Rojak and Cocktail: Tengku Adnan, who’s the liar now?

Tengku Adnan bin Tengku Mansor, Tourism Minister in Pak Lah’s cabinet (Pak Lah – father of Islam Hadhari and grand son to famous ulama’ Haji Abdullah Fahim) proposed to the government recently to extend operating hours for entertainment outlets in Kuala Lumpur (so apparently tourists have complained to him that KL is dead after 2 and there is nowhere to go, according to him during a Mesyuarat Bahagian). He also proposed to the cabinet reduction of duty on alcohol. Damn, he might as well make liquor the official drink for Supreme Council meetings.

So who is this guy anyway? Dato’ Adnan was born in Malacca on 20th December 1950 at 610h, birth certificate no. 100502. Name at birth was Adnan bin Mansor. On 20th December 1962, Dato’ Adnan was 12 and a proud owner of an IC (IC no. 4079409). However, on 3rd October 1972, Dato’ Adnan had changed his name to Tengku Adnan bin Tengku Mansor. He also changed his dad’s IC name to Tengku Mansor bin Tengku Baba. Claims to be Malacca’s 3rd generation Sultanate heritage.

Dato’ Adnan was once Tun M’s Setiausaha Kerja UMNO. Dato’ Adnan, a businessman, was known to be Tan Sri Vincent Tan’s favorite go-to guy for projects. Word on the street is that Dato’ Adnan has 3.5million shares in Berjaya Sports Toto via his SPV, Cimsec Nominees Sdn Bhd. Sports Toto has a total of 681 outlets nationwide and 2 overseas operations, one in Phillipines and the other in Ghana. Once upon a time, Dato’ Adnan, Tan Sri Vincent and Pahang State Govt through an SPV called PASDEC Holding Berhad used to own Bukit Tinggi Resort. After fierce pressure from the public, he relinquished his shares on 23rd May 2003.

So, you’ve got a respectable Prime Minister going all around the world promoting Islam and you’ve got this Minister under him going around screwing things up for PM. Well, one can argue that he was dropped at the last election and was called back to the Cabinet after the reshuffling. Don’t know what the end game is.
Well if anyone wants to argue about his ‘tengku’ness, notice that officially, his dato’ seri title precedes his tengku title. That tells it all.

(From: Malaysia Tomorrow.)

Two weeks ago a local official from the Malaysian Tourism Board called Unspun in his office and displayed such stupidity that even though Unspun was temptd to blog about it, he refrained because life is hard, all of us have to make a living and if word of the conversation got out it may cost the man his job.

Malaysian Tourist Board responded!

But after his big boss Tengku’s Adnan’s comments about bloggers and women Unspun figures that the local official will probably promoted in the Malaysian Tourism Board heirachy if the conversation came to light. So here’s Unspun’s contribution to the advancement of a waste-of-space’s career (I had written it and saved it as a draft with the headline Malaysian Tourism Board responds! here’s the text):

Well sort of…and not in the way anyone with any sense of service would have envisioned.

The background to this is that after the Malaysian Tourism Board mucked up the trip of Nila Tanzil who was there shooting a travel program for a local TV station, she blogged about it here and here. The Board responded by complaining about her blog entry to the station, which has since not bothered to invite her to host any more programs for them.

Then, The Star’s Wong Chun Wai wrote about Nila’s case and said that the Board would do well to look into the incident and see if any lowly officials are covering up their own incompetence by putting the muscle on the Indonesian TV station. Since then silence. Not a peepfrom the MTB either in Indonesia or Malaysia.

Then on Friday Unspun’s alter ego received a phone call from a locally-based official wanting to know: #1. if Nila worked with Unspun 2. Nila’s phone number in tones that are best described as demanding, as a mountain goat in heat would be if deprived of a mate.

Unspun replied that he should already know the answer to both questions. He’s read the blogs, he knows Unspun personally, and if Nila went to Malaysia he should have her contact details on record, so what’s the point of asking moi?

To which said official tried to play the we-have-something-in-common-card. “You Malaysian, I also Malaysian lah” was repeated several times to Unspun. Then said official realized he was getting nowhere so he got angry, saying “I contak you but you marah I, so never mind lah,” in a merajuk tone and hung up.

Unspun is still wondering what the call was for. To get Unspun to put pressure on Nila? To pave the way for making amends to Nila? What?