Of loyalty, royalty and...

Since the recently concluded general election of Malaysia, PM AAB is under tremendous pressure from his own party stalwarts as well as the component parties due to the dismay performance of UMNO and BN during the said election.

Initially, there are talks that AAB is going to hand over the UMNO presidency to others but the talks and demands seems to lose momentum and goes underground, at least physically and the next weeks will see whether it is a serious threat or just a whimper of UMNO members antics.
This is more so when his deputy has publicly supported AAB through thick and thin.

On the other front, east Malaysian lawmakers are openly voicing out their displeasure on how BN ill treated them as was seen by statements from Anisah Aman and Ghapur during their speech in parliment recently. This fuelled more talks on the possibility of Sabah and Sarawak lawmakers cross over to the opposition. Apparently, these "coffee shop" talks is getting to AAB's nerves as it is reported in Malaysian insider that AAB is in overdrive to secure the pledge of loyalty of Sabah and Sarawak's lawmakers. Based on these reports, it seems that AAB is given a lifeline up to August to make good his promises to look into Sabah and Sarawak's interest.

Politic life in Malaysia will be more interesting comes June when UMNO starts their branch and division elections, the commission report on video involving a senior lawyer etc...

On the other front, the oil royalty payment to Malaysian oil producing states is another point of interest.
MB of Terengganu, Ahmad Said had previously called for the federal government to return the oil royalty money to the state to manage. He further stated that the money to the tune of RM 1.5 billion per year as reported by newspaper.

Well, brace for the shock when the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Senator Datuk Amirsham A.Aziz revealed in the parliment on 12th May '08 that the royalty money or wang ehsan to the state of Terengganu is RM 2.45 billion annually.

This RM 2.45 billion annually is a simple arithmetic calculation of dividing RM 7.364 billion by three since the figure quoted by the Senator is for three years i.e. from March 2004 to Mar 2007.
No wonder, AAB is clapping his hands previously. He was appreciating the "good works" done by those behind the scene guys in spending to projects that are not fully beneficial to the people of Terengganu.

AAB may have smiled before but the threat of crossover is real.

Till then...G'nite M'sia...wherever u are...