Kadir: PM to meet 60 Umno chiefs next week

Each warlord will receive RM500,000, according to the veteran journalist's sources.

PETALING JAYA: Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak is set to meet Umno division heads next Monday in another show of party solidarity, according to veteran journalist A Kadir Jasin.

Quoting unnamed Umno sources, Kadir says in his latest blog posting that the meeting is with 60 division heads who are not MPs and that each of them will be paid RM500,000 from a “special allocation”.

“If this is true,” he says, “we have to determine whether the allocation is from the government, the party or some other sources.”

Kadir regards his informants as credible because they were the ones who told him two weeks ago that they had examined 1MDB’s accounts and were making moves to prevent the scandal surrounding the company from threatening the national economy and Umno’s credibility.

He says his sources told him that Cheras Umno chief Syed Ali Alhabshee’s recent questioning about the authorities’ delay in calling in businessman Jho Low for interrogation was one of these moves.

“As I understand it, the Umno sources were emphasising that Umno’s continued hold on power is more important than any individual’s survival,” he adds.

Kadir also questioned Najib’s wisdom in accepting the sponsorship of his daughter’s recent wedding from a foreign source.

Last Friday, in an attempt to counter criticism of the lavish celebration, Najib’s special aide, Rizal Mansor, told the media that the cost was borne by the groom, Daniyar Kessibayev, and his family. The Kessibayevs are Kazakhstanis.

Kadir says it appears that Najib felt no discomfort in accepting the sponsorship.

“We have to ask whether it’s proper for a prime minister to accept the sponsorship of an outside party for a lavish reception where the guests are invited by him. Won’t it cause indebtedness and expose him to blackmail?”

Kadir brings up the issue partly in the context of reports indicating that the Treasury may have run out of money.

Referring to Health Minister S Subramaniam’s recent statement that the ministry’s budget has been slashed by RM300 million, he says this is in keeping with information he has received from a “senior aide to a senior minister” that all government agencies are experiencing budget cuts for 2015. Apparently, the total cut is RM2 billion and this amount is being channelled to flood relief operations.

“When this sort of thing happens,” he says, “we cannot run away from asking whether the Treasury is short of money, or worse, has run out of money. What has happened to the contingency allocation? Or are we to understand that there is no such allocation under Najib as Prime Minister and Finance Minister? Or has the allocation been used up for other purposes, such as last March’s RM950 million loan to 1MDB?”