After rejecting corrupted Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s invite to a dodgy holiday “leaders’ retreat”, Malaysia’s veteran Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad announced that he will be raising the water price for Singapore and discussions will commence this month on Nov 12.
This will be Malaysia PM Mahathir Mohamad’s first visit to Singapore after he toppled the corrupted regime of Najib Razak, who is the former best friend of Lee Hsien Loong. The 92-year-old Malaysia PM who has built a fan base in Singapore will be attending the 33rd ASEAN Summit from Nov 11 to Nov 15.
Malaysia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Marzuki Yahya confirmed that Malaysia will be raising the water prices regardless of Singapore’s objections:
“We will continue to give our commitment. I hope with the cooperation of all parliamentary members, it gives strength to efforts to get the desired price for the Malaysian government.”
Singapore is getting a heavily subsidised raw water price of 3 sen per thousand gallons as a foreign country, when fellow Malaysian state Melaka are paying 15 times more at 50 sen per thousand gallons. The former Prime Minister Najib Razak, currently facing countless corruption charges, had previously signed a contract with Lee Hsien Loong to depress the water price at 3 sen per thousand gallons, in exchange of Singapore helping him to launder tens of billions of stolen public funds from Malaysia’s investment fund 1MDB. 8 Singapore banks, including state-owned banks like UOB, DBS and OCBC, were involved with the money laundering of 1MDB, according to an independent investigation by the US Department of Justice.
The Singapore government has raised water prices by 30% in the past year, and profiting from the people through its monopoly on water supply. Water prices is expected to go up further as the government authorised the sale of two main water desalination plants by Hyflux to an Indonesia government-backed consortium.