8 totally real Malaysian news we thought were April Fools’ jokes

So for April Fools’, CILISOS thought it would be fun to play a prank on our readers. We pretended that the site got shut down and we made it look like this:

Fooled some of ugaiz too 😀

But that really was a joke. We didn’t kena blocked. If you had clicked the ‘Click Here’ page, it would have brought you to our home page. Here are 5 articles ala Fake Malaysia News style, we thought were April Fools’ joke, but aren’t.

 

1. GST is now……HALAL?

On GST’s first day, our Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced that the tax is HALAL. He was speaking at the World Halal Summit in KLCC, reported The Malaysian Insider, and said that National Fatwa Council stamped its approval of GST.

“It’s confirmed by our fatwa. The National Fatwa Council has said that GST is halal.” – Datuk Seri Najib Razak, Prime Minister, The Malaysian Insider

Why we thought it was a joke:

We cannot believe those guys went through all that trouble to fatwa-approve GST. It’s already up on the Council’s site, you can check it out here. We also can’t believe they would PR it this way.

But what about the tax on non-halal stuff like cigarettes and alcohol? GST money will be mixed in with the other taxes and public funds, what, so… is it still considered halal?

 

2. Malaysians having more exciting sex life than… Latinos?!

Malaysia is, get this, Top 10 in the number of people having sex weekly, according to the Durex 2012 Global Face of Sex survey. 74% of Malaysians are having sex at least once a week and that puts us at No. 7, after Greece, Brazil, Russia, China, Italy and Poland, reported Malaysian Digest.

But on the flipside, only 38% of Malaysians are satisfied with their sex lives, said the report.

Why we thought it was a joke:

This is the same as when we found out that people from Terengganu and Kelantan spend the most time on Pornhub and that Kelantan has the highest number of AIDS cases. Our jaws dropped.

Can you believe Malaysians beat the Latinos and Dutch – who have Amsterdam, famous for its sexual liberalism? Only 25% of the CILISOS team did it last week, certainly the numbers didn’t come from us, hurhurhur.

 

3. We have ANOTHER 1MDB? With a RM27 billion debt?!

Serdang MP Ong Kian Ming got a reply from Putrajaya on April Fools’ Day about Pembinaan PFI’s debt… and it’s nearly RM27 billion, reported The Malay Mail Online.

WHAAAT??

“The spending of the government-owned company does not appear anywhere in any of the Federal Government budget accounts which means that all expenditure are ‘off-budget’ items.” – Ong Kian Ming, Serdang MP, The Malay Mail Online

Why we thought it was a joke:

Where da heck did Pembinaan PFI come from and why have we never heard of it before? According to TMI’s report, it’s 99.9% owned by the Finance Ministry and 0.1% by the Federal Land Commission.

We Googled. But the company doesn’t even have a website. What we got from the search were some quite scandalous headlines *raise eyebrows*. So what does it do? We only know that it’s in the construction business.

The Auditor-General’s report 2013 Series 3 says that PPFI has the third highest liabilities among all government organisations at the end of 2012 – the first 2 being Petronas and Khazanah, “But unlike Petronas and Khazanah, Pembinaan PFI does not have any operational income as shown by the same AG’s report,” said Kian Ming on TMI.

PPFI was formed on 28 September 2006, and in just 9 years, it has managed to rack up a debt of RM27 billion. We can’t believe that out of nowhere, we have another 1MDB-like case on our hands and RM27b holes in our pockets.

 

4. Wah! We can choose not to pay 10% service tax?

Deputy Finance Minister Datuk Ahmad Maslan literally said this:

“The service tax imposed by hotels and restaurants does not go to the government. This charge is called tips and should be given to the employees but some companies abuse it by keeping it to themselves and not passing it on to the workers.

So I want to inform that you don’t have to pay the 10% service charge if their service is not good.” – Datuk Ahmad Maslan, Deputy Finance Minister, The Malaysian Insider

Why we thought it was a joke:

Let’s see, where do we start… so the Dep Finance Minister is basically telling us we can WALK OUT of a restaurant after paying just for the food, if we don’t like the service. He’s giving us permission to do that? Sure won’t kena arrested by police? OK thanks, the CILISOS team will try it today at lunch.

We know the 10% doesn’t go to the government, but c’mon. How will hotel and restaurant owners react to his comment?

 

5. Huh, MPs must exercise for money?

So Garmin came up with this campaign. MPs against MPs (like, double whoa) will compete to see who takes the most number of footsteps over 3 months and win RM10,000 for their constituency for sports activities. They’ll strap on a GPS watch to record the steps, reported The Star.

“It’s difficult because we (politicians) seldom find time to exercise. We have to eat 10 times a day at functions.

That being said, we want XXL effort from our MPs to serve the people, but we don’t want XXL-sized MPs.” – Khairy Jamaluddin, Youth and Sports Minister, The Star

Why we thought it was a joke:

It’s not. The rare glimpse into their MPs-just-wanna-have-fun lives must have jolted us from our better judgment, but after reading the news to the end, thumbs up to Garmin for donate the money to improve sports activities.

It’s time we did something about our shameful title. What title are we talking about? The fattest people in South East Asia. The Star reported that 45% of Malaysian men and 50% of Malaysian women are overweight or obese. Eeeek.

 

6. A hospital took as long to build as KLIA!

After delaying for 7 years and 4 months, Hospital Shah Alam is finally complete, reported The Star. And the cost is? RM550.85 million, jeng jeng jeng.

Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed said that initially they gave the project to Sunshine Fleet, but the company only managed to complete 27% of the work before its contract expired. Then the baton was passed to Gadang Engineering, however even the second company had to ask for an extension twice, claiming they had to fix all of Sunshine’s mistakes. And PAC is gonna take action against Sunshine.

Why we thought it was a joke:

Dude, 7 years and 4 months to build a hospital? Even KLIA took about the same amount of time. Planning began in early 1990, and by 27 June 1998, the RM9 billion airport was opened. What’s so complicated? It’s not like you need to land planes on the hospital.

 

7. There was a M’sian with 21 convictions (including murder) running free??

A 24-year-old robber was killed in a shootout with police in Ipoh. But this guy, according to Perak police chief Senior Deputy Comm Datuk Osman Salleh, had 21 previous convictions of abduction, attempted murder, robbery and causing grievous hurt.

“We believe this is a three-member gang, which was responsible for numerous robbery and attempted murder cases in the state.” – SDCP Osman Salleh, The Star

In the car chase, the suspect and his 2 accomplices actually tried to force the police off the road by ramming into their car.

Why we thought it was a joke:

It sounds like it came from the script of Gerak Khas. But seriously, 21 previous convictions? How is this dude still running free?

Last we remembered, conviction means the court has found a person guilty of a crime, so for abduction, attempted murder, robbery and causing grievous hurt, you would think he’d be thrown behind bars right?

And he’s only 24, he couldn’t possibly have finished serving the sentences for 21 convictions. According to the Penal Code, the sentence for abduction alone is 7 years. Go figure the math.

 

8. Wah, got MP so rude towards GST haters!

Langkawi MP, Datuk Nawawi Ahmad allegedly replied to Facebook user Ridz Black on his page:

“Tak mau bayar cukai pi dok di bulan. Memang kerajaan hidup atas cukai pada rakyat termasuk Kelantan.” – Datuk Nawawi Ahmad, Langkawi MP, The Malay Mail Online

(Translation: Don’t want to pay taxes, go live on the moon. Certainly, the government lives on taxes from the people including from Kelantan)

The Malay Mail was quoting from a post on omakkau.blogspot.com.

Why we thought it was a joke:

We cannot believe an MP would reply like that. Live on the moon? Seriously? He could have offlinked to site explaining GST in detail. He could have sent Ridz Black a pamphlet. But he chose to tell people go live on the moon. And of course he can say that la, seeing as Langkawi is duty free.

They totally got us…

Not bad! Some of these articles would have made funny April Fools’ jokes. We almost thought they were plucked from Fake Malaysia News, which is a really great site for funny, fake news in Malaysia.

Even as people working in the media industry, we still cannot believe some of the things that go on in this country. Malaysia, anything pun boleh.

It was so hard for us to pick which was our favourite. But we’d have to say our favourite (or at least for this writer) is halal GST, since GST is such a hot topic right now and labelling it halal is so win. If you guys come across any more funny news, share it with us on Facebook.

But you know, with the current climate in Malaysia, we really think anything… is… possible. Flying ringgit today, maybe? Oh wait.