Anwar ends a year of overseas trips on high note but …

This post is published here after it has appeared in scoop.my earlier today 19 Dec 2023 - Rockybru. 

Tokyo, 18 Dec: Every time he’s abroad for work, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim will make time to. meet with the Malaysian diaspora.

Usually, this meet-and-greet with Malaysians living, working or studying abroad takes place at the hotel where he stays and involved hundreds of people, under the watch of the host country’s security detail. 

Usually, it’s over dinner. In the case of the 392 Malaysians in Japan who converged on the the Imperial Hotel yesterday (the furthest had traveled from Hiroshima, according to the organisers), it was high tea. 

Usually, the PM doesn’t really get to eat. Yesterday, stuck on the stage with the moderator, he asked on loud speakers if he could please have a cup of coffee. 

In New York (September), San Francisco (Oct) and Tokyo yesterday, three most recent assignments the Scoop had me cover, it was the same: he arrives, make a short speech, and stays on the stage till the end of the designated time answering questions from the floor. 

“I’ll answer the easy ones. The hard questions, you ask Tengku Zafrul and Tok Mat,” he told the Malaysian diaspora in Tokyo,  referring to the two accompanying Cabinet ministers. 

As the case was in New York and San Francisco, a primary concern of the Tokyo diaspora is the right to Malaysian citizenship for children of Malaysians married to foreigners. 

Another is, can they not be made to travel all the way to our Embassy in Tokyo just to renew their visas? It is a long journey …

In San Francisco, Anwar said he liked the idea of Malaysian students gaining some work experience after graduation by working in their host countries.

This will help them serve the country better when they do return. And if they somehow decide to stay back longer or not come back at all, “Just make sure you send a lot of money home.”

The Malaysian diaspora, of course, find Anwar’s views refreshing, even liberating. “Don’t be afraid to use race and religion .. to forge greater unity among ourselves.”

But some students - and their parents -  are finding out that things are easier said than done. Anwar may be supportive of our students gaining job experience abroad but the relevant authorities, such as MARA, which give out study loans and scholarships, may have other ideas.

“The PM says one thing but the relevant authorities say they have not received the memo from the PM. So nothing has changed,” said a frustrated dad. 

Anwar said the rights to Malaysian citizenship for diaspora babies will be taken up, presumably in Parliament, in the first quarter of 2024. 

Follow-through will determine that the diaspora’s issues and other gains made during Anwar’s trips are properly executed and realised. 

These include the international stature that the country has managed to regain as a result of Anwar’s “fiercely independent” but non-combating stand on Gaza, US-China’s ties, rules-based xxx, climate change and ASEAN. 

New Foreign Minister Mohamad Hassan has already gotten a taste of what’s in store. Since his appointment, he has not even had time to report for duty at Wisma Putra. “Straight to the deep end,” Tok Mat told reporters covering the Tokyo visit. 

And there’s the potential FDI that all those overseas trips have garnered. Keyword here is potential. 

“Tengku Zafrul banyak berjasa membawa pelaburan besar ke negara kita,” Anwar had told the Tokyo diaspora. 

That’s a fact. From all those overseas trips that he made in 2023, with and without the PM, the Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry Tengku Zafrul Aziz got companies from Germany to Japan to commit to RM353.6 billion worth of potential investments (including Tokyo’s latest tally of RM6.6 billion, which are mostly for expansion).  

These are FDI that the Malaysian economy sorely needs. 

But if not realised, potential investments will amount to nothing. 

To make sure that those companies actually invest, all the infrastructure, resources, and ease of doing business that have been promised to them by Anwar, Zafrul and Tok Mat during all those trips must be realised and delivered. 

And everyone - ministry, department, chamber of commerce,  GLC, trade union, and right down to the media - must get the same memo. 

Ends

Rocky’s Bru is Datuk Ahirudin Attan, the Scoops’ blah blah blah. In Tokyo he discovers chimaki, a rice cake covered with sweet soy flour from the mountain region of Uonuma, probably the best desserts in the world after kueh lopes. 

The case of the missing trees in Taman Tun Dr Ismail

 

TTDI, 29 Nov: They are cutting the trees again in Taman Tun Dr Ismail, once one of the greenest housing estates in KL. 

Well, it probably STILL is but at the rate City Hall has been making some huge, old trees dissapear while residents were in bed watching Netflix or HBO, or simply passing out, TTDI won’t stay as green for long. Resident Dr V. Sivapalan alerted the neighbourhood of the missing trees two days ago on TTDI’s 17k-strong Facebook page. “I don’t know if you realise it but we have been losing a lot of large trees in TTDI over the last few months. These are perfectly healthy trees that are 20-30 years old.” 

Dr Sivalapan said “they” started cutting trees along Persiaran Openg “purportedly to put up new pavements”, followed by trees along Jalan Datuk Sulaiman and now “they” have cut the trees at the Kiara Park entrance and along Jalan Rahim Kajai.

“TTDI is know for its trees but they have stealthily cut down those trees and no one has protested. If we continue to keep quiet, soon we will lose all the trees along all our road just because they want to build pavements … It is time we spoke against this madness,” he said in the FB posting.

What Dr Sivapalan said is true. Taman Tun is beginning to look like Legoland in JB when it opened a few years ago: botak and barren. The sad thing is that residents who responded to the news of the fallen trees were mostly unsympathetic. 

“I’m sure DBKL has a good reason for that. No one cuts down trees without a valid reason,” one wrote back.

DBKL, or the City Hall, is who Dr Sivapalan refers to as “they” in his FB posting on the missing trees. And how anyone who lives in TTDI can still blindly trust DBKL, heats the hell out of me. Most residents would remember how TTDI nearly lost an entire precious park to a massive condominium project that DBKL tried to force upon them just a couple of years before the pandemic!

I’m with Dr Sivalapan and likeminded residents in calling the RA to wake up from their slumber and nudge the relevant Member of Parliament into action. Stop this three-killing madness. Let’s do out bit for Mother Nature.

P.S. DBKL should take a leaf out of Kuala Kubu Baru’s book: KKB Council to track condition of the town’s iconic trees 

It pays to annoy: How Malaysia got Gaza to be heard in San Francisco

San Francisco, Nov 17: PM Anwar Ibrahim should be delighted with the outcome of the APEC meetings which ended today but he said he was only “quite happy”.

“I regretted that we (the leaders) were unable to reach justice a consensus on Gaza,” he said at the conclusion of the 30th APEC leaders meeting here. 

“I am grateful for the opportunity to bring the Palestine issue out into the open and in not a combative way.

“But I wish (the US), which has been at the forefront of humanitarian issues, had been more consistent when it came to Gaza. 

“Like I said in front of President (Joe) Biden earlier this afternoon, each day delayed means hundreds maybe thousand of Palestinian lives, including children and women,” he said. 

The PM spoke to Malaysian journalists after a dinner with the Malaysian diaspora, which was the last official event in his packed schedule that started last Monday. 

Foreign Minister Zambry Abdul Kadie, MITI minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz, and KKD Minister, along with Malaysian envoy to the US, Nazri, accompanied Anwar at the press conference. 

Throughout the APEC meetings, Anwar had been a thorn in the flesh for host the US, which has

ruled out a ceasefire for Gaza. 

With the staunch support of his counterparts from Indonesia and Brunei, Zambry insisted ni that if APEC wouldn’t support Gaza, it should not be making any geopolitical statement at all that support, say, Ukraine. 

“Any geopolitical statement to be issued must be fair and not hypocritical,” Zambry said. 

And as a result of Malaysia’s protests, the APAC  leadership summit was able only to include economic issues the Badr morning f. Mto go back to its geoeconomic roots. 

Anwar praised Brunei and Indonesia for backing up Malaysia. The three countries issued  a joint statement on Palestine not related to Bangsar. (Chia, Please provide the link to the Bernama article here)

On the economic front, Anwar appeared  more than quite happy. His delegation secured more than RM63 billion of new proposed investments by Microsoft, TikTok, Inovix, Google, and TPG). 

This amount does not include the deal signed by the MCMC under Fahmi’s ministry with BlackBerry. Among other things BlackBerry will set up a Cybersecurity Centre of Ezcellence in Malaysia. 

Zafrul said he has gotten Cabinet approval to create a Malaysian Investmenr Facilitation Centre to cut red tape and hasten approval of new investments.

Anwar calls for end of Cold War mindset after Jo Biden-Xi Jinping meet

San Francisco, Nov 15: For the last one year PM Anwar Ibrahim has consistently called for the US and China to engage each other and not force others around them, Malaysia included, to ally to one or the other. 

This morning, as President Biden and President Xi finally held a historic four-eyed meeting at the onset of the APEC Summit, Anwar applauded it as “critical” and called for an end of  “the Cold War mind set “.

“To me, the meeting between President Biden and President Xi is critical because it should give a message that we are able to work together and trust each other, to resolve serious problems and issues like climate change, Ukranian or Gaza. There are too many contentious issues in the world and we must try and engage.

“Accept the fact that you may not achieve all the desired results but this engagement is important to try and establish areas that we can work together,” he said at the APEC 2023 CEO Summit here.

APEC comprises 21 nations including the US, China, ASEAN, South Korea, Japan and the Oceania. These leaders’ Summit is preceded by a week of meetings involving the CEOs, the APEC economic ministers (AEM) and foreign ministers (AMM). 

Anwar has always been against attempts to force Malaysia to take sides in the US-China conundrum. He repeated this stand to the CEOs. 

“Why put us in a fix in a zero-sum game? For the benefit of the emerging economes and also for the West and the East, I believe that the solution is, of course, greater collaboration.

“This Cold War mindset must end because the world in the post-normal times is more chaotic, more complex and full of contraditions that only wise leaders with vision and commitment and shared idealis will be able to resolve effectively.”

Yesterday, in his special lecture at the UC Berkeley yesterday, Anwar had described how both these countries are equally important to Malaysia. 

He cited as example the case of his government’s decision to open up Malaysia’s 5G development to China’s Huawei.

“When it comes to 5G, our earlier decision was to go with Ericsson (but) then we also see this very impressive advanced technological transformations by Huawei. So we choose what we consider the best for the country. It is not a question of whether we like the United States or China, it is what’s critically important for Malaysia,” he had told the students.

Last September at the UN General Assembly, the Malaysian PM had also sent a similar message to the US and China. 

He repeated this to the APEC CEOs: “The US and the West remain a very important ally to us and China is a very important, trusted neighbour tht will help in our attempt to propel the economy and ensure a peaceful and vibrant regional economy.”

Anwar also challenged the business leaders to be more accountable and help promote the new dynamics. “You can’t depend only on the political leaders because they have been entrusted and to some extent they have succeeded, but they have also failed miserably. So we need now a new configuration where the private sector should play a more dominant role.”

At the same time, he added, the business leaders must have the humility to accept that things have changed and to acknowlege that we have limitations. The 1MDB, for example, would not have happened without the complicity of some international financial institutions, in this case Goldman Sachs. “Accountability is not just among politial leaders but also business leaders and civil society leaders,” he added.

Anwar is scheduled to have a series of discussions with CEOs of some of the biggest corporations based in San Francisco, including Google and Microsoft, and several bilateral meetings with his counterparts, including from Canada and Peru, which is hosting next year’s APEC.

At the end of the 30th APEC summit on Saturday, the leaders will adopt a Golden Gate Declaration that will set the tone for economic collaborations among the member countries in the coming year.