All a-Twitter over hostage girl

One Man's Meat

by PHILIP GOLINGAI

In quiet KL, tweets went flying in Twitterjaya as a hostage drama unfolded when a naked man grabbed a 10-year-old girl from her family home in Kampung Baru.

HOSTAGE drama at Kampung Baru in KL. Mentally ill man has threatened to kill 10-year-old girl.

That was what I tweeted at 1pm on Monday while stabbing into a medium tenderloin steak at Cafe Barbera in Bangsar.

It was the first day of the Lunar New Year of the Water Dragon and I was at the cafe to check whether it was suitable for a tweetup (an organised or impromptu gathering of people who use Twitter).

I was doing a favour for Twitter sensation @tankengliang (Tan Keng Liang, Kedah Gera­kan Youth chief) who was organising a tweetup on Feb 25.

“KL is so dead,” I thought as the only patron in Cafe Barbera was me.

Then my colleague Austin Cameons SMS-ed about an ongoing hostage drama.

I drove to Kampung Baru, a Malay enclave in the heart of Kuala Lumpur.

The first thing I did when I arrived at the scene of the crime was to take photographs with my Nokia N8 so that I can tweet them.

Fifi Ramadani was held at knife-point in a single-story wooden house with the Petronas Twin Towers in the backdrop. In front of the house were two ambulances, paramedics and policemen (in uniform and “mufti” – slang for civilian attire) who were watched by members of the media and curious onlookers.

Austin interviewed the girl’s 47-year-old father, Shafrudin Marlis, a one-legged Indonesian with Malaysian PR.

“The man, his wife and three children were watching television at about 11am, when a naked man stormed into their home,” he briefed me.

“The man, who might be mentally ill, grabbed a knife from the kitchen and in a matter of seconds took the girl and threatened to kill her if the family approached him.”

At 1.32pm, I tweeted: “Kg Baru hostage drama: Looks like police ready to neutralise mentally ill man who threatened to kill 10-year-old girl. Ambulance waiting.”

Nothing happened.

At 2.06pm, I tweeted: “Waiting game at hostage drama at Kg Baru.”

2.29pm: “Heard at hostage drama scene. Baik juga polis ni. Tak tembak-tembak (The police are being very nice. They have not shot the hostage-taker)”.

In terms of police action, the only thing exciting, which I tweeted, was “Kg Baru hostage drama: Police have sent in 4 packets of iced tea.”

3.04pm: “If this was a movie, Bruce Willis would have saved the day by now. 5 hours long hostage drama.”

3.06pm: “Looks like a female hostage negotiator has arrived at hostage scene. And she ain’t no Jodie Foster.”

3.13pm: “A doctor in white uniform just arrived to give psychiatric help to hostage taker.”

By then my tweets on the hostage drama had generated interest in TwitterJaya (the moniker of the Malaysian Twittersphere).

@JohariTeh tweeted: “Society should have seen this (coming). Why let such unstable person roam the streets. Could have been anyone’s child. Learn, man, learn.”

Twitterers were asking for updates. My answers were: “ongoing”, “very calm here” and “still negotiating”.

I received some tweets that cracked me up. For example, @saroki19: “Got female hostage negotiator, send in nasi lemak with sedative.”

And those on TwitterJaya discovered that a real life hostage drama was so unlike that in Hollywood.

@abamjoni tweeted: “Jack Bauer needs 24 hours” in response to SidneyNg: @aliamaricar’s “Bruce Willis/Keanu Reaves would have settled it in 2 hours tops.”

@maketab: “Hancock would also save the day in a few seconds.:-)”

At 3.32pm, in reply to @hajarshamsudin who tweeted: “Will the police just shoot the guy. I can’t stand the thought of the girl harmed! It’s almost 5 hours already!”, I wrote: “I don’t think police will shoot him.”

3.38pm: “Looks like something will happen. We’ve been kicked to yellow line.”

3.46pm: “A woman arrived at the scene. Probably connected to naked hostage taker.”

3.47pm: “No sniper. Not necessary” in reply to @throngz’s query, “Is the sniper there yet?”

4pm: “The official language at hostage scene in kg baru is Indonesian. I hear murmurs of Javanese or Bugis.”

Many people retweeted it. Some even politicised it.

4.08pm: Gun shots.

At 4.09pm, my hands shaking, I tweeted: “Three gun shots and girl rushed out.”

4.11pm: “Frenzy at scene. But girl whisked away in ambulance.”

4.14pm: “Crowd in hostage scene cheers police effort. It is all over.”

4.16pm: “Four shots fired and hostage taker is believed to be alive. He was rushed away in an ambulance.”

Austin reported a police spokesman as saying: “All our attempts failed. We then had to shoot the suspect after he became more aggressive. We fired four shots, which hit him in the rib area.”

At 8pm, @staronline tweeted: “Hostage drama: The mentally ill man who held a 10-yr-old girl hostage and was shot by police has died in hospital.”

Enter the ‘Emperor of Indonesia’

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

A Tanjung Malim-born Dutch citizen claims he is a descendent of the Emperor of China and that his bloodline is linked to royal families in India, Java and Siam.

IT is not every day that you get to meet a trillionaire. So when I was invited to interview Kamal Ashnawi, a person I've never heard of, I said yes.

On Saturday morning, at a Kuala Lumpur hotel coffee house together with two of Kamal's aides, I waited for the so-called trillionaire.

Wearing a baseball cap, long-sleeved shirt and jeans, he sauntered over to our table. The two aides bowed, pressed their palms together to their forehead as if greeting royalty and kissed his hands.

“We call him Tuanku as he is a sultan from Indonesia,” one of the aides whispered to me.

According to Kamal, he is a Dutch citizen born in Tanjung Malim, Perak, on Jan 1, 1964.

“I'm a descendent of the Emperor of China and in a history that went haywire, my family fled from China to Kedah. I traced my bloodline to the royal families of China, India, Java and Siam,” claimed the man who is also known as Raden Mas Prabhu Gusti Agung Ki Asmoro Wijoyo.

“I grew up in Tanjung Malim and my family here is very simple and ordinary. Nobody in my family talks about our royal blood and wealth. But my grandmother once told me: “You are special and, when the time comes, you will know.”

It was in Holland in the late 1980s that Kamal “found out who he really was”. A member of an Indonesian royal family, kicked out of the country by president Sukarno, told him he was of royal blood.

In London in the early 1990s, a lawyer told Kamal about his royal family's massive wealth. Unconvinced, he told the lawyer to prove his claims.

He and the lawyer flew from London to Hong Kong to meet the “keeper of the royal treasure”. From there, Kamal and the keeper travelled to Kunming in China.

They hiked up a mountain for four hours and reached a cave guarded by an old couple who, Kamal says, are immortals.

“If you tried to pass them without their blessing, you would cough blood and die,” he said.

Inside the three-metre-high cave, Kamal saw gold bars stacked like a pagoda, US$15mil (RM46mil) in jade and US$10mil (RM31mil) in diamonds and stacks of US dollars.

“I took a gold bar and knocked it on a rock. It was really gold. The treasure is the wealth of the dynasties that ruled China. Their wealth was also kept in other mountains and in vaults all over the world,” he said.

About three years ago, when Kamal watched Nicholas Cage's movie National Treasure, he laughed.

“The treasure in the movie was small compared to the wealth I saw in the mountain,” he said.

Next, Kamal told of his meeting two years ago in Kuala Lumpur with Dr Wong Eng Po, a royal physician from China.

Dr Wong placed his hand on Kamal's bald head, then immediately bowed in front of Kamal and ordered his five followers to do the same.

“He said I was the reincarnation of Emperor Nurhaci (1661-1626) of China. He felt an energy on my head which was superhuman because an emperor, unlike an ordinary human, has to think more.

“I'm the reincarnation of two emperors of China,” Kamal added.

He elaborated that a few years ago, the royal family decided he would be the sole administrator of the royal wealth kept in secret accounts in about 1,000 banks worldwide.

“This means that 86.7% of the world's money belongs to me,” he said.

Taking out several folders, Kamal said: “You're lucky, I brought documents.”

He produced an A4-sized paper with the photographs of the national treasure, the immortal couple and several “official-looking” letters allegedly from HSBC certifying he has an account of five trillion euros (RM20tril).

“That is a small amount. I have more money in other banks and institutions,” he added.

I wondered why his name has not appeared in the Forbes' list of world's richest people. And a suspicion lingered about his claims.

However, I could not authenticate his documents since the bank was closed for Chinese New Year.

Kamal has not made any withdrawal from the account as “it is not money that you can move just like that”.

“The money is under the control of Indonesia, Germany, Britain, the US and the Euro Central Bank and I've got to go smooth with them,” he said.

“I can't use the money directly but I will invest in certain projects. Like three trillion euros (RM12tril) to green a desert in China.”

Curious, I asked what was the difference between a billionaire and a trillionaire.

He replied: “A billionaire needs to show he has the money. But for me, I don't need to show that I got money. I can travel in a bus. I can wear slippers.”

Born in the year of the dragon, Kamal believes 2012 is his year. In March, he says he will negotiate with institutions such as the IMF to be recognised as the Emperor of Indonesia.

He says he's rich. But his story could just be as rich.

Let's hope he is not another Elie Youssef Najem, the so-called Lebanese billionaire who made headlines for all the wrong reasons.

And words are all it takes...

ONE MAN'S MEAT
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

Two wrong words by Ceylyn Tay in a speech that appeared on YouTube led to a barrage of personal attacks that has left the novice politician devastated. But she is confident that she will overcome the experience.

IT is about 7pm on a Sunday and Ipoh City councillor Ceylyn Tay checks the comments on a YouTube video linked to her Facebook page.

In the video, Tay, a virtually unknown Gerakan politician, was giving a 20-minute speech in Cantonese to about 3,000 people at a 1Malaysia function in Ipoh on Jan 7.

The comments included “Ham ka chan” (a Cantonese proverb which means to curse someone’s family an entire generation to death), “This stupid woman is selling off the Chinese”, “kepala cacat” (mentally handicapped), “I’m ashamed of you and I’m ashamed of your mother” and “we’ll get a bunch of guys to #$%& you”.

Some of the vulgar words, according to Tay, are Chinese phrases which are too hard to translate into English.

The 36-year-old mother of two daughters felt her temperature rising.

“Wow! What’s this? I was very, very upset. I blanked out for a moment,” Tay recalled in an interview in Ipoh on Thursday, four days after her YouTube video went viral.

“When I watched my speech again, I felt that I did not say anything that could have hurt anyone.”

“And I realised that I was attacked because I was speaking at a Barisan Nasional function.

“If I spoke at a Pakatan Rakyat function, that would be another story.”

She cried. And she did not want anyone around her.

“Even later (that night) when my husband (a 44-year-old businessman) returned home, he asked what had happened and I told him ‘Don’t ask’.

“He wanted to comfort me but I said: ‘Don’t touch me!’”she said.

The novice politician added: “Even now I am still upset that my friends have joked that they want to send me to Tanjung Rambutan.”

The next day the YouTube video was taken down after about 16,000 views. But then – in Tay’s words – “all sorts of edited versions” were uploaded to the video-sharing website.

The statement, according to Tay, which riled the viewers, was: “Malaysia is a multi-racial country and we can’t have a two-party system, unlike the US and England as these two countries have a single race.”

“I used the wrong words ‘single race’. What I meant was the US and England have homogeneous societies,” explained the Malacca-born woman who grew up in Ipoh.

“Some viewers commented ‘Are you saying that (US President) Barack Obama is not black? That he is bleached!’

“What I actually meant was Americans share the same language, religion and culture.”

During the interview at the office of Gerakan deputy president Datuk Chang Ko Youn, Tay was accompanied by four “bodyguards” (Gerakan members).

They were there to give her morale support and to answer her phone calls.

Her iPhone has been ringing non-stop as her phone number was posted on her Facebook page. And she has received so many prank calls and text messages asking for a date.

“Does it help that you have a pretty face?” I asked.

“I don’t think I have a pretty face,” said Tay, who is a singer and emcees events.

“Then why are some men excited over you that they want to date you?” I asked.

“Maybe because that night I was wearing a red top,” she said.

“Maybe because in Barisan there is no other lady from the Chinese community who can speak quite steadily.

“Unlike other politicians who are quite conservative, I am very open in my speech.”

“And I say things in quite a funny way. For example, (Perak DAP) Nga Kor Ming has mentioned several times that if Pakatan ruled it would waive the bumiputra quota and I said: ‘Nik Aziz (Kelantan Mentri Besar Datuk Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat) might not agree and he would buy RM5 worth of kerosene and burn the DAP’.”

“Do you think you’ve become a national figure?” I asked.

“Kind of,” Tay said. “I can see that there are people, not only from Perak, but Johor, Penang and Sin­gapore who want to add me to their FB.

“That’s how I know the video is spreading.”

“Is this negative publicity good for you?” I asked.

“I think this is a very good experience. Not everyone has this chance that within a few days everyone knows about you,” she said.

“Many people want to make me weak but I feel if I can overcome this, in the future I can overcome anything.”

“Now the attacks I’ve received are from Facebook. It will get worse if the Opposition politicians start attacking me.”

The ‘what-ifs’ in Sabah politics

ONE MAN'S MEAT
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

The reality in Sabah is that if elections were called today, BN will retain the state. However, that does not stop the Opposition from dreaming because anything can happen politically in Malaysia’s Wild Wild East.

“INI kali lah! (This is the time!)” is the Opposition’s battle cry in Sabah.

During my five-week Christmas holiday in my home state the mood among opposition-minded Sabahans is that this time the Barisan Nasional government which has ruled Sabah since 1994 will fall.

“In 1999, 2004 and 2008 we had the feeling that the winds of change would sweep Sabah but it did not happen. But this time the winds are blowing stronger,” said an opposition leader, referring to the state polls in 1999, 2004 and 2008 which Barisan National won convincingly.

“Ini kali lah!” interjected a 40-something Kadazandusun man wearing a T-shirt with Datuk Dr Jeffery Kitingan’s United Borneo Front logo.

But the political reality in Sabah is that if elections were called today, Barisan will retain the state. However, that does not stop the Opposition from dreaming that it will form the next government as anything can happen politically in Malaysia’s Wild Wild East.

You can’t blame the Opposition from thinking that the political ground in the Land Below the Wind is shifting. There are so many what-ifs in the Wild Wild East.

Top on my list is what if an Umno warlord ditched his party, which is the backbone of Sabah BN (controlling 32 state seats out of 60).

“Yes, he is going to form a party. There are flags and T-shirts of his new party in his house,” an Umno mini warlord and assemblyman told me with confidence.

He listed the names of Umno leaders who would join the new opposition party – three incumbent MPs (one with a glamourous wife), a former chief minister, a former federal minister, a state minister and half a dozen warlords and former lawmakers.

The speculated list is impressive. It is as if the Manchester United reserve team plus Dimitar Berbatov and Paul Scholes had ditched the Red Devils to form a club to contest against United in the FA Cup.

“Why do they want to be ABU (“Anything But Umno” or its original meaning “Anything But United”)?” I asked the politician.

“They’ve being sidelined or they think they are going to be sidelined. Most of them are (political) gamblers.

“They have nothing to lose. They think this is their last chance to throw the dice,” explained the mini warlord, who is speculated to turn ABU if he was dropped as a candidate.

If these dissenters do indeed leave Umno, they would enhance the stereotype that Sabah politicians are “Sdn Bhd (private limited)” individuals who are in politics for their own interest.

My top second favourite what-if is that a Sabah-based party will do what Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) did in 1990.

On the eve of the 1990 election, PBS led by Tan Sri Joseph Pairin Kitingan pulled out of BN to join the opposition Gagasan Rakyat (including Semangat 46 and DAP) alliance.

Speculation is rife – even among party diehards – that it is just a matter of time that the party will join forces with Datuk Yong Teck Lee’s Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP), which left the BN on Sept 15, 2008.

There are other wilder what-ifs in Sabah politics.

“It is a poker game. Someone is bluffing,” explained a seasoned political analyst.

The only sure thing for the Opposition if elections were to be called today is DAP is assured of winning some seats in Sabah. The party’s result in 2008 (winning the Kota Kinabalu MP’s seat and the Sri Tanjung state seat) is an indication of its strength.

The “Ini kali lah!” mood is also fanned by the belief there is a curse that a Sabah government will fall every nine years. Usno (United Sabah National Party) ruled from 1967 to 1976, Berjaya from 1976 to 1985 and PBS from 1985 to 1994.

There’s some truth in this “curse” except that BN has ruled the state for 18 years since 1994.

But the political analyst has an explanation to “prove” that the nine-year curse happened in 2003.

“From 1994 to 2003, Sabah was ruled by rotation Chief Ministers,” he said, referring to Umno’s Tun Sakaran Dandai, Umno’s Datuk Seri Salleh Said Keruak, SAPP’s Yong, Upko’s Tan Sri Bernard Dompok, Umno’s Datuk Seri Osu Sukam and LDP’s Tan Sri Chong Kah Kiat.

“And when the rotation was stopped in 2003, Sabah has been ruled by one Chief Minister who is Datuk Musa Aman.”

An interesting theory. Notice that the last number of the year each subsequent government rose to power is reduced by one — 1967, 1976, 1985, 1994, 2003 ... and 2012?