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Sordid politics in Malaysia – Hitting below the belt

The Economist
Mar 24th 2011

EVER since he ascended the greasy pole, the political career of Malaysia’s opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, has been mortgaged to his private life. He is currently on trial for sodomising a male aide, which he denies, in what has become a virtual rerun of a similar case in 1998, after he was sacked as deputy prime minister. Then he was sent to jail for six years, until an appeal court ruled that his conviction had been unsound.

Now a new scandal has broken out over a video clip that purports to show Mr Anwar having sex—this time with a woman. Mr Anwar has furiously denied that he is the man in the video. (The footage was screened on March 21st to a group of Malaysian reporters, all of whom were required to surrender phones, laptops and recording devices.) A man who refused to identify himself said that the video was a secret recording made at a hotel room in Kuala Lumpur. He explained that he had discovered the recording device after a “prominent politician” asked him to search the hotel room for a missing watch. He said he wanted to show that the “prominent politician”—guess who?—was immoral and “not fit to be a leader”. The man of mystery has since revealed his identity, and that of an accomplice: surprise, surprise, they’re longtime political enemies of Mr Anwar’s.
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Can IGP Ismail Omar give a categorical assurance that there would be no cover-up in the Carcosa sex tape investigations as happened in 1998 when results of Anwar Ibrahim black-eye police investigations were initially suppressed?

The Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Ismail Omar should give a categorical assurance that there would be no cover-up in the Carcosa sex tape investigations as happened in 1998 when results of Anwar Ibrahim black-eye police investigations were initially suppressed.

More than a decade after the event, the former Kuala Lumpur Criminal Investigations Department chief Datuk Mat Zain Ibrahim, who was the investigation officer in the Anwar “black eye” assault case, revealed that he had right from the beginning found out that it was the then Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Rahim Noor who had committed the offence but this information was initially suppressed and it was only finally forced out publicly in a Royal Commission of Inquiry four months later.

A special police team to investigate into Carcosa sex tape caper lodged by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim will not inspire much confidence unless the Inspector-General of Police can give such an assurance as well as explain why the police had been so slow in springing into action following news of the Carcosa sex tape video caper on Monday.
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Why are sex video trio not charged?

By Kee Thuan Chye

So, those who surmised that the sex video revealed by ‘Datuk T’ was a political ploy have been proven right. The people behind it – three of them – have confessed to it.

They were forced to reveal themselves because PKR’s MP Johari Abdul had earlier spilled the beans on them. It all unravelled like a cheap soap opera.

Former Malacca chief minister Rahim Thamby Chik, businessman Shazryl Eskay Abdullah and Shuib Lazim, treasurer-general of Perkasa, have come out to say they are ‘Datuk T’. And they have the cheek to call for a royal commission of inquiry into the sex video.

In the first place, they have transgressed Section 292 of the Penal Code for possessing and distributing pornographic material. Regardless of who the person in the video is, the trio are culpable. Exposing a politician’s sexual activity does not protect them from the law.
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Who’s the fool?

By Thomas Lee

Although the April Fool’s Day is still a week away, a deputy federal minister from Sarawak has already come out with a “foolish” statement.

Datuk Joseph Salang Gandum was reported as saying that the Christians in Sarawak are “foolish” to hold protest prayer vigils against the way the Barisan Nasional regime is violating the rights to freedom of religion with its detention of thousands of copies of the Bahasa Malaysia version of the Bible, and imposing certain conditions for their release.

Joseph, who calls himself a Christian, has said that if the Christians “come out and say that we want the Bibles, they will get it” and that “If they want to make fools of themselves, we will not respond,” whatever that means.

Joseph, the federal deputy minister for information communication and culture, was commenting critically on a series of prayer vigils that the Sarawak Christians are holding to seek divine help and intervention in facing the constitutional violation of their religious rights.
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Longing For A Free Mind (Part 3 of 14)

by M. Bakri Musa

The Comfort of the Coconut Shell

[In the first two parts I asserted that for Malaysia to achieve her Vision 2020 aspirations, she needs leaders and citizens with free minds. I likened those without a free mind as frogs underneath a coconut shell.]

We ignore our better sense and willingly believe the mullah despite the donkey braying in our face because our minds are captive to biology, tradition, and the environment, among others.

The North Koreans fervently believe that they live in Paradise because their “Beloved Leader” tells them so. Never mind that they wake up every morning with nothing to look forward to and go to sleep at night on an empty stomach. Malaysian leaders never tire of telling us that they are competent and not corrupt despite the mess the country is in and their luxuriating in their palatial mansions. It does not take a donkey to realize that these leaders could not possibly be “clean” to afford such obscene opulence just on their government pay.
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