Who lied? We fact-checked Anwar and Najib’s debate points

If you were watching an event of great national importance on Thursday night, it would have either been the Najib – Anwar debate or the Thomas Cup (RIP). While we were pretty sure the Thomas Cup was exciting, we feel Najib served the hardest smash that night with his “King is Rakyat” response to Cash is King.

But beyond the meme moment, both Najib and Anwar also made some statements that got our Bovine Fecal Matter Meter tingling and, from the comments on our FB post, we weren’t the only ones. So, we decided to fact-check some of their statements to see how well they’d factually hold up. Some caveats though:

• We’re judging if something is true or false based on facts at face value (ie, what we could find)
• We included additional information for context, which were not said during the debate itself
• We excluded some statements that cannot be verifed, such as Najib’s assertion that GST would have benefitted the Rakyat over the pandemic.

Also, a timeline of events is somewhat important to keep in mind:

• Najib was Prime Minister from 2009 – 2018
• The Pakatan Harapan government ruled for 22 months, from 2018 – February 2020
• The Sheraton Move gave us two governments, first led by the Perikatan Nasional coalition under Muhyiddin, and now UMNO under Ismail Sabri.

If you haven’t, we recommend watching the full debate on Sin Chew’s YouTube channel since it was the one with the least technical interruptions.

Najib: PNB’s large investment in Sapura Energy happened during PH’s rule | TRUE BUT SNEAKY

At his initial presentation, Najib pointed out that Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB)’s buyout of shares in Sapura Energy – from an initial 12.16% to 40% and costing RM2.7 billion – happened while the PH government was in charge. This turned PNB from a small investor into a major one with a huge paper loss, since those shares were only worth about RM400 million at the time, and is said to have since lost almost 90% of that RM2.7 billion investment.

Timeline-wise, this is actually true because the buyout happened in September 2018.

However, in his rebuttal, Anwar replied that this decision was made by Abdul Wahid Omar, who was PNB chairman while Najib was in power; and Zeti Aziz, his successor, had no choice but to follow through with that decision. At the time as well, Najib was also on the board of trustees at Yayasan Pelaburan Bumiputra, which PNB’s board of directors report to.

If you look at the timeline, Zeti was only appointed on July 1 2018 which gave a very short time for so many plans to have been made, something also stated by The Edge Markets:

“Although the rights issue was announced in August 2018 and after the board changes at PNB and the Yayasan, it was very likely that the plan was devised much earlier under the previous boards, as a big restructuring cannot be done so quickly.” –  Quoted from The Edge Markets

Anwar: Sapura’s former CEO was paid RM83 million in 2017 | TRUE

Tan Sri Sharil Shamsuddin was the CEO of Sapura Energy for 25 years up til his retirement in 2021. While we couldn’t find all the AGM reports, it’s true that Sharil made the news in 2018 for his high salary of RM71.92 million in the 2018 financial year, and RM84.24 million the year before – when the company was already in financial trouble.

While bigwigs getting these kinds of salaries aren’t out of the norm, it usually gets criticized when the company isn’t doing well. However, Sharil’s salary was a much lower RM12.8 million in the 2019 financial year.

When contacted about his 2018 salary, Tan Sri Sharil explained to The Edge Markets that it was because he took a personal risk by locking up his shares in Sapura Energy as a bond (called a covenant) to refinance a RM14 billion loan with banks. Essentially, the loan would default if he sold his shares below 10%, or stepped down as CEO.

Anwar further claimed that Sapura Energy’s former CEO and his “kelompok” (family and others) received almost RM1.1 billion between 2012 – 2021. We can’t fully verify this as we don’t know who the kelompok covers but Sharil’s brother Dato’ Shariman Shamsuddin is also part of Sapura Energy.

Najib: Petronas can SOS (Save Our Sapura) | POSSIBLE

At the start of his debate, Najib said his suggestion could save Sapura Energy without costing the Rakyat a single sen, and that plan was:

• Petronas takes over Sapura
• Petronas fulfills Sapura’s RM7 billion in contracts
• Petronas uses their resources and experience in Oil and Gas to bounce Sapura back
• Petronas sells a now-stable Sapura off
• Profitronas

While it sounds workable in theory, this whole idea of Petronas coming in the save the day isn’t exactly new; with Tengku Razaleigh, Petronas’ first CEO and founding Chairman lamenting in 2014 that the government had been treating the company as a cash cow with a list of previous bailouts including:

• Bank Bumiputra in 1985 with a RM2.5 billion infusion, and again RM1 billion more in 1991
• Konsortium Perkapalan Berhad for RM2 billion in 1997
• Underwriting the constructions of KLCC and Putrajaya for RM6 billion and RM2 billion respectively

And to be fair, this also happened during the time of the PH government, when RM54 billion was taken in 2019. These were apparently to cover a hole created by unpaid GST and tax refunds that were uncovered when Guan Eng and co took over the nation’s finances. In a way, this alleged giant GST hole may also answer Najib’s claims that GST would have benefitted the Rakyat at this time 😗

Najib: GDP growth was highest when he was PM | SOMEWHAT TRUE

Najib claimed that GDP was the highest in the region while he was PM. According to the World Bank, Malaysia had the highest annual GDP growth in 2014, 2015, and 2017 when compared to Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia.

Najib: Income inequality was lowest when he was PM | TRUE

Income inequality is measured using the Gini Index, which measures how income is distributed across different households in a country. Scoring a zero means perfect equality, while a hundred means perfect inequality – so lower score is better lah.

Najib claimed that the Gini score dropped while he was in charge, and that score went up while PH was the ruling government.

The World Bank has Malaysia’s Gini scores from 1984 – 2015, which shows that it has indeed been on a downward trend from 2009 – 2015. For 2016 – 2019, we have to refer to our own Department of Statistics, which indicate in their 2019 report that while the Gini score has gone up – 39.9 in 2016 to 40.7 in 2019 – it’s still lower than what it was when Najib first became PM.

Najib: Stock market was at it’s best when he was PM | TRUE

The FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI, aka the FBM KLCI, is a market value-weighted stock market index composed of the 30 largest companies on the Bursa Malaysia.

Historically, it has been on an upward trend since 1998, but the most noticeable dips in the index happened in 2001, 2008, and 2020. It peaked in 2014 and 2018. Najib’s claim that Malaysia had the longest bull run in the world is also true, with the run starting in 2008 and ending in February 2020.

It also has to be stated that the stock market was at one of its lowest points during the time the PH government was in charge; down by nearly 12% a year after PH won GE14.

Eh why so few fact-checks on Anwar?

Before the accusations of berat sebelah come in, the reason is because many of Anwar’s points didn’t have enough solid indicators for us to check. For instance, Anwar’s claim that cash handouts/welfare causes a dependency on the government instead of empowering the Rakyat to break the poverty cycle on their own is hard to justify either way because it hasn’t been done in Malaysia. However, if you look Indonesia’s Program Keluarga Harapan experiment, then Anwar’s claim would likely be labelled FALSE.

But either way, let us know if we’ve made a mistake somewhere or if we missed out a point to fact-check.

Researched by Badd & assisted by Jake

Written by UiHua