FRIVOLOUS? You gotta be kidding, Jibby!

When questioned by reporters about private investigator Balasubramaniam’s latest revelations implicating the family of Prime Minister Najib Razak in the Altantuya murder scandal, Najib snapped, “I will not entertain any frivolous statement!” and asked reporters to move on to the next question...


Who is frivolous: PI Bala or PM Najib?

By Kim Quek
Monday, 7 December 2009

This curt reply to crassly cut reporters off from asking further questions sounds to me more like a reflex in panic, rather than a responsible answer from the prime minister of a supposedly democratic country. For it was a totally inappropriate reply to Bala’s serious accusation, made in circumstances that commanded respect and credibility.

What can be more serious than accusing Najib’s wife Rosmah Mansor and his brother Nazim of having used the “carrot and stick” maneuver to force Bala to retract his first affidavit which implicated Najib in the murder scandal?

And what can be more respectable than having his revelations made in an interview conducted and witnessed by three senior lawyers of the country?

Bala alleged that Rosmah’s close associate, Deepak Jaikishan, offered him RM5 million; and Nazim Razak threatened to harm his family unless he followed Deepak’s instructions. This happened on the day he disclosed his first affidavit on 4th July 2008. Fearing for the safety of his family, Bala retracted under coercion the allegations linking Najib to Altantuya in a second affidavit the next day, and disappeared immediately with his family - until his recent interview which was captured on video and recorded in transcripts. These were first published in Malaysia Today and later relayed by other websites including Malaysiakini and YouTube.

In the interview, Bala described how he was forced into retraction, and how he and his family embarked on their fugitive journey to India under the overall direction of Deepak. That journey was a rather convoluted and lengthy voyage that saw them passing through or staying for various durations in Singapore, Bangkok, Kathmandu, Delhi, Madras, and eventually Chennai.

Bala exuded confidence with his detailed description of occurrences supported by factual details that pinpoint the relevant players, locations, times, dates, durations, hotels, monetary figures, cheques, bank accounts, etc.

Against these formidable allegations, all we have from the alleged culprits is deafening silence, despite the news being circulated in the Internet for more than two weeks. Until, of course, when Najib dismissed these as “frivolous” and not worthy of his response, during a press conference after an UMNO supreme council meeting on December 4th. This effectively means that Bala has cooked up a pack of damned lies, according to Najib.

So, one of them must have lied. Was it Bala, or was it Najib?

Image courtesy of Justice

FACTS FAVOR BALA

A cursory glance at the facts and circumstances surrounding the latest controversy would enable one to readily conclude that Bala has the upper hand, for the simple reason that Bala’s accusation is buttressed by precise facts and details that can be easily debunked if false, while Najib and his group have chosen to remain silent in spite of the serious nature of the accusation.

If Bala’s statement is false - and with the immense power and resources at the disposal of the Prime Minister - there is no possible reason for Najib not to have instantly ordered an investigation, and bring Bala to face the consequences for having so openly and repeatedly defamed the Prime Minister and his family.

If Najib could have Raja Petra Kamarudin - webmaster of Malaysia Today - charged with criminal defamation for the publication of an article in his website that said Rosmah was present at the crime scene, why can’t he do the same with Bala?

In fact, Bala’s case is even more serious, as he has signed two contradictory affidavits – a clear offence of false declaration – besides accusing the Prime Minister and his family of involvement in murder.

And why should the Prime Minister, his family, and the various law-enforcement agencies be so kind and forgiving to Bala as to leave him untouched, while the nation suffers the humiliation of its Prime Minister being openly defamed and ridiculed?

FROM ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE

Viewing the case from another angle – Bala’s perspective, it appears even more compelling that Bala was not likely to have lied.

Why should a family man like Bala falsely accuse the Prime Minister of involvement in the most heinous of crimes, knowing its serious consequences as an ex-police officer? What possible gain could he get, keeping in mind that he couldn’t have extorted any money, since the allegation is untrue?

Even if it is true that Bala had falsely accused Najib, that he had repented and retracted his allegations in a second affidavit, and run away to another country to escape retribution, there is no conceivable reason for him to make a come-back to invent another pack of lies, thereby exposing himself for the second time to the risk of serious punishment. Unless, of course, he is a lunatic, which is clearly not the case.

GROUNDS OF SUSPICION ABOUND

Evidence of justice being aborted to protect Najib is found in the numerous irregularities that have occurred before and during the trial of the Altantuya murder.

Why was Najib not investigated since the first two accused, who were his bodyguards and took orders from him, had no apparent motive on their own to commit the murder, and the third accused was his confidant?

Why were the judge, prosecutors and even a defence lawyer abruptly replaced without credible reasons shortly before the trial?

Why was the motive for murder never raised during the trial?

Why did prosecutors and defence lawyer join forces to prevent critical evidence being pursued in court such as a certain photograph showing Altantuya and Najib taking meals together and the mysterious erasure of immigration entry records of Altantuya and her Mongolian companions?

Why was Bala’s affidavit barred from the court without credible reasons?

Since the third accused, who was charged for instigating the murder, was released without his defence being called, then who had ordered the killing?


It is clear that unless these troubling questions are dealt with satisfactorily, there is no way Najib can clear himself of suspicions that have surrounded him, least of all by waving away inquisitive questions by a curt reply like what he did in the said press conference.

In fact, such conduct only betrays his weaknesses. For it is plain commonsense that if Najib is on the side of truth, he would have welcomed reporters to ask questions – instead of crudely shutting them up – so that he has a chance to exonerate himself. And he would also have taken action against Bala ages ago, instead of inaction for so long – perhaps with the hope of the scandal fizzling out in due course?

The latest Bala revelations have constituted a solemn challenge to the integrity and legitimacy of Najib’s premiership, for which he must now solemnly account to the nation.

And the only way to do that without dishonoring his oath of office is to commission a truly independent panel to uncover the truth and account to the nation.

If Najib is a responsible Prime Minister, he should have felt duty bound under his oath of allegiance to the country to clear his name through a proper inquiry by an independent and reputable panel, now that the perception of his involvement has been so entrenched and pervasive - nationally as well as internationally.

Image courtesy of Counterpointer

An Orangutan's Best Friend

Suryia and Roscoe live at the T.I.G.E.R.S sanctuary in Myrtle Beach , South Carolina.

The orangutan was in the rescue center and was not doing well. This old hound wandered in truly emaciated and the orangutan took to him the moment the dog arrived.

He stayed with the hound night and day until he was well and during the process found a reason to live.

They are now inseparable.

[Images forwarded by Hari Ho]

Oil palm cultivation has brought in a vast amount of revenue to Malaysia - but most of it ends up in the hands of a privileged few. The rapid proliferation of oil palm plantations in the last 30 years has resulted in disastrous deforestation.


As a monoculture, oil palm cannot be considered an eco-friendly cash crop. Artificial fertilizers, weedkillers and insecticides used in oil palm estates have poisoned the land and made it infertile. Many indigenous cultures have been displaced and endangered because of oil palm greed. In Kalimantan and various other parts of Indonesia, Malaysian oil palm interests have caused huge tracts of rainforest to be cleared for oil palm cultivation.

Open burning to clear the felled forests has caused atmospheric pollution throughout the region - and there is no political will to stop the problem because many top government officials in both Indonesia and Malaysia have vested interests in the palm oil industry. In Sarawak, logging companies work in cahoots with oil palm cultivators to rape not only the precious rainforest, but also gentle indigenous tribes like the Penan.



Palm oil products may actually be quite good in terms of nutrition - but oil palm cultivation on such a colossal scale is definitely deleterious to our long-term environmental well-being and must be stopped.

Oil palm-based biofuel more harmful than fossil fuels: Researcher
Tue, December 8, 2009

PALEMBANG: The programme to develop palm oil as a non-polluting biofuel is a “myth” to justify expansion of oil palm plantations in Indonesia, a researcher from Sriwijaya University Julian Junaidi said.

“The burning of palm oil-based biofuel might not generate enviromment-damaging gas, and the process of turning palm oil into biofuel was much more harmful than the use of fossil fuels,” Indonesia’s Antara news agency reported, citing Julian as saying.

Speaking at a dissussion on biofuel organized by the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) here Monday, he said the burning of one tonne of premium gasoline would cause 3.1 tonnes of carbon dioxide (C02) to escape into the atmosphere. However, the process of turning one tonne of palm oil into biofuel would produce 33 tonnes of CO2.

These facts showed that the use of palm-oil-based biofuel would contribute enormously to global warming, he said.

“Tragically, most of the activity to turn palm oil into biofuel is taking place in developing countries, where the oil palm plantations are located,” Julian said.

Apart from damaging the environment, he said, the programme to develop biofuel from palm oil was also causing land disputes in the community.

“The drive to expand oil palm plantations has already led to hundreds of land disputes because the expansion was done not on no- man’s land but on people’s farm land,” he said.

“Oil palm is not a renewable energy source. The price people have to pay for palm oil-based biofuel is too high. Millions of hectares of forests are being cut down for a crop that eventually only contributes to ecological disasters,” he said.

Meanwhile, Anwar Sadat, director of Walhi’s South Sumatra chapter, said the programme to develop biofuel from palm oil had induced the large-scale expansion of oil palm plantations.

The oil palm growing frenzy to produce palm oil not only for households but also as biofuel for industry and transportation had led to degradation of people’s forests and protected forests in South Sumatra’s low lands.

“The oil palm planting drive has also increased the frequency of social conflicts in the province.

According to Sawit Watch (an NGO), in 2003, oil palm plantation-related land disputes happened 140 times but the number rose almost four-fold to 513 in 2007,” he said. — BERNAMA

DEAN JOHNS ON "KILLER KLEPTOIDS"

For the benefit of those who can't afford or are too kedekut to subscribe to Malaysiakini, I'm reproducing this ribtickling and heartbreaking piece by one of my all-time favorite political columnists...


Dean Johns | Malaysiakini
December 2, 2009
1:38pm

Trying to make sense of the political scenario in Malaysia is always a surreal experience. But at times it all seems so far-fetched and flat-out fantastic that I think I must have lost the plot.

Or else that I've actually been asleep all this time, trapped in some bizarre nightmare based on replays of all those hair-raising old Hollywood horror movies I used to frighten myself silly by sitting through.

At times like these I get desperate for some kind of reality check. So you can imagine how grateful I feel to the likes of Barry Wain, with his new biography of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, for reassuring me that the doctor isn't some scary childhood movie memory or figment of my fevered imagination, but is actually, if incredibly, the former long-time prime minister of Malaysia.

And that the Frankenstein monster the doctor created isn't just some filmic fable, but a real-life political machine that's still rampaging around the country wreaking havoc wherever it goes and indulging its insatiable appetite by devouring whatever it can get its hands on.

If you'd believe Barry Wain, and why wouldn't you, as long as he works for neither the Malaysian nor Singapore mainstream press, the BN machine has swallowed RM100 billion of Malaysians' money in the past 25 of its 52 years in power.

And according to Time magazine, economist Daniel Lian of Morgan Stanley Singapore estimates it's consumed about three times the amount estimated by Wain, or US$100 billion.

Here, in case you missed them, are a few highlights of this saga of monumental theft, fraud and embezzlement:

* Bumiputra Malaysia Finance (BMF) swindle: US$1 billion
* Bank Negara foreign-exchange fiasco: RM20 billion
* Extra BMF bailouts: US$600 million
* Perwaja Steel bankruptcy: US$ 800 million
* Maminco tin market manipulation: US$500 million
* Bank Islam non-performing loans scam: RM2.2 billion
* Highway concessionaire bailouts: RM38.5 billion
* Mirzan Mahathir's MISC rescue: RM600 million
* Port Klang Free Zone scandal: RM12 billion

If that's not enough plundered billions to make you bilious, don't worry. It's just the tip of the iceberg. Or should I make that 'heistberg'? Whatever, it's a considerable quantity of loot for a government to steal from its citizens.

Heart-breaking human cost

How the Malaysian people have tolerated being robbed on such an epic scale for so long I can't begin to guess. Why so many millions of them never stopped voting for the doctor or his successors, or never chased any of them, King Kong-like, up to the top of the Twin Towers to his downfall and doom is a total mystery.

Unless, of course, that like me they've been assuming that the whole thing was so unbelievable that it must be just a movie, and gone on scoffing their popcorn and kuaci as though the horror would eventually end and they could safely return from this harsh reel world to an altogether happier real one.

Or maybe they were thinking that, as long it was only money the monster was after, they'd be safe if they let it have its fill, and that with luck they might score their share of any small change that happened to slip through its fingers.

What they failed to realise, however, is that the BN money-chomping monster's been in league all along with those other fixtures of this long-running Malaysian fright-flick, the werewolves of the police and MACC, the body-snatchers of the internal security ministry, the vampires of commerce, contracting and the civil service, and the droids of the mainstream media.

With a monster cast this creepy to contend with, it's no wonder so many otherwise potentially sentient citizens have been turned into such political and ethical zombies.


With the watchdogs of the law at their throats, thousands of blood-suckers with their fangs in their necks and hundreds of make-believe journalists busy blinding their eyes, deafening their ears and dumbing their minds, some people are bound to get somewhat confused.

Which brings us to the fact that the tragedy is not so much the amount of money, land and other public property that BN and its minions have stolen and continue to steal but the heart-breaking human cost of it all.

The financial toll taken by the police, MACC and judiciary in corruption is chicken-feed compared with the priceless protections and trust that they've stolen from the people, not to mention the countless lives they've stolen from 'suspects' in staged 'shootouts' and 'questioning' in custody.

Revenge of the voters

The billions looted and squandered by the government and its cronies are nothing compared with the human rights, educations, opportunities, hopes, dreams and futures they've stolen from Malaysians born on the 'wrong' side of the screen that the ideologues of BN have erected between the races and religions on which to play their wayang kulit of 1Malaysia.

And now, having skinned the Malaysians alive in every conceivable fashion from financial to spiritual, they've had the hide to introduce a goods and services tax, thus adding even more to the swag of oil and tax revenues that BN has traditionally siphoned-off from behind the impenetrable screen of the official secrets act.

They're also, I see, still paying Najib Abdul Razak's airfare and considerable expenses to go around the world robbing Malaysia of even more of its Mahathir-ravaged international reputation with remarks like his recent one in New York that "Malaysia's message of reforms and transformation must be told to foreign investors."


Who does he think he's kidding about Malaysia as long as it's still business as usual for him and his gang of BN bandits? Doesn't he realise that embassies and high commissions report the truth back to their home governments?

And that trade commissioners and reputable global financial media keep investors informed of the larcenies of national governments like Malaysia's?

Sometimes I think Najib's recited his script so often he's started to almost believe it himself.

I certainly hope so. Because the more over-confident that he and his coalition cronies become that their Attack of the Killer Kleptoids production is set to run permanently, the more shocked they'll be by its inevitable sequel, Revenge of the Voters from Hell.

Well done, Anwar! Najib, balik kampung!

I found out from my friend-in-exile a short while ago that Anwar Ibrahim has been listed by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the "Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2009."

Not too sure if that's really such a tremendous honor, since Anwar has to share the stage with a few dubious characters like Ben Bernanke (Chairman of the übercriminal Federal Reserve), Dick Cheney and Henry Kissinger (the man who approved the use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, an atrocious act that resulted in the leukemia deaths of at least 500,000 non-combatants and exposed 4.2 million Vietnamese to dioxin poisoning).

Nevertheless, Anwar is the only Malaysian on the list - along with other prominent Asian freedom-fighters like Amartya Sen and Aung San Suu Kyi - and that in itself deserves a hearty congratulation or two.

After all, I doubt Anwar had to pay RM20 million to some Jewish PR agency to upgrade his public image and make him look good in the eyes of the world.

Here's what Foreign Policy has to say about Anwar:

Anwar Ibrahim
for challenging the Muslim world to embrace democracy.

Opposition leader | People's Justice Party | Malaysia

Two decades ago, it would have been impossible to imagine Anwar pulling together rural Malays, ethnic Indians and Chinese, and Islamists into a coherent political bloc. Back then, Anwar was deputy prime minister in a de facto single-party state that espoused preferential treatment for ethnic Malays. It was a policy that Anwar had pushed from his days as a youth leader right up until 1997, when he denounced his patron, then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, for corruption. He would spend the next six years in solitary confinement on trumped-up charges for that political betrayal. And he would leave jail in 2004 with a bold message for change in a country now at the forefront of the struggle for democracy in the Muslim world. Today, Anwar's political career is blossoming, despite a new, politically motivated indictment. Abroad, he has become an outspoken advocate of religious tolerance.

He sat down with Foreign Policy to talk about his big ideas:

On Muslim countries and the West: You can't just erase a period of imperialism and colonialism. You can't erase the fault lines, the bad policies, the failed policies, the war in Iraq, and support for dictators. That to me is the reality. But what is the problem? When you … apportion the blame only to the West or the United States. They want to deflect from the issue of repression, endemic corruption, and destruction of the institutions of governance.

On his time in prison: I spent a lot of time reading. I decided to focus on the great works and the classics. Friends from around the world were sending books, but it takes months for [the prison] to vet them. There came a book on the Green Revolution at that time. The officer said, "Anything revolution -- out!" even though it was about agriculture. But the books kept coming. The officers were not even graduates, and [the books] were in English. They would say, "Anwar, out of 10 books, can you send back one?" So I would select something I had already read or something I was not interested in and say, "We should reject this."

On politics: Of course, you simplify the arguments [for politics], but the central thesis remains constant. People say, "Anwar, you are opportunistic. How can you talk about Islam and the Quran here, and then you talk about Shakespeare and quote Jefferson or Edmund Burke?" I say, it depends on the audience. You can't talk about Edmund Burke in some remote village in Afghanistan. Then you go to Kuala Lumpur and you quote T.S. Eliot. If I quote the Quran all the time to a group of lawyers, [they will think] I am a mullah from somewhere!

Enema of the People: a double dose of RPK

[NOTE: I just got back from a rare visit to Melaka where a 3-day Art & Performance Festival has just been concluded, featuring a friendly and vibrant troupe of artists, mostly Melbourne-based, brought in by dancer-choreographer Tony Yap, an illustrious prodigal son of Melaka who went to Australia in 1976 to further his studies - and ended up becoming a dance sifu to a brilliant new generation of dancers. More about this piquant but inadequately publicized event when I've caught my breath. Meanwhile, thank heaven for the engagingly lucid and outspoken RPK, who can always be counted on for some political edification - and who happens to be my favorite prescription for a badly constipated body politic.]