The Renong chairman, Tan Sri Halim Saad, married the niece of the finance
minister's new kid on the corporate block, in a
glittering wedding in Singapore over the weekend. Bolehland's best
and brightest turned up for the glittering show that one
comes to expect when corporate tycoons running away from their bankers
decide to take a new wife. Which is exactly what
Tan Sri Halim did. Renong is a leading Malaysian conglomerate in more
ways than one: it is officially favoured, it has debts it
cannot repay, but it continues to get contracts galore from a grateful
government -- it has just got a contract to build a dam in
Singapore. But its corporate jets have disappeared, and money does
not flow like water any more, it is more like urine flowing
from one suffering from prostate problems. The grand show put on for
the wedding served more than one purpose: besides the
uniting of lovebirds after the Tan Sri's messy divorce in which his
ex-wife wants to take him to the cleaners, it is also a warning
and signal to those who have doubts about the long term viability of
Renong and its sister-company, UEM, that all is well.
But reading through the press reports about the wedding, one thing struck
me. There is no mention anywhere in these reports of
his marriage under shariah laws. The impression one gets -- and I showed
the reports to several Muslim friends -- is that it is a
civil wedding. With the Prime Minister insisting in his speeches around
the country that PAS is not Islamic, how could such a
wedding take place without paying homage to Islam as the country's
official religion? Unless, of course, the Muslim ceremony
took place in Malaysia. As far as I know, that did not take place.
I could, of course, be mistaken. But given the high
prominence of the wedding in Singapore, it is fair to assume that a
similar wedding in Malaysia would have been as high profile.
The Prime Minister, who dismissed a deputy prime minister because he
believed he went against Muslim sensibilities, cannot
have this become an electoral issue. When I called a PAS ulamak friend
to check on this, it was he who raised the question
before I did. This means that until and unless Tan Sri Halim Saad comes
clean and is unequivocal about his Muslim marriage,
the fallout would be worse than his messy divorce from his first wife.
In the highest reaches of Bolehland's corporate and political world,
marriages are made not in heaven but in bank and
corporate parlours. Tan Sri Halim, 45, married a Singapore lawyer working
in Malaysia, Shaesta Said, who is 25 or 29
(depending on whether you want to believe AFP or Bernama), a niece
of Dato' Akhbar Khan, the latest entrant in the
highstakes contest to acquire the most debt in the shortest possible
time. He is one of three parties attempting to take control of
the CLOB Malaysian shares, which fell foul of the KLSE's re-registering
them. Tan Sri Halim is chairman of the Renong-UEM
combine which with Telekoms is the third entrant. Given the way these
things work in Bolehland, the Prime Minister is
outclassed in this affair. Both Tan Sri Halim and Dato' Akhbar Khan
are acolytes of the Penghulu; while the second of the three
proposals is submitted by Tengku Abdullah, whose relationship with
the Prime Minister is well known; unless he can come with
a brighter plan, the Pengulu now marches ahead in the grand plan to
acquire the suspended Malaysian shares. The arrogance
with which these things are conducted is the stuff of Bolehland legend.
Tan Sri Halim Saad must come clean on the status of his
Muslim marriage, where it was held and when. Especially when it is
the official view in Malaysia that a marriage between
Muslims, one of whom is a Malaysian, overseas is not recognised unless
it is conducted according to Muslim rites.
M.G.G. Pillai