. 10 that it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents
WASHINGTON: Iranian hackers sought to interest President Joe Biden’s campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump’s campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people connected to the Democratic president in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election, the FBI and other federal agencies said Wednesday.
There’s no evidence that any of the recipients responded, officials said, preventing the hacked information from surfacing in the final months of the closely contested election.
The hackers sent emails in late June and early July to people who were associated with Biden’s campaign before he dropped out. The emails “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” according to a US government statement.
The announcement is the latest effort to call out what officials say is Iran’s brazen, ongoing work to interfere in the 2024 election, including a hack-and-leak campaign that the FBI and other federal agencies linked last month to Tehran. The Justice Department has been preparing charges in that breach, The Associated Press has reported.
The FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have said the Trump campaign hack and an attempted breach of the Biden-Harris campaign are part of an effort to undermine voters’ faith in the election and to stoke discord.
The Trump campaign disclosed on Aug. 10 that it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents. At least three news outlets — Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post — were leaked confidential material from inside the Trump campaign. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what it received.
Politico reported that it began receiving emails on July 22 from an anonymous account. The source — an AOL email account identified only as “Robert” — passed along what appeared to be a research dossier that the campaign had apparently done on the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. The document was dated Feb. 23, almost five months before Trump selected Vance as his running mate.
In a statement, Morgan Finkelstein, a spokesperson for Kamala Harris’s campaign, said the campaign has cooperated with law enforcement since learning that people associated with Biden’s team were among the recipients of the emails.
“We’re not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign; a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt,” Finkelstein said.
Ukraine’s Zelensky says ‘victory plan’ is ready
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday that his “Victory Plan,” intended to bring peace to Ukraine while keeping the country strong an avoiding all “frozen conflicts,” was now complete after much consultation.
Zelensky pledged last month to present his plan to US President Joe Biden, presumably next week when he attends sessions of the UN Security Council and General Assembly.
While providing daily updates on the plan’s preparation, Zelensky has given few clues of the contents, indicating only that it aims to create terms acceptable to Ukraine, now locked in conflict with Russia for more than 2 1/2 years.
“Today, it can be said that our victory plan is fully prepared. All the points, all key focus areas and all necessary detailed additions of the plan have been defined,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address.
“The most important thing is the determination to implement it.
There was, Zelensky said, no alternative to peace, “no freezing of the war or any other manipulations that would simply postpone Russian aggression to another stage.”
On Tuesday, the president said a meeting with top commanders had produced “good and strong content” in military terms, “precisely the kind that can significantly strengthen Ukraine.”
Zelensky has used as the basis for negotiations a peace plan he presented in late 2022 calling for a withdrawal of all Russian troops, the restoration of Ukraine’s post-Soviet borders and a means to bring Russian to account for its invasion.
The plan was the focal point of a “peace summit” hosted by Switzerland in June with participants pledging to convene a second summit later this year. Russia was not invited to the June summit and branded it as meaningless, though Ukraine and its allies say Moscow could attend the next gathering.
Zelensky has rejected any notion of negotiations while Russian troops occupy nearly 20 percent of the country’s territory.
Russia has repeatedly said it is willing to negotiate, but rules out discussions while Ukrainian forces remain in its southern Kursk region an incursion into the area last month.
Venezuelan opposition candidate says letter conceding election was coerced
CARACAS: Venezuela’s opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia said Wednesday he had been coerced into signing a letter distributed by Venezuelan authorities in which he supposedly conceded election defeat to strongman President Nicolas Maduro.
In the letter, dated September 7 and addressed to parliamentary leader Jorge Rodriguez, Gonzalez Urrutia said “I respect” the regime-aligned CNE electoral council’s proclamation of Maduro as the winner of the July 28 vote.
But on Wednesday, the 75-year-old retired diplomat published a message on X from Madrid, where he was given asylum after weeks in hiding in Venezuela, saying he was made to sign the letter in exchange for being allowed to leave.
Maduro aides brought him the letter at the Spanish embassy in Caracas and “I had to either sign it or deal with the consequences.”
Gonzalez Urrutia added “there were very tense hours of coercion, blackmail and pressure. At that point I considered I could be of more use free than if I were imprisoned.”
The letter, he said, was worthless as it was tainted by “coercion.”
Within hours of polls closing, the CNE declared Maduro the victor with 52 percent of votes cast.
The opposition immediately cried foul and dozens of countries refused to recognize Maduro’s claim to a third six-year term unless the CNE published a detailed vote breakdown, which it has not.
The United States has said there was “overwhelming evidence” that Gonzalez Urrutia had won.
The opposition presented its own figures based on polling station-level counts which it says proves Gonzalez Urrutia won by a landslide.
Gonzalez Urrutia vowed on Wednesday that “as the president elected by millions and millions of Venezuelans who voted for change, democracy and peace, I will not be silenced.”
He left for Spain under the cloud of an arrest warrant condemned by the international community for “serious crimes” related to his insistence that Maduro had stolen the vote.
Gonzalez Urrutia had ignored three successive summonses to appear before prosecutors investigating him for alleged crimes including “usurpation” of public functions, “forgery” of a public document, incitement to disobedience and sabotage.
The charges stem from the opposition’s publication of voting results, which the government says only authorized institutions have the right to do.
The CNE has said it cannot publish the voting records as hackers had corrupted the data, though observers have said there was no evidence of such interference.
Gonzalez Urrutia replaced opposition leader Maria Corina Machado on the ballot at the last minute after she was barred from running by institutions loyal to the Maduro regime.
She, too, has been mostly in hiding since the vote, except for appearing at a handful of organized demonstrations.
Maduro has said both Gonzalez Urrutia and Machado belong “behind bars,” blaming them for the deaths of 25 civilians and two soldiers in protests that broke out spontaneously after his alleged victory was announced.
Nearly 200 people were injured and more than 2,400 arrested.
Maduro has managed to cling to power despite sanctions stepped up after his 2018 reelection, also dismissed as a sham by dozens of countries.
Harvey Weinstein pleads not guilty to new sex crime charge
NEW YORK: Disgraced US movie producer Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York.
Weinstein, 72, who had emergency heart surgery just over a week ago, appeared in a Manhattan courtroom in a wheelchair to enter his plea to a single charge of committing a criminal sexual act.
The once-powerful movie mogul was unshaven and appeared pale and visibly frail during his brief court appearance.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said the new indictment of Weinstein is for the sexual assault of a woman in a Manhattan hotel between April 29, 2006 and May 6, 2006.
“Thanks to this survivor who bravely came forward, Harvey Weinstein now stands indicted for an additional alleged violent sexual assault,” Bragg said in a statement.
Weinstein is serving a 16-year prison sentence after being convicted on rape charges in California.
He was also convicted in New York in 2020 of the rape and sexual assault of an actress and of forcibly performing oral sex on a production assistant.
He was sentenced to 23 years in prison in that case.
A New York appeals court, however, overturned that conviction in April and Weinstein is now awaiting a retrial on those charges.
Judge Curtis Farber scheduled a next court hearing for Weinstein for October 2.
The one-time Hollywood heavyweight has suffered from a raft of health issues while in prison and has spent time in a secure hospital unit.
On September 9, Weinstein was rushed to Bellevue Hospital from New York’s Rikers Island prison for emergency heart surgery.
Allegations against Weinstein helped launch the #MeToo movement in 2017, a watershed moment for women fighting sexual misconduct.
More than 80 women accused him of harassment, sexual assault or rape, including prominent actors Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashley Judd.
Weinstein claimed any sexual relations in question were consensual.
Weinstein and his brother Bob co-founded Miramax Films.
Their hits included 1998’s “Shakespeare in Love,” for which Weinstein shared a best picture Oscar.
Sanders preparing resolutions to block $20 billion in US arms sales to Israel
WASHINGTON: Sen. Bernie Sanders is preparing several resolutions that would stop more than $20 billion in US arms sales to Israel, a longshot effort but the most substantive pushback yet from Congress over the devastation in Gaza ahead of the first year anniversary of the Israel-Hamas war.
In a letter to Senate colleagues on Wednesday, Sanders said the US cannot be “complicit in this humanitarian disaster.”
The action would force an eventual vote to block the arms sales to Israel, though majority passage is highly unlikely.
“Much of this carnage in Gaza has been carried out with US-provided military equipment,” Sanders, I-Vermont, wrote.
As the war grinds toward a second year, and with the outcome of President Joe Biden’s efforts to broker a ceasefire deal and hostage release uncertain, the resolutions from Sanders would seek to reign in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assault on Gaza.
The war has killed some 41,000 people in Gaza after the surprise Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack that killed about 1,200 people in Israel, and abducted 250 others, with militants still holding around 100 hostages.
While it’s doubtful the politically split Senate would pass the measures, the move is designed to send a message to the Netanyahu regime that its war effort is eroding the US’ longtime bipartisan support for Israel. Sanders said he is working with other colleagues on the measures.
Key Senate Democrats have been pushing the Biden administration to end the Israel-Hamas war and lessen the humanitarian crisis, particularly in Gaza, where people’s homes, hospitals, schools and entire Palestinian families are being wiped out.
