Zaid Ibrahim’s Pristine Jihad and Purest Dakwah

M. Bakri Musa

www.bakrimusa.com

23rd November 2015

[Foreword to Zaid Ibrahim’s latest book, Assalamualaikum. Observations on the Islamization of Malaysia, published by ZI Publications and launched on November 20, 2015 by former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir.]

     Muslims believe the Koran to be a guide from God; “for all mankind, at all times, and till the end of time.” That is a matter of faith.

     The essence of the Koran is Al-amr bi ‘l-ma’ruf wa ‘n-nahy ani ‘l-munkar. That message is repeated many times in our Holy Book. The approximate translation is, “Command good and forbid evil;” or in my Malay, “Biasakan yang baik, jauhi yang jahat.” Succinct and elegant in both languages as it is in the original classical Arabic!

     This central message is often missed in the thick tomes of religious scholars, erudite sermons of bedecked ulamas, and frenzied jingoisms of zealous jihadists. Meanwhile in Malaysia, Islam is reduced to a government bureaucracy manned by control-freaks intent on dictating our lives. Yes, they are all men.

     Their mission has little to do with that golden rule. Theirs is an exercise of raw unbridled power, all in the name of Allah of course. Not-too-bright and self-serving politicians are only too willing to ride this Islamic tiger. Once ridden however, it is mighty difficult to dismount, as the Afghanis and Pakistanis are finding out.

     Malaysia’s saving grace is its significant non-Muslim minority, an effective buffer and formidable bulwark against the intrusive reach of these political Islamists. Another is that we are blessed with our share of Hang Jebats, courageous souls committed to justice and offended by these opportunistic Hang Tuahs of Islam.

     Zaid Ibrahim is one such individual. He demonstrated his Jebatism many years ago by quitting his senior cabinet position, a rare occurrence in Malaysia. His reputation soared following that.

     He brings this tenacious trait to his latest book, Assalamualiakum (Peace Be Upon You) where he assails these government-issued ulamas for their zealous preoccupation with the superficialities of our faith while ignoring our blatant “un-Islamic” core, as with our corrupt leaders and the injustices they perpetrated, as well as their flagrant and frequent abuses of power.

     Such perversions of the faith are now the norms in much of the Islamic world. Malaysians, especially Malays, need to be reminded of this grim and depressing reality. Zaid’s collection of essays does this; they are tough, sophisticated, and most of all brutally frank.

     Many have also done this but what makes Zaid unique is that he marshals the logic, rationality and persuasiveness of an accomplished lawyer that he was in his writing. Many Malays, unsure of their grounding in Islam, obsequiously defer to these civil servant-ulamas. Not Zaid. He proves that you do not need a madrasah background, flowing robes, or exquisite tajweed to expose these pretenders in our faith.

     Zaid shies away from long quotations of the Koran and hadith, de rigueur in current Islamic discourses. His only paean to Arabism is the title. As he noted in his preface, he could have substituted the warm and welcoming Malay equivalent, Salam sejahtera. Noting that sejahtera is of Sanskrit and thus Hindu origin, he demurred. The zealots might misinterpret his gesture.

     To Zaid, such concepts as justice, privacy, the rule of law, and representative government, long dismissed by Islamists as Western constructs and thus ipso facto un-Islamic, have deep roots in Islamic tradition and are very much in consonant with the central message of the Koran.

     I agree. Consider privacy. Legend has it that Caliph Omar once spied an unmarried couple engaged in what Malaysians call khalwat (“close proximity”). He barged in to confront the couple, threatening them with the severest penalty – stoning to death, at least for the woman. Unperturbed, the male partner instead chastised Omar, admitting that yes, he had indeed sinned against God, but Omar on the other hand had wronged him and his partner by violating their privacy. The wise Caliph relented.

     Three points here. One, the primacy of personal privacy in Islam; two, citizens should not hesitate confronting even the highest authorities should they stray out of line; and three, the pivotal difference between wronging God versus wronging your fellow humans. Tell that to those voyeuristic Islamists who are wont to snoop into hotel rooms!

     As for our leaders’ frequent abuse of power and disregard for the rule of law, consider the last line of Caliph Abu Bakar’s immortal inaugural speech. “Obey me so long as I obey Allah and His Messenger. And if I do not, then I have no right to your obedience.” Tell that to those overbearing leaders, religious as well as secular.

     Islam is more than a religion; it is a complete and total way of life. As such discourses in Islam should not be the exclusive preserve of only ulamas and religious scholars. All have something, and Zaid has much, to contribute.

     As a practicing lawyer Zaid was concerned with justice at the personal level. As a public figure he fights for justice at the societal level. Without justice a society cannot be Islamic regardless of its label. It is that simple.

     Zaid exposes pervasive injustices in the Islamic world perpetrated by religious leaders as well as secular ones wrapped in religious garbs. Little wonder that Ayatollah Khomeini drove more out of Islam than even Stalin could! Deprived of justice, peace eludes much of the Muslim world.

     Malaysia may not be led by ulamas (except for Kelantan), but as Zaid wrote, it is in “an increasingly steep descent into a more regressive form of Islamic administration . . . not by the desire to promote Islamic values . . . but to exert political control.”

     As for ulamas leading the state, Zaid’s Kelantan is “Exhibit A” on why they should not. It has appalling poverty as well as the highest rates of AIDS, incest, drug abuse, and abandoned babies. It also has the highest number of surfers of pornographic sites!

     Zaid renders a great service to Muslims by reminding us of the sterling essence of our great faith. For non-Muslims, Assalamualikum is a lucid exposition of the Islamic foundation of such concepts as justice, privacy, the rule of law, and other humanistic aspirations hitherto wrongly assumed to be exclusively modern and Western.

     Stated in a different way, with Assalamualaikum Zaid Ibrahim performs a pristine form of jihad and the purest of dakwah.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 23 November 2015, 6:44 am and is filed under
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1MDB fire sale reeks of desperation

by Khairie Hisyam

Kinibiz

November 24 2015

The open secret that 1MDB is selling off its power assets to foreign hands is now out, and now all eyes are on its attempts to divest a majority stake in its Bandar Malaysia project. The entire exercise reeks of the desperation that is driving the company.

On Nov 23, 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) finally made an unsurprising announcement: China General Nuclear (CGN) has won the bidding for its power assets, offering nearly 25% higher than local power player Tenaga Nasional Berhad.

The sale is understandable – 1MDB is desperate for cash. It has RM42 billion in borrowings that it is finding very hard to service. However, the sale of its only cash cow reeks of desperation and raises questions on just how deep is the hole 1MDB is in right now.

According to 1MDB, CGN is paying RM9.83 billion for its power assets held under Edra Global Energy. Payment is cash, which is music to the ears of those tracking 1MDB’s long trail of questionable deals over the years where it got into convoluted deals that often involve payments that are not cash.

As an aside, the sale brings full circle what was a contentious and questionable generosity – recall that 1MDB overpaid by several billion ringgit for the power assets which cost a total of RM12 billion, excluding the upcoming Track 4B 2,000MW power plant in Malacca.

It bears repeating here that immediately after the purchases, 1MDB impaired RM1.2 billion in its accounts as recognition of goodwill for the energy assets. 1MDB had already incurred that amount of loss from the purchase of one of the power assets. And now it will have to incur a further RM1 billion plus in losses from the sale to CGN too.

1MDB power plant generic featured imageWhat was so strategic about acquiring power assets from established Malaysian independent power producers at a ridiculous premium, reselling it for a loss, and in the process putting power assets and expertise into foreign hands?

The other question that arises is why China state-owned CGN willing to pay what is perceived to be 25% higher than market prices for the assets. Since this is virtually a government-to-government deal with both parties being government owned, could there be a quid-pro-quo somewhere else?

There is even now talk of Chinese interest in the Bandar Malaysia sale and the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore high-speed rail project, estimated to be closer to RM60 billion in worth compared to original projections of circa RM40 billion.

Of course, despite the pointlessness of the entire saga this deal remains significant. Along with getting RM9.83 billion in cash, 1MDB’s debt burden is also lightened by about RM8 billion, which represents the debt attached to the power assets. Effectively, if cash obtained is used to pay debts, nearly RM18 billion will be cleared (RM9.83 + RM8) and 1MDB is left with “a mere” RM24 billion or so in borrowings to think about.

But the disposal of its power assets may also put 1MDB in a more difficult situation despite a relatively lighter borrowing burden. Its only real cash flow stream comes from the power assets – without them, where will the money come from?

It’s not easy to establish with certainty how much of 1MDB’s net earnings come from energy (bearing in mind it is essentially a loss-making entity year after year before paper gains from land revaluation are imputed) but in the 2013 financial year ended March 31, 2013 (FY13), the power assets contributed 80% of 1MDB’s revenue.

This proportion more or less remained intact at 77% for FY14. With four-fifths of its revenue source essentially going away soon, the remainder RM24 billion in borrowings cast dark clouds over 1MDB despite the RM9.83 billion in cash that it gets from selling the power assets. Can it really service the remaining debt?

However, this is where some perspective vis-a-vis 1MDB’s overall rationalisation plan aids. The plan, according to 1MDB in February, is basically to monetise the power assets and spin off its core businesses into standalone entities. In other words, 1MDB on its own will eventually be wound down.

So here we have the power division not only being monetised but sold off entirely to help pay down borrowings. That leaves the real estate portion of 1MDB as the remaining core business – the Bandar Malaysia development and the twin project Tun Razak Exchange (TRX).

Bandar MalaysiaThen again 1MDB is currently looking to sell off 60% equity in its wholly owned Bandar Malaysia development. The company said on Nov 12 that it is now considering two “final, binding and fully funded bids” for the stake.

Bandar Malaysia is an immense undertaking with an estimated gross development value GDV) of as high as RM40 billion. Among other things, the site will see the terminus for the proposed Kuala Lumpur-Singapore high-speed rail located here, no mean plus point for its developer.

Letting go of a majority stake in the project essentially means 1MDB, a government-owned company, is relinquishing control over its future direction as well as a big portion of future profits – a regrettable outcome considering 1MDB originally bought the land cheaply from the government for its “strategic” initiatives.

The irony is that in the end, the strategic sale of this majority stake would un-strategically lead to private entities, potentially foreign, reaping the ultimate benefit and profits from what was public land, strategically divested on the cheap by the government to a government-owned company to drive strategic development in the country for strategic public interest.

1MDB Tun Razak Exchange TRX landscape image 130814In any case, does becoming a backseat shareholder count as having a core business? Probably not. This leaves only the TRX development, for which GDV estimates also rise as high as RM40 billion, for 1MDB.

To be fair, 1MDB have not stated that it intends to sell off this project too, with the implication being that its subsidiary 1MDB Real Estate is likely to remain in the driving seat.

However, 1MDB had also been selling off portions of land from the 486-acre project site. Recall the controversy over Tabung Haji’s RM188 million purchase of a 1.56-acre plot as well as Retirement Fund Inc (KWAP)’s reportedly RM1 billion deal for a 40-storey building and land at TRX earlier this year.

Since then, we have had Affin Bank buying half a hectare of TRX land for RM255 million; and WCT buying a 70-acre plot for RM223 million in a deal attached to its RM755 million infrastructure job win at TRX.

It may seem normal. But the question that needs to be asked is whether it is such a good idea for a normal developer to sell off parts of its own development land when what it should be doing is to execute its development plan and sell the completed structures for even higher profit.

Plainly put, that 1MDB is selling off land parcels now as opposed to reaping the higher, longer-term profits from selling completed property indicates that it cannot afford to wait that long – it needs cash now, as evident from its slaughter of its only cash cow for the meat and letting go of a majority stake in Bandar Malaysia.

In other words, we now have a government-owned, self-styled strategic development company  forced to sell off its assets to pay a mountain of borrowings. We can only assume much of the proceeds are earmarked to meet debt obligations as they come due.

This comes after past controversies on overpaying for the power assets in the first place as well as strings of dodgy deals, which KINIBIZ had been tracking for years.

All this points to a troubling question: how did 1MDB get into a situation so dire? And who should be taken to task for running a government-owned company into the ground, having racked up tremendous amounts of borrowing that may fall to the government – and by extension the public – to service in whole or in part if insufficient cash is raised in the end?

Not helping matters is the current delay in 1MDB’s FY15 annual accounts, for which the Companies Commission had recently granted a six-month extension to the company to submit after having missed the original six-month deadline that ended on Sept 30.

This is not the first time its accounts have been delayed. In fact every single one of its accounts since inception have been delayed.

Taken together, the entire mess spells deep trouble that reeks, even to observers from across the seas judging by growing foreign media interest and reported foreign investigations into 1MDB-related matters. With what limited information is available we can only assume the real situation is far worse than it seems.

As 1MDB president and group executive director Arul Kanda previously said, it is easy to say any number of things in hindsight in dismissing much criticism against the company. However, it is with hindsight that we discover mistakes and make people be accountable for that so that we may bring the lesson forward with us to progress.

That means the public deserve full disclosure from the government and 1MDB itself, immediately, of all available facts concerning the company.

How did it use its billions in borrowings if the only cash-generating assets had been mostly the power business, which cost only RM12 billion or so to acquire? Where were the rest? Who made the ultimate decision on so many questionable and ultimately disastrous ventures? Was there money siphoned off?

In the end what has 1MDB really achieved in its seven years or so of existence but squander borrowed money?

And full disclosure must be accompanied by a truly independent investigation – followed by action without fear or favour – on  what really transpired in an episode which must eventually go down in history as another national disaster that unfolded before our very eyes.

GRRRRR!!!

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 24 November 2015, 6:16 pm and is filed under
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Enough is enough, stop playing politics to make a mountain out of a molehill over Nurul’s unplanned meeting in the Philippines as if the country does not have weighty matters on hand

Enough is enough, stop playing politics to make a mountain out of a molehill over PRK Vice President and Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar’s recent visit to the Philippines and unplanned meeting with Jacel Kiram, as if the country does not have weighty problems on hand.

If Nurul has traitorous intent, she would have ensured that there would be no photographic evidence of her meeting with Jacel, let alone allowing the photograph to be to be uploaded on FaceBook for the whole world to know.

This bolstered Nurul’s statement of innocence, her expression of regret over her photograph with Sulu “princess” Jacel Kiram and reiteration of her sympathies and support for the fallen heroes from the army,  military and the public who perished as a result of the  Lahad Datuk intrusion in 2013.

Unless the authorities have evidence otherwise, the police should accept at face value Nurul’s explanation that she had not sought out or set up any meeting with Jacel Kiram and that Jacel  was one of the 15 guests invited by her hosts – the council on Philippines affairs and the Asian Institute for Democracy, the office of the City Mayor of Manila and the office of the Vice President of the Philippines during her visit to Manila in connection with the call by the United Nation Working Group of Arbitrary Detention for the immediate release of Anwar Ibrahim from Sungai Buloh prison.

The Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Azalina Othman Said made another howler when she said  the government might refer Nurul Izzah to the Parliamentary Rights and Privileges Committee.

Would she suggest that Nurul and the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak should both be referred to the Parliamentary Rights and Privileges Committee as Najib was the centre of a similar controversy, when  a photograph appeared on the social media last month of the Malaysian Prime Minister shaking hands with the Jewish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations.

Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein has said it was “despicable” for Nurul to be photographed with Jacel. Did he say that it was “despicable” for Najib to be photographed shaking hands with Netanyahu in the United Nations last month.

The Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said Nurul may be investigated by the police under the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (Sosma) and the Penal Code for her meeting with Jacel.  Did Khalid ever direct the police to investigate the Prime Minister under Sosma and Penal Code for his handshake with Netanyahu during his recent visit to the United Nations?

As Nurul’s photographed meeting with Jacel was as innocent as the photographed handshake between Najib and the Israeli Prime Minister, it is time for the issues to placed in proper perspectives and for all concerned, in particular the Deputy Prime Minister, several Cabinet Ministers and the No. 1 Policeman in the country, to move on and  to return to the many more weighty, important and urgent national problems awaiting attention and resolution.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 24 November 2015, 2:41 pm and is filed under
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France’s anti-Isis coalition: where the key countries stand

Simon Tisdall

Guardian

Monday 23 November 2015

France is pulling out all the stops as François Hollande scrambles to fulfil his ambitious pledge to build a global military coalition to defeat Islamic State following the Paris attacks.

The French president has won public approval and international backing for his handling of the crisis so far. His poll ratings are up by eight points to 33%. Foreign leaders have lined up to express solidarity.

In a flurry of hastily arranged mini-summits this week, Hollande will seek to turn expressions of support into concerted, sharp-end action before the rare moment of unity passes.

His prospects for success are mixed. The leaders of the US, Russia, Germany and Britain – whom Hollande will meet separately over four days – agree unreservedly about the necessity of eradicating Isis. All want a peace deal to end the Syrian civil war. But there is less agreement on how to do this.

Britain

David Cameron, who met Hollande in Paris on Monday morning, presented the easiest target for the diplomatic offensive. The prime minister is plainly embarrassed that Britain has not joined France in bombing Isis in northern Syria. So he offered the next best thing: French use of the British military airbase at Akrotiri in Cyprus, plus mid-air refuelling for French combat planes. And he vowed that if he has his way, the RAF will soon join the fight in Syria.

But even here, differences of emphasis persist. Cameron stressed the problem of foreign fighters returning to Europe. At last week’s G20 summit, he said Britain would host a conference to raise funds to stem the flow of Syrian refugees. These priorities reflect the British focus on immigration and security.

United States

Hollande faces a bigger challenge in Washington on Tuesday. Barack Obama is under growing pressure to do more in Syria from Republicans and his own side, including the Democrat presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. European diplomats complain the US leader does not appreciate the severity of the twin terrorism and refugee crises facing Europe.

So far, Obama has resisted his critics. He shocked even his own supporters by calling Paris a “setback”. He is adamant that the US will not put boots on the ground in Syria, beyond the limited special forces units he authorised last month. So Hollande’s hopes of proactive US engagement in a global coalition may be disappointed. More US airstrikes, more arms to Syrian rebels, more drone attacks – plus condolences – may be the best he gets.

Russia

Part of Hollande’s problem is the Americans’ refusal to cooperate militarily with the Russians, whose entry into the Syrian war last month they deplored. Obama agreed a joint approach to rebooting a UN-mediated Syria peace process when he met Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, in Turkey last week. This is a key plank of what Cameron calls a comprehensive strategy to resolve the Syria-Isis conundrum.

But deep disagreement with Moscow remains over the future of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, a longtime Russian client. On the military front, the prospect of the US conducting joint operations or sharing targeting and intelligence information with Russia, beyond the limited “deconfliction” measures already agreed, is zero.

Is Obama about to be outflanked? Sensing a chance to outmanoeuvre the Americans, Putin, who will host Hollande in Moscow on Thursday, has been busy stressing Russian solidarity with France.

His reaction to the Paris attacks, following confirmation that an Isis bomb destroyed a Russian passenger plane over Sinai last month, was purposefully empathic. “The latest tragic events in Paris show that we have to unite our efforts in fighting this evil, something we should have done a long time ago,” Putin said.

Hollande’s global anti-Isis coalition idea suits Putin. It legitimises Russia’s role in Syria, takes the spotlight off Assad, and puts last year’s row over Crimea on a permanent backburner. He argues that the west has no alternative but to prioritise the fight against Isis above all other Syria considerations. Putin travelled to Assad’s chief ally, Iran, on Monday, in apparent pursuit of this aim.

Putin has ordered Russian navy ships in the eastern Mediterranean to cooperate with the French military “as allies”. Like Obama, he has ruled out deploying ground troops. But Putin has promised the French he will do more. “We are mulling over what we would really do extra in order to support those who are in the battlefield, resisting and fighting with terrorists, Isis first of all,” he said.

The signs of deepening collaboration between France, which as Obama noted, is Washington’s oldest ally, and Russia – Iran also, by extension – are deeply disconcerting for the US. Significantly, Hollande has not so far called for Nato’s help. France, historically, has always been ambivalent about the US-led alliance, but the omission is striking. Putin may exploit this faultline, too.

Germany

All of which may leave Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, who travels to Paris on Wednesday, feeling anxious. Since the end of the second world war, Germany has not permitted itself offensive military operations, so she has nothing to offer Hollande in that department.

Merkel has lost the initiative on Europe’s refugee crisis. Her open borders policy, introduced in the summer, is under fierce attack at home, while Hollande, disregarding the EU’s prized Schengen rules and Germany’s wishes, has unilaterally imposed frontier controls.

German intelligence liaison failings prior to the Paris attacks have also soured relations. As Europe’s de facto leader, Merkel is accustomed to getting her way. But when she meets the embattled Hollande, she may be reduced to listening, with tea and sympathy.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 24 November 2015, 6:46 am and is filed under
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ISIS Women and Enforcers in Syria Recount Collaboration, Anguish and Escape

By AZADEH MOAVENINOV

New York Times

Nov 21, 2015

SOUTHERN TURKEY — Dua had only been working for two months with the Khansaa Brigade, the all-female morality police of the Islamic State, when her friends were brought to the station to be whipped.

The police had hauled in two women she had known since childhood, a mother and her teenage daughter, both distraught. Their abayas, flowing black robes, had been deemed too form-fitting.

When the mother saw Dua, she rushed over and begged her to intercede. The room felt stuffy as Dua weighed what to do.

“Their abayas really were very tight. I told her it was their own fault; they had come out wearing the wrong thing,” she said. “They were unhappy with that.”

Dua sat back down and watched as the other officers took the women into a back room to be whipped. When they removed their face-concealing niqabs, her friends were also found to be wearing makeup. It was 20 lashes for the abaya offense, five for the makeup, and another five for not being meek enough when detained.

The three Syrian women interviewed for this article, all former members of the Islamic State morality police who escaped to Turkey this year, met with a reporter in a southern Turkish city for hours of interviews, together and separately, over the course of two multiday visits.

The names Aws, Dua and Asma are pseudonyms used for their protection, but they fully identified themselves and their family connections.

Their accounts of working for the Islamic State, of their lives and of events in Raqqa, Syria, in recent years were consistent with one another and with interviews and accounts of other former and current residents of Raqqa.

The women also shared cellphone images of locations in Raqqa, and of their lives there, that were independently confirmed.

In the short time since she had joined the Khansaa Brigade in her hometown, Raqqa, in northern Syria, the morality force had grown more harsh. Mandatory abayas and niqabs were still new for many women in the weeks after the jihadists of the Islamic State had purged the city of competing militants and taken over. At first, the brigade was told to give the community a chance to adapt, and clothing offenses brought small fines.

After too many young women became repeat offenders, however, paying the fines without changing their behavior, the soft approach was out. Now it was whipping — and now it was her friends being punished.

The mother and daughter came to Dua’s parents’ house afterward, furious with her and venting their anger at the Islamic State.

“They said they hated it and wished it had never come to Raqqa,” Dua said. She pleaded with them, explaining that as a young and new member of the Khansaa Brigade, there was nothing she could have done.

But a lifelong friendship, with shared holiday gatherings and birthday parties, was suddenly broken. “After that day, they hated me, too,” she said. “They never came to our house again.”

Dua’s second cousin Aws also worked for the brigade. Not long after Dua’s friends were whipped, Aws saw fighters brutally lashing a man in Muhammad Square. The man, about 70, frail and with white hair, had been heard cursing God. As a crowd gathered, the fighters dragged him into the public square and whipped him after he fell to his knees.

“He cried the whole time,” Aws said. “It was lucky for him that he had cursed Allah, because Allah shows mercy. If he’d cursed the Prophet, they would have killed him.”

Today, Aws, 25, and Dua, 20, are living in a small city in southern Turkey after fleeing Raqqa and its jihadist rulers. They met up here with Asma, 22, another defector from the Khansaa Brigade, and found shelter in the city’s large community of Syrian refugees.

Raqqa is widely known now as the capital of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate and as the focus of heavy airstrikes by a growing number of countries seeking revenge for the group’s recent terrorist attacks. But the city in which the three women came to adulthood used to be quite different. Identified here by nicknames, the women spoke for many hours over the course of two visits this fall, recalling their experiences under Islamic State rule and how the jihadists had utterly changed life in Raqqa.

All three described themselves as fairly typical young women of Raqqa. Aws was more into Hollywood, Dua into Bollywood. Aws’s family was middle-class, and she studied English literature at a branch of Euphrates University, a three-hour bus ride away in Hasaka. She devoured novels: some by Agatha Christie, and especially Dan Brown books. “Digital Fortress” is her favorite.

Dua’s father is a farmer, and money was tighter. But her social life was closely intertwined with Aws’s, and the cousins loved their charming city. There were long walks to Qalat Jabr, the 11th-century fort on Lake Assad; coffee at Al Rasheed Park; and Raqqa Bridge, where you could see the city lights at night. In the gardens and amusement park in the town center, there was ice cream and communal shisha pipes to gather around.

“In the summer, everyone went out at night and stayed out late, because it was so hot during the day,” Dua said.

The women keep pictures of their old lives in Raqqa on their cellphones, scenes from parties and countryside outings. Aws’s gallery includes days on the lakeshore, her friends in bathing suits, dancing in the water.

Asma, with a bright gaze, was another outward-looking young woman, studying business at Euphrates University. Her mother was a native of Damascus, the capital, and Asma spent some of her teenage years there seeing friends, swimming at pool parties, going to cafes. She is also an avid reader, fond of Ernest Hemingway and Victor Hugo, and she speaks some English.

All three belonged to a generation of Syrian women who were leading more independent lives than ever before. They mixed freely with young men, socializing and studying together in a religiously diverse city with relatively relaxed mores.

Many young women dressed in what they called sport style, baring their knees and arms in the summer and wearing makeup. And while Raqqa’s more conservative residents wore abayas and veils, women were going to college in greater numbers and getting married later. Most men and women chose their own spouses.

When the uprising against the government of President Bashar al-Assad began rippling across Syria in 2011, it seemed distant from Raqqa. As news of fighting and massacres started filtering in, it was mostly from faraway cities in the country’s west, like Homs. Even as displaced people began appearing in Raqqa and the city’s young men started to sign up with anti-Assad groups in the area, including the Nusra Front and what is now the Islamic State, the fabric of life seemed intact.

At the start of 2014, everything changed. The Islamic State wrested full control of Raqqa and made the city its command center, violently consolidating its authority. Those who resisted, or whose family or friends had the wrong connections, were detained, tortured or killed.

The Islamic State has come to be known around the world by names like ISIS and ISIL. But in Raqqa, residents began calling it Al Tanzeem: The Organization. And it quickly became clear that every spot in the social order, and any chance for a family to survive, was utterly dependent on the group.

Not only had Raqqa residents become subjects of the Organization’s mostly Iraqi leadership, but their place in society fell even further overnight. As foreign fighters and other volunteers began streaming into town, answering the call to jihad, they became the leading lights of the shaken-up community. In Raqqa, the Syrians had become second-class citizens — at best.

Dua, Aws and Asma were among the lucky: The choice to join was available to them. And each chose to barter her life, through work and marriage, to the Organization.

None of them subscribed to its extreme ideology, and even after fleeing their homes and going into hiding, they still struggle to explain how they changed from modern young women into Islamic State morality enforcers.

In the moment, each choice seemed like the right one, a way to keep life tolerable: marrying fighters to assuage the Organization and keep their families in favor; joining the Khansaa Brigade to win some freedom of movement and an income in a city where women had been stripped of self-determination.

But every concession turned to horror before long, and the women came to deplore how they were pitted against their neighbors, part of a force tearing apart the community they loved. Only months in, widowed and abandoned and forced to marry strangers again, would they see how they were being used as temporary salves to foreign fighters whose only dedication was to violence and an unrecognizable God.

Each of them was driven to the conviction that escape was a last chance at life. And each joined the flow of Syrians abandoning their country, leaving a void to be filled by the foreigners who held nothing of Syria in their hearts.

The Betrothals

The day Abu Muhammad, a Turkish fighter for the Islamic State, walked through Aws’s front door to seek marriage, she made her first concession to the Organization.

Her father and grandfather met with Abu Muhammad in the living room, telling Aws that she could see him at a second meeting if he offered a suitable dowry. But Aws was too much of a romantic, and had seen too many Leonardo DiCaprio films, to agree to marry a man whose face she had not seen.

When she knelt down behind the living room door to leave the thimbles of coffee she had prepared, she peered in for a moment and caught a glimpse of him. He had winged eyebrows, light eyes and a deep voice. As she waited for the discussion to conclude, she tried to imagine what their life together might be like. By the time her father called her in, she had already nervously decided to say yes, for her family’s sake.

After their wedding, she was surprised to find that the marriage felt real — even affectionate. Abu Muhammad liked to trace the two moles that made a constellation on her left cheek; he gently teased her about her accent when she tried to pronounce Turkish words.

But he often did not come home at night, and was sometimes gone for three- or four-day stretches to fight for the Islamic State. Aws hated being left alone and would pout about it when he finally came home; he answered with silly jokes, cajoling her into forgiveness.

She tried to keep busy by socializing with other fighters’ wives. Among them, she felt fortunate. Some were married to men who were abusive.

Everyone had heard of Fatima, who had killed herself by slitting her wrists after being forced to marry a fighter, and there was the Tunisian girl next door who burst into tears every time someone mentioned her husband’s name. And even they were considered luckier than the captured women from the Yazidi minority, who were being smuggled into town as slaves for other fighters.

Mostly, though, Aws’s days became an intolerable void. Sociable and lively, with long, curly black hair and a gamine face, she was bored and thoroughly unhappy. She finished her housework quickly, but there was nowhere to go. New books were nearly impossible to find after the jihadists banned almost all fiction, purging the bookshops and local cultural center.

The Organization also cast a long shadow over her marriage. Though Aws had always wanted a baby, Abu Muhammad asked her to take birth control pills, still available at Raqqa’s pharmacies. When she pressed him, he said his commanders had advised fighters to avoid getting their wives pregnant. New fathers would be less inclined to volunteer to carry out suicide missions.

This was one of the early, devastating moments when Aws saw that there would be no normalcy or choice; the Islamic State was a third partner in her marriage, there in the bedroom. “At first, I used to keep bringing it up, but it really upset him, so I stopped,” she said.

For Dua’s family, money had always been an issue. Her father was still farming, but many lawyers and doctors who had lost their jobs when the jihadists took over had also started selling fruits and vegetables to get by, creating new competition. The Organization imposed taxes, which cut further into the family’s income. When a Saudi fighter came to ask to marry Dua, in February 2014, her father pushed her to accept.

The Saudi, Abu Soheil Jizrawi, came from a wealthy construction family in Riyadh and promised to transform Dua’s life. She deliberated and eventually agreed. She met him for the first time on their wedding day, when he arrived bearing gold for her family. She liked what she saw: Abu Soheil was light-skinned with a soft black beard, tall and lanky, with charisma and an easy way of making her laugh.

He set her up in a spacious apartment with new European kitchen appliances and air-conditioning units in each room — almost unheard-of in Raqqa. She eagerly showed off her new home to friends and relatives. Her kitchen became the place where the other fighter’s wife in the building — a Syrian who, like Aws, had married a Turkish recruit — stopped in for coffee. Each morning, Abu Soheil’s servant shopped for them and left bags of meat and produce outside the door.

In the evenings, the couple lingered over dinner, and he complimented her cooking, especially when she made his favorite kabsa, a spiced rice dish with meat and eggplant. Abu Soheil did not even mind the little rose tattoo on her hand, though permanent tattoos are forbidden in strict interpretations of Islam.

“He changed my life completely,” Dua said. “He persuaded me to love him.”

Filling Empty Hours

While a little light, at least, had come into the lives of Aws and Dua, Asma’s living room in Raqqa was perpetually dark and stifling. She kept the curtains drawn and windows closed so that no one would know she had her television on inside. Television, music, the radio — everything was kept at the lowest volume she could hear.

Even that escape was becoming scarce for Asma as electricity in Raqqa dwindled to two, sometimes four, hours a day. She certainly could no longer go to the salon to fill the time.

The Organization decreed that the Internet could be used only for critical work, like that of the painstaking recruiters who went online to woo new fighters and foreign women to Syria. Asma, who had previously been on her laptop a few hours each day, found herself disconnected from the world.

“But it was O.K. for them, contacting all those girls to bring them in,” Aws recalled later, as the three women sat together here in Turkey. They all rolled their eyes. “That was work.”

In February 2014, two months into her marriage and unable to persuade Abu Muhammad to let her get pregnant, Aws decided to join the Khansaa Brigade. Dua joined around the same time, and they started their compulsory military and religious training together.

The cousins had their misgivings about joining. But they had already married fighters, choosing to survive the occupation of Raqqa by aligning with the Organization. Working with the brigade was a chance to do more than just subsist, and it paralleled their husbands’ work. And the full extent of the brigade’s oppressiveness would only emerge with time.

A number of Asma’s relatives had already started working for the Islamic State in various ways, and she deliberated carefully before joining in January 2014. With her family already enmeshed with the Organization, it seemed the most logical choice.

“For me, it was about power and money, mostly power,” Asma said, switching to English to describe those motivations. “Since my relatives had all joined, it didn’t change a great deal to join. I just had more authority.”

Though the women tried to rationalize their enlistment, there was no way to avoid seeing the Organization as the wanton killing machine it was. But all of Syria, it seemed, had become about death.

At night, Aws and Dua heard attempts at self-justification from the husbands they had waited up for and would go to bed with. They had to be savage when taking a town to minimize casualties later, the men insisted. Mr. Assad’s forces were targeting civilians, sweeping into homes in the middle of the night and brutalizing men in front of their wives; the fighters had no choice but to respond with equal brutality, they said.

All three women attended the training required for those joining the Khansaa Brigade. Roughly 50 women took the 15-day weapons course at once; during eight-hour days, they learned how to load, clean and fire pistols. But the foreign women who had come to Syria to join the Islamic State were rumored to be training on “russis,” slang for Kalashnikov assault rifles.

Religion classes, taught mainly by Moroccans and Algerians, focused on the laws and principles of Islam. Dua, for one, was pleased; she felt she had not known enough about Islam before the Organization took over.

By March 2014, Aws and Dua were out every day on the brigade’s street patrols, moving about the city in small gray Kia vans with “Al Khansaa” on the sides. There were women from across the world in the brigade: British, Tunisian, Saudi, French.

But both within their unit and more broadly across Raqqa, the Organization had issued a strict decree: No mingling between natives and foreigners. The occupiers thought gossip was dangerous. Salaries and accommodations might be compared, hypocrisies exposed.

Status within Raqqa — how it was derived and how it was expressed — was becoming a grievance. Dua explained openly, with a modest but satisfied expression, that she had enjoyed more status than most because of her wealthy Saudi husband, who was said to be high up in the Organization.

“As women, our status depended on his status,” Aws said, referring to husbands in general. Among the male fighters, this had been clear from the beginning: Salaries, cars, neighborhoods and housing were allocated in large part by nationality.

It soon became clear that the foreign women had more freedom of movement, more disposable income and small perks: jumping to the front of the bread line, not having to pay at the hospital. Some seemed to have unfettered Internet access, including multiple Twitter profiles.

“The foreign women got to do whatever they wanted,” Asma complained. “They could go wherever they wanted.”

“They were spoiled,” Aws said. “Even the ones that were younger than us had more power.”

“Maybe it’s because they had to leave their countries to come here — it was felt they should be treated more specially,” Dua said, as usual more reluctant to criticize.

“We couldn’t even say anything,” Aws said. “We couldn’t even question why.”

The Organization had no outlet for grievances. It seemed to operate by stealth, and being married to its fighters offered no real information about its operations and ambitions. Senior figures like the caliph himself, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, were never seen in public. Even within Raqqa, he remained a shadow, the women said.

Asma’s role in the Khansaa Brigade involved meeting foreign women at the border with Turkey, 50 miles north, and accompanying them into Raqqa at night. With her smattering of English and cosmopolitan air, she was well suited to the task. She would receive a slip of paper with names, and the crew — two or three brigade women, an interpreter and a driver — would start up the highway.

Many women were arriving from Europe. One spring night this year, Asma and her crew received three British girls, dressed in Western clothes but with their hair covered. “They were so young, tiny, and so happy to have arrived, laughing and smiling,” she recalled.

She accompanied them to a hostel and helped them get settled. As with most of the foreigners she escorted, she did not see them again. It was only later that she saw their faces plastered across the Internet, identified as schoolgirls from Bethnal Green in London, migrating by choice to join the Islamic State.

Asma was bewildered by their decision to so cheerfully embrace a life that was sapping her every single day.

Before, Asma had a boyfriend from college. Their relationship was complicated: He had urged her to start wearing a head scarf and to dress more conservatively even before the Islamic State took control of Raqqa, but she refused to have her worth judged by the amount of skin she had covered. After the takeover, he moved to Jordan to finish his studies.

Now, she wore her hijab all day and enforced it for other women. But at night, she listened to the rock group Evanescence on her phone and mourned.

One spring day in 2014, the women in Dua’s police unit went to one of the city’s main squares to watch the stoning of two local women, supposedly for adultery. Dua refused to go. She did not like how the militants prized spectacle over correct implementation of Shariah law. “In Islam, you need four witnesses to the act to carry out such a punishment,” she said.

Within hours, word spread that one of the women had not been involved with a man at all. She was said to have shown up outside the city’s Police Headquarters holding a sign that read, “Tasqoot al-Tanzeem.” Down With the Organization.

By the time the trees blossomed that spring, it was common to see the heads of captured soldiers and people accused of treason hanging in the main square near the clock tower. But most who had stayed in Raqqa were either too afraid to rebel or had no desire to.

Horrified, the cousins kept trying to cope, soothing themselves with the thought that, though they had joined the Organization, at least they were not personally killing anyone.

“We saw many heads being cut off,” Dua recalled.

“You saw the heads — it was just the heads you saw,” Aws corrected her.

“Well, it is forbidden in Islam to mutilate bodies.”

“I saw bodies that lay in the street for a whole week.”

Asma, unsettled at the turn in the conversation, tuned out and started looking at Facebook on her phone. Of the three women, she was the only one who read Western news coverage online: She knew the world considered the Islamic State grotesque, and she was haunted by how she had tainted herself at the very outset of her adult life.

Within the brigade, women had started using their authority to settle petty quarrels or exact revenge. “Girls who were fighting would go to the Organization and accuse their enemies of some infraction,” Aws recalled. “Even if they had done nothing wrong, they would be brought into headquarters.”

Their job, inflicting fear on their neighbors, was agony. That everyone was probably two-faced was the only reliable assumption.

“Many times, I saw women I knew smiling at me when they saw I’d joined,” Aws said. “But I knew inside they felt differently. I knew because before I joined myself, when I saw a girl I knew had started working with ISIS, I resented it.”

Wives of Martyrs

As with Aws’s husband, Dua’s, Abu Soheil, did not want children. But Dua was not in a rush, and she did not press him.

One week in July 2014, he did not return for three nights. On the fourth day, a group of fighters knocked on her door. They told her that Abu Soheil had blown himself up in a battle against the Syrian Army at Tal Abyad, on the border with Turkey.

Dua was devastated, especially when the commander told her Abu Soheil had requested a suicide mission. He had never told her about such a plan, and she broke down, shaking and sobbing, at the men’s feet.

She tried to console herself with the thought that it was honorable to be a martyr’s wife. But days later, she learned a fact that made things even harder to bear: Abu Soheil had killed himself in an operation not against the hated Syrian Army, but against a competing rebel group that the Islamic State was trying to wipe out.

“I cried for days,” she said. “He died fighting other Muslims.”

Just 10 days later, another man from her husband’s unit came to the house. He told Dua she could not stay home alone and would need to marry again, immediately.

Again, the Organization was twisting Islamic law to its own desires. Under nearly universal interpretations of Islam, a woman must wait three months before remarrying, mainly to establish the paternity of any child that might have been conceived. The waiting period, called idaa, is not only required but is a woman’s right, to allow her to grieve. But even in the realm of divine law, the Islamic State was reformulating everything.

“I told him that I still couldn’t stop crying,” Dua said. “I said: ‘I’m heartbroken. I want to wait the whole three months.’ ” But the commander told her she was different from a normal widow. “You shouldn’t be mourning and sad,” he said. “He asked for martyrdom himself, and you are the wife of a martyr. You should be happy.”

That was the moment that broke her.

The Organization had made her a widow and wanted to do so again and again, turning her into a perpetual temporary distraction for suicidal fighters. There was no choice left, no dignity, just the service demanded by the Islamic State’s need to feed men to its front lines.

“I had a good marriage to a good man, and I didn’t want to end up in a bad one,” Dua said. “I knew it would be painful for me to marry someone only to lose him when he goes on a martyrdom mission. It’s only natural to have feelings and grow attached.”

She knew she had to escape, even though it would mean leaving the house that should have been her inheritance.

The news came for Aws not long after it did for Dua. Abu Muhammad had also killed himself in a suicide operation. There was no funeral to attend and no in-laws to grieve with. She was devastated.

She had no time to recover before the Organization came knocking. “They told me that he was a martyr now, obviously he didn’t need a wife anymore, but that there was another fighter who did,” Aws said. “They said this fighter had been my husband’s friend, and wanted to protect and take care of me on his behalf.”

She agreed reluctantly, despite being one month short of her three-month waiting period. But things did not click with this new husband, an Egyptian who turned up at home even less than Abu Muhammad had. Everything about him — his personality, his looks, their sexual relations — she shrugged off with a sour expression and a single word: “aadi.” Regular.

When he ran off with his salary two months later, without even a goodbye, Aws was left abandoned, denied even the status of widow. Back at her parents’ house, she wandered from room to room, grieving for the life she had had before and stunned by how far away it seemed from where she had fallen.

Departure

To the outside world, the territory controlled by the Islamic State might seem to be a hermetically sealed land governed by the harshest laws of the seventh century. But until relatively recently, the routes into and out of Raqqa were mostly open. Traders would come and go, supplying the Organization’s needs and wants — including cigarettes, which some fighters smoked despite the fact that they were banned for Raqqa residents.

Dua, unable to bear another forced marriage, left first. Her brother made calls to Syrian friends in southern Turkey who could meet her on the other side, and the siblings boarded a small minibus for the two-hour ride to the Tal Abyad crossing early this year. The flow of refugees into Turkey was still heavy then, and the two passed through without being stopped.

When Aws decided to leave four months later, it was harder to cross the border because Turkey had started tightening security. She contacted Dua and was put in touch with the man who had helped Dua get out.

The man is part of a network in southern Turkey that has made a cottage industry of extricating people from Islamic State territory. When Aws got to the border crossing, one of the man’s colleagues was waiting with a fake identity card that showed her to be his sister if she should be questioned.

Her heart was in her throat, but when the moment of crossing came, the men at the checkpoint never asked her to show identification, much less to remove her veil.

By early this past spring, Asma was agonizing about whether to flee as well.

Raqqa had been transformed. Before, she would see someone she knew every 20 paces; the city felt small. But those who could afford to had fled. On the job in public, she was surrounded by strange faces and foreign accents.

The Organization disapproved of young women’s remaining unmarried, and Asma’s situation had grown complicated. She became deeply depressed, her days stretching before her aridly.

“You couldn’t go to the doctor without your father or brother. You couldn’t go out to just take a walk,” she said. “I just couldn’t bear it anymore.”

She felt her identity was being extinguished. “Before, I was like you,” she told a reporter, waving her arms up and down. “I had a boyfriend, I went to the beach, I wore a bikini. Even in Syria, we wore short skirts and tank tops, and all of this was normal. Even my brothers didn’t care — I had no trouble from anyone.”

When she and a cousin plotted their escape, they told no one, not even their families, and took nothing but their handbags. A friend inside the Organization agreed to get them out, and fear for him made the night journey even more terrifying. The friend guided them through three checkpoints, and finally, just after 1 a.m., they arrived at the border crossing. They showed their ID cards and murmured goodbye.

“The guy at the checkpoint, I was convinced he knew we were trying to escape. I was so nervous and scared,” Asma recalled. “But then I realized it only looked suspicious in my head, because I was so scared.”

The car meeting them on the other side looked gray in the moonlight. They got in and drove away from the Islamic State, from what was left of Syria.

Little Syria

The Turkish city the three women now live in sits on a dry grass plain, its outskirts dotted with almond and plum groves, pine and olive trees. Low-slung apartment blocks were put up during a housing boom a few years ago, providing the cheap accommodation that has made it possible for many Syrian refugees to rebuild lives here.

There are scruffy Syrian children begging and selling tissues in the street, just as in Istanbul or Beirut, Lebanon. But there are opportunities for work, and the rent for a two-bedroom apartment is not staggeringly out of reach.

There are, by now, enough Syrians that the city center has its own Syrian restaurants and baklava shops. The merchants in the bazaar are now practiced in saying, in Arabic, “This price is just for your sake.”

But not all of the city’s Syrian émigrés were Islamic State collaborators, and Aws, Dua and Asma tightly guard their secret. They are stateless and dislocated, hiding pasts that could hurt them.

All three are taking English and Turkish classes, hoping that will someday help them chart a future elsewhere, perhaps in a more cosmopolitan part of Turkey. They live with Syrian families who are more established, whom they know from home or who had connections there. The families cover much of their living costs, and what they brought from home is enough for their language courses and daily expenses.

Aws wakes up and listens to the Lebanese singer Fayrouz as she makes her morning coffee. She is cagey about her social life, but she shows part of a new cellphone gallery that seems to echo her old life in Raqqa, before the Organization took over: handsome friends, endless shisha cafes. She speaks with her family by voice chat a couple of times a month over WhatsApp.

She wants to find a way to finish her university studies, and to feel normal. “But here, walking on the street, they never let you forget that you’ve had to leave your country,” she said. “Once, someone told a friend of mine, ‘If you were a real man, you wouldn’t have left your country.’ It killed me when I heard this.”

Asma is more fearful and rarely goes out within the town. She has severed contact with her family, worried that the militants will punish them for her escape. Once a week, she emails and calls a friend in Raqqa to complain that her family has spurned her. It is untrue, but she hopes that if she says it often enough, it will spread and perhaps even be heard by Islamic State intelligence, and that she will protect her family from any consequences of her departure.

After years of shame and disappointment, none of the three said they could imagine ever going back, even if the Islamic State falls. The Raqqa that was their home only exists in their memories.

“Who knows when the fighting will stop?” Asma said. “Syria will become like Palestine; every year, people think: ‘Next year, it will end. We will be free.’ And decades pass. Syria is a jungle now.”

“Even if one day things are all right, I will never return to Raqqa,” Aws said. “Too much blood has been spilled on all sides — I’m not talking just about ISIS, but among everyone.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 22, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: For ISIS Women, Fraught Choices . Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 24 November 2015, 7:23 pm and is filed under
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MPs and Malaysians are entitled to know whether Najib is going to stand up in Parliament to give full and satisfactory accounting of his role in the twin mega scandals or he will continue  “pass the buck” to his Ministers and minions?

I commend the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Chairman, Datuk Hasan Arifin for realizing his folly in unilaterally and arbitrarily announcing a ban on all PAC media conferences, in retaliation to honest media reporting of his faux pax last Wednesday that the reason  PAC would not summon Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to PAC investigations into the RM50 billion 1MDB scandal was because he needed to “cari makan”.

Hasan did a U-turn yesterday when he belatedly realized that the PAC is not a “kingdom of its own” but responsible to Parliament and answerable to the public, and it is just outrageous and completely unacceptable for Malaysia to have a PAC Chairman who has a phobia of the media.

But Hasan has not completely undone the damage he has committed to undermine public confidence in the institution of Parliament, which includes the PAC.

I had on Saturday listed five ways to wipe out the shame and stain which Parliament had suffered as a result of Hasan’s twin faux pax on “cari makan” and the outrageous ban on PAC media conferences, and Hasan had only met one of the five requirements – to rescind to ban on PAC media conferences.

The least Hasan should do is to be honest and apologise for his “cari makan” remark and table the issue of whether to summon Najib to the PAC in its investigations into the 1MDB scandal to the full meeting of PAC for a decision, and not for him to unilaterally and arbitrarily decide on behalf of the bipartisan PAC.

It the PAC decides not to summon Najib to PAC investigations into 1MDB, although Najib is the only person who knows the ins-and-outs of the 1MDB scandal (current 1MDB CEO Arul Kanda Kandasamy is only the latest highly-paid “operative” who joined  the “revolving-door” teams of 1MDB operatives in January this year and would have no personal knowledge   of what happened in 1MDB in  the past five years), then it is the entire PAC and not just Hasan who must answer for this major dereliction of parliamentary duty.

In fact, if the PAC meeting decides not to summon Najib to appear before it, then the issue of whether the UMNO/BN members of PAC have any pecuniary interests in the 1MDB issue becomes a central question.

This is because former MCA President Datuk Chua Soi Lek had admitted that the  RM2.6 billion “donation” in Najib’s personal banking accounts scandal was related to UMNO/BN expenditures in the 13th General Elections campaign, and  all UMNO/BN MPs members of the PAC should declare whether they have any pecuniary interest in the matter, and if so, what amounts each had received as UMNO/BN candidate for the 13th general election campaign from Najib’s RM2.6 billion personal banking accounts.

Arifin’s twin faux pas on “cari makan”  and media-phobia leading to ban all PAC press  conferences last Thursday helped to keep Najib’s RM2.6 billion “donation” and RM50 billion 1MDB twin mega scandals in the limelight during the ASEAN and Post-ASEAN Summits last weekend.

Najib’s twin mega scandals are issues  which every ASEAN and Asian-Pacific leader in Kuala Lumpur over the weekend would have given personal attention and received special briefing from their officials, and although not a single one of the ASEAN and Asian-Pacific leaders had even breathed a word of Najib’s twin mega scandals in public, even in the direct meeting between Najib and US President Barack Obama, there is not doubt that they had an haunting and hounding effect on the series of ASEAN and post-ASEAN Summits in the Malaysian capital.

The headline “ASEAN summit tarnished by Malaysian corruption scandal involving PM” by a commentator in an international publication aptly captures the mood and spirit of the international gathering of ASEAN and Asia-Pacific leaders in Kuala Lumpur over the weekend.

This is not something for Malaysians to be proud – as we should be very ashamed that Najib’s twin mega scandals are corrupting and contaminating every aspect of our national life.

This is the second last week of the current 25-day budget meeting and there are still no signs that Najib is ready to stand up in Parliament to clear his name and give a full and satisfactory accounting of his role in his twin mega scandals.

Is Najib going to flout all parliamentary tradition, conventions and practices to just continue to duck the issue of the twin mega scandals by refusing to personally answer the thousand-and-one questions from MPs in the entire 25-day budget meeting?

The Speaker, Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia has been publicly toying with proposals of parliamentary reforms, including the Prime Minister’s Question Day every week in  Parliament, as is common in progressive Parliaments.

How can such a proposal of a Prime Minister’s Question Day has any chance of success when it is impossible to get Najib to be in Parliament to personally answer questions about his twin major scandals?

MPs and Malaysians are entitled to know whether Najib will personally answer in the current Parliament to give full and satisfactory accounting about his role in the twin mega scandals, or he will continue to duck to pass the buck to his Ministers and minions.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 24 November 2015, 7:58 am and is filed under
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Paris Attacks Suspect Killed in Shootout Had Plotted Terror for 11 Months

By ANDREW HIGGINS and KIMIKO DE FREYTAS-TAMURA

New York Times

NOV. 19, 2015

VERVIERS, Belgium — Black smudges and faded traces of gunfire on a red brick rowhouse here in eastern Belgium mark the death foretold of Abdelhamid Abaaoud. It is the spot where, 11 months before the announcement on Thursday that he had been killed outside Paris, he began plotting an elaborate campaign of terror across Europe.

Mr. Abaaoud’s inaugural terror mission here ended in disaster for his cause and cost the lives of two of his jihadist friends — both from his old Brussels neighborhood, Molenbeek — when Belgian security forces stormed their hide-out on Jan. 15.

But Mr. Abaaoud was not there. A telephone call he made shortly before the raid in Verviers to pass on instructions to those in the hide-out, a senior Belgian counterterrorism official said, was the last trace anybody had of him until the French police found on Wednesday what turned out to be his mutilated body after an early-morning shootout just north of Paris.

His whereabouts had remained a constant source of mystery and suspected misinformation from his Islamic State handlers. That was, until the bloody raid in the Paris suburb of St.-Denis revealed the gaping holes in Europe’s system of open borders that allowed him to infiltrate France under the noses of the intelligence services across the Continent.

“Not a single piece of intelligence from a European country that he might have transited through before arriving in France was communicated to us suggesting that he might be in Europe and was heading towards France,” the French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said Thursday at a news conference.

Even as he defended the performance of the French service, Mr. Cazeneuve pleaded for more intelligence sharing, saying, “It is urgent for Europe to come together.”

Along the way, Mr. Abaaoud, 27, is believed to have organized a string of attacks that made him the most talked-about — and, in jihadist circles, feted — terrorist since Osama bin Laden.

French intelligence officials have concluded that Mr. Abaaoud was involved in at least four of six terrorist plots foiled in France since the spring, Mr. Cazeneuve said.

Before his deadly ambitions culminated in the massacres in Paris on Friday that killed 129 people, they included a thwarted attack on a Sunday-morning congregation at a Paris church and an attack on a Paris-bound train this summer that was halted when passengers overpowered the gunman.

The Paris prosecutor, François Molins, said in confirming Mr. Abaaoud’s death on Thursday that the delay in identifying the body, which was virtually pulverized, had been because it required fingerprint analysis. “We do not know at this stage whether Abaaoud blew himself up or not,” Mr. Molins’s office said.

Also killed in the raid was a woman identified by two French intelligence officials as Hasna Aitboulahcen, 26, who fired on police officers and then blew herself apart with a suicide vest.

While Mr. Abaaoud’s death ended one chapter of the intense criminal investigation that began Friday night, a manhunt continued for one of his partners in Friday’s attacks, Salah Abdeslam, 26, a French citizen and another friend from Molenbeek.

The Belgian authorities also arrested nine people in a series of raids on Thursday — seven of them as part of an investigation into Bilal Hadfi, 20, also from Molenbeek, who detonated his explosive vest outside the Stade de France in the attacks last week.

Mr. Abaaoud, a former drug dealer from the same borough of Brussels, had been on the radar of Western security forces since early 2014, when he moved to Syria, apparently via Cologne Bonn Airport in Germany, and began starring in ghoulish propaganda videos filmed by the Islamic State.

But he emerged as an immediate menace when he began making telephone calls from Greece with instructions for a terrorist plot to comrades hiding here at No. 32 Rue de la Colline, a sleepy residential street near Belgium’s border with Germany.

Belgian security listened in on his calls for days, a senior Belgian counterterrorism official involved in tracking him said.

Describing him as the “hyphen” connecting the militant group in Syria and operatives in Europe, the official said Mr. Abaaoud had been planning to carry out “a huge attack” from Verviers, a down-on-its-luck former industrial town with many immigrants and few jobs.

But in January, tipped off to his plans by the telephone surveillance, Belgian antiterrorism forces stormed the three-story home that two of Mr. Abaaoud’s friends and fellow militants had rented through an intermediary a few weeks earlier.

After a fierce gun battle that foreshadowed the one in St.-Denis that claimed Mr. Abaaoud’s life, the security force uncovered a cache of explosives and automatic weapons. Two suspected militants — both from Molenbeek, where Mr. Abaaoud grew up — were killed.

Information about his whereabouts and plans was so closely held that intelligence officials in Brussels kept even the mayor of Verviers and its police chief unaware that the Islamic State had set up a safe house in their town and was planning a major attack.

“I only heard about Abaaoud and what he was doing by reading the press,” said Marc Elsen, the town’s mayor at the time of the Jan. 15 assault on the hideaway controlled by Mr. Abaaoud.

He said he had gotten a call just 15 minutes before the raid to tell him that a “large-scale operation” by the federal police was about to take place a few hundred yards from his office. “Then I heard all the shooting,” he said. “It sounded like heavy artillery.”

By Mr. Abaaoud’s own account of what happened, published in the Islamic State magazine Dabiq, the two men killed in the raid had been “together in the safe house and had their weapons and explosive ready.”

But they were overpowered by “more than 150 soldiers from both French and Belgian special forces” and “blessed with shahadah,” or martyrdom, he told the magazine, saying that was “what they had desired for so long.”

Belgium officials said that this was a lie and that only Belgian forces had taken part.

For Mr. Abaaoud, the police operation delivered a humiliating personal blow. The Islamic State had entrusted him with beginning what one of the group’s senior leaders, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, had promised a few months earlier would be a campaign of terror in Europe.

The blow was made worse by two brothers’ success just a week earlier in attacking the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. A rival terrorist group in Yemen, affiliated with Al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for that. The Islamic State claimed a separate attack two days later on a Jewish supermarket in Paris, but that was more a “lone wolf” assault, inspired rather than directed by the group.

Jihadist groups are “always competing,” said Jelle van Buuren, an expert on jihadists at Leiden University, in the Netherlands. “Who’s the best, who’s the most violent, who’s the most successful?”

Mr. Abaaoud’s failure so soon after the successful Charlie Hebdo attacks may have galvanized him to organize and conduct an even more spectacular assault like the one in Paris last week, Mr. van Buuren added.

He described Mr. Abaaoud as “a type who is so proud of his image, the big warrior of the caliphate, that he was more than willing to take this role.”

To add to the pressure to perform, Mr. Adnani, the Islamic State’s chief propagandist and champion of its expansion into the West, issued an appeal shortly after the Verviers fiasco that cursed any Muslim “who has the ability to shed a single drop of crusader blood but does not do so, whether with an explosive device, a bullet, a knife, a car, a rock, or even a boot or a fist.”

It was the duty of all Muslims, he said, “in Europe and the disbelieving West and everywhere else, to target the crusaders in their own lands and wherever they are found.”

Mr. Adnani, following the Islamic State’s custom of casting defeats as victories, still added the failed operation in Belgium to a list of successes that included a shooting at the Canadian Parliament and the January attacks in Paris. But he put Belgium last.

If the Verviers debacle helped fire Mr. Abaaoud’s zeal, it also prompted him to improve his terrorist tradecraft. He stopped using the telephone, or at least one that could be listened in on.

As many as six of the assailants in the coordinated Islamic State terrorist assault in Paris were Europeans who had traveled to Syria.

Security officials believe that the Paris attackers used some kind of encrypted communication, though they let their guard down by tossing a cellphone into a trash can near the Bataclan theater, the site of the most deaths in Friday’s attacks. The geolocation services on the phone led investigators to one of the attackers’ hide-outs.

With the carnage on Friday, Mr. Abaaoud put the Verviers disaster behind him. A dropout, he became, in the words of the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, “one of the brains” behind the deadliest assault on Paris since World War II.

Where Mr. Abaaoud was at the time of the Verviers raid is unclear. He suggested in his interview with Dabiq that he had been somewhere in Belgium and had managed to evade detection and travel back to Syria.

But the Belgian security official, noting that much of what the Islamic State says is untrue, said Mr. Abaaoud had not been in Belgium: He had called from Greece with instructions shortly before the house was stormed. That call, the official said, was the last trace security agencies had of him.

Whether Mr. Abaaoud was in Belgium at all in this period is not known, the official said. It is easy, he added, to move around Europe without leaving a trace, especially for a citizen of Belgium, part of the 26-nation zone in Europe that allows visa-free travel.

Who knew what, and when, about Mr. Abaaoud’s travels is now a source of friction among European countries, which have opened their borders to one another but not their intelligence.

Far-right politicians, in particular, have seized on his travels to rally public support to end what was the proudest achievement of Europe’s postwar push for more integration: the so-called Schengen Area of visa-free travel.

“It seems that just about anybody can freely enter France now, with no checks, including somebody as dangerous and well known as Abdelhamid Abaaoud,” Marine Le Pen of France’s National Front said on Thursday.

“The absence of national borders is criminal madness,” Ms. Le Pen said. “The French elites have given themselves over to this surreal myth of a country without borders. Open your eyes, now!”

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 24 November 2015, 5:30 am and is filed under
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The Latest: Belt Found Where Fugitive’s Phone Was Located

New York Times/Associated Press

NOV. 23, 2015, 2:46 P.M. E.S.T.

PARIS — The latest on the deadly attacks in Paris and the heightened security in Europe (All times local):

8:40 p.m.

French police say that an explosive belt without a detonator that was found in Paris was in the same place that fugitive Saleh Abdeslam’s cell phone was localized on the day of the attacks that killed 130 people.

The belt was found Monday by a street cleaner in a pile of rubble in the southern suburb of Montrouge.

The three police officials who gave information about the belt could not be named because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation.

— By Nicolas Vaux-Montagny and Lori Hinnant.

___

7:35 p.m.

Belgium says that it will keep its alert at the highest level possible in the capital for now and will maintain its security measures to contain a possible attack at least until Monday.

Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters that the rest of the nation would stay at the second-highest level.

Even with the alert level this high, Michel said that schools and the subway system would reopen progressively as of Wednesday.

“We do our utmost to keep the situation under control,” Michel said after a meeting of the national security council.

___

7:25 p.m.

The Belgian prime minister says that the alert level in Brussels will remain at the highest level for the time being.

However, schools and the Brussels subway will begin to reopen on Wednesday, Charles Michel told a news conference Monday.

“The threat is imminent. We ask our population to stay calm,” he added.

___

7:25 p.m.

French police say that an explosive belt — a without detonator — has been found in the southern Paris suburb of Montrouge.

A police official says the belt was found by a street cleaner on Monday in a pile of rubble.

Police are currently analyzing the belt to see if it may have been used in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks that killed 130 people, an official for the judicial police said. He could not be named because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation.

— By Nicolas Vaux-Montagny

___

6:55 p.m.

Belgian authorities have charged a fourth suspect with terrorism offenses after they detained 16 people on Sunday.

The federal prosecutor said in a statement that the suspect, who was not identified, was charged with “participation in the activities of a terrorist group and a terrorist attack,” referring to the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris.

Authorities had charged three others with similar offenses last week.

The other 15 people detained on Sunday evening were released.

___

6:05 p.m.

The French Defense Ministry says it has launched its first airstrikes from the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, bombing Islamic State targets in the Iraqi cities of Ramadi and Mosul.

The ministry said that four Rafal fighter jets were sent from the carrier on Monday afternoon, with two each flying over each city.

President Francois Hollande said on Monday that “we’re going to choose sites that do the most damage possible.”

France has already carried out strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria.

___

5:30 p.m.

U2 will play two shows in Paris next month to make up for concerts postponed after the Nov. 13 attacks in the city.

Frontman Bono promised Monday that the band would “put on our best for Paris.”

He said in Dublin that the gunmen and bombers who killed 130 people “took lives, took music, took peace of mind — but they couldn’t steal the spirit of that city. It’s a spirit our band knows well and will try to serve when we return for the postponed shows.”

U2 had been due to play Paris Nov. 14 and 15. The Irish rockers will now play two gigs at the city’s AccorHotels Arena on Dec. 6 and 7.

Tickets for the canceled shows will be valid for the rescheduled dates, and the Dec. 7 show is due to be broadcast on HBO.

___

5:20 p.m.

Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano says he has ordered the expulsion of four Moroccan men who have been investigated for banding together “for the purpose of terrorism,” including one who spread manuals with know-how about carrying out attacks and about combat training.

In a statement Monday, Alfano described all for as being committed to “the spread of violent extremism.”

Alfano said the four were under investigation for “association for the purpose of terrorism, including international.” He said they were being expelled for reasons of state security.

The four were living near Bologna, and the Italian news agency ANSA said they had been under investigation for a few years.

___

3:10 p.m.

The International Tennis Federation says the Davis Cup final is set to go ahead as planned in Ghent this weekend with increased security measures because of the terror alert in Belgium.

Belgium hosts Britain in the three-day final, starting Friday. Ghent is about 35 miles (56 kilometers) from Brussels, which is on the highest state of alert because of what the Belgian government calls a “serious and imminent” threat.

In a statement, the ITF says it is “taking every necessary step to ensure the safety” of those at the final, implementing additional security measures including a ban on fans carrying bags.

The federation says organizers “in consultation with the relevant officials and our risk assessment and security advisers, are closely monitoring the situation in Belgium and specifically in Ghent.”

___

1:05 p.m.

Belgian authorities say five more raids in Brussels and eastern Liege have yielded five more detentions.

In all, 21 people have been taken into custody since Sunday while the capital remains under its highest alert level.

The federal prosecutor said in a statement that a BMW sighting near Liege which had rumored to contain Paris fugitive Salah Abdeslam had no links with the ongoing investigation.

___

12:35 p.m.

The French government says it wants to tighten the rules on the use of prepaid bank cards as part of a crackdown on extremist financing.

Finance Minister Michel Sapin says the aim is to restrict the ability of extremists to use such cards for anonymous money transfers.

He says Europe-wide rules are needed to ensure the user’s identity is checked when they apply for and use the cards.

Sapin said Monday that those who carried out the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris used prepaid cards. He didn’t elaborate.

Among other measures, Sapin also outlined a proposal to expand the authorities’ power to freeze the assets of suspects to include real estate and vehicles.

___

11:30 a.m.

NATO, the world’s biggest military alliance, has adjusted operations at its headquarters in northeastern Brussels in light of the heightened terror alert proclaimed by Belgian authorities.

A NATO official, who was not authorized to make public statements and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Monday some alliance staff members have been asked to work from home, and that external visits and visiting groups scheduled for the day had been canceled.

On Saturday, after Belgian authorities raised the alert level in the Brussels region to the maximum 4 rating, NATO staff members were advised to stay away from public transport and gatherings, the official said. The official said NATO had also raised its own internal alert level, but that “NATO headquarters is working.”

“We remain vigilant and are taking all necessary measures to ensure the security of our staff and premises,” the official said.

—By John-Thor Dahlburg

___

10:20 p.m.

A closely watched survey has found that the attacks in Paris that killed 130 people are having an immediate negative effect on French businesses.

Financial information company Markit says some service providers have reported that the attacks had “negatively impacted on activity.”

As a result, Markit says its purchasing managers’ index for France — a broad gauge of business activity — fell to a 3-month low in November of 51.3 from 52.6 the previous month. The drop takes the French economy nearer the 50 threshold separating expansion and contraction.

Jack Kennedy, senior economist at Markit, says the longer-term economic impact of the attacks remains “uncertain.”

The French performance contrasts with that of the 19-country eurozone, which according to Markit is expanding at the highest rate in four and a half years.

___

10:05 a.m.

The Belgian capital Brussels has entered its third day of lockdown, with schools and underground transport shut and more than 1,000 security personnel deployed across the country.

Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon said on Monday that “investigations will continue until we’ve fixed this problem.”

He told Belgium’s RTL broadcaster that Paris attacks fugitive Salah Abdeslam “must have a lot of support on our territory. That’s why all these searches being conducted at the moment are important.”

Security was extra tight in the European quarter of Brussels, especially around the EU institutions where ministerial meetings were going ahead as planned.

Brussels remains at maximum alert over information about an “imminent threat,” possibly a series of coordinated attacks at different locations similar to those in Paris on Nov. 13.

___

10:00 a.m.

Streets of central Brussels were mostly deserted Monday morning, save for a few random buses and cars — and some army trucks unloading soldiers. Commuters said they understood Belgian authorities’ decision to keep the terror alert at its highest level for a third day running, but said the results gave the capital city an uneasy feeling.

“It feels a bit like a dead city,” said Cedric Verschooten, a government worker who lives in Flanders and was in Brussels for meetings. Verschooten stopped to take a selfie in the empty streets, which he said would normally be teeming with traffic.

Brussels resident Ligea Salazar said she was very afraid there could be a Paris-style attack on Brussels. Despite the increased police and military presence, she wasn’t reassured.

“I don’t think they really know what’s going on,” she said. “They released too many people after arresting them.” Salazar said she had to walk to work today because the subways weren’t running — and was late as a result. “I like to walk but it is nice to have the choice to take the Metro.”

___

9:55 a.m.

British Prime Minister David Cameron says he will seek parliamentary approval this week for Britain to join U.S.-led airstrikes against Islamic State extremists in Syria.

Cameron also offered the use of a British air base in Cyprus for anti-IS actions in Syria.

Speaking in Paris on Monday after meeting French President Francois Hollande, Cameron said the two leaders agreed to increase counterterrorism cooperation after the attacks. He called for greater European Union-wide efforts to share intelligence to stop extremists.

___

9:20 a.m.

French President Francois Hollande and British Prime Minister David Cameron have visited the Bataclan concert venue in central Paris, which saw the worst carnage of the attacks that killed 130 people.

Hollande and Cameron were meeting Monday in Paris as the French leader presses for a stronger international coalition against Islamic State. He is headed to Washington and Moscow later in the week.

The decision to head to the Bataclan was not announced in advance and came amid tight security in both Paris and Brussels, home to many of the men identified as suspects in the Nov. 13 attack.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 24 November 2015, 5:07 am and is filed under
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Azalina’s motion against Nurul a gross abuse of parliamentary majority and will open the floodgates for majoritarian oppression of the minority in Parliament which should not have  been allowed by the  Speaker in the first place

It is shocking and outrageous that a motion in the name of the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Azalina Othman Said against the PKR MP for Lembah Pantai Nurul Izzah Anwar has appeared in today’s Dewan Rakyat Order Paper, clearly in violation of Standing Order 27 (3) which states:

“Except as provided in Standing Order 43 and in paragraph (5) of Standing Order 86 and 26(1), not less than fourteen days’ notice of any motion shall be given unless it is in the name of a Minister, in which case seven days’ notice or, if Tuan Yang di-Pertua is satisfied upon representation to him by a Minister that the public interest requires that a motion should be debated as soon as possible, one day’s notice shall be sufficient.”

Azalina’s motion clearly does not have the requisite seven days’ notice stipulated for motions in the name of a Minister.

Is the  Speaker, Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia satisfied upon Azalina’s representation that one day’s notice is sufficient, as  “public interest” requires that the motion should be debated as soon as possible?

What could be  such “public interest” when Azalina’s motion against Nurul is most spiteful and a gross abuse of parliamentary majority which will open the floodgates of majoritarian oppression of the minority in Parliament which should not have been allowed by the Speaker in the first place.

There are two major objections to such a motion:

Firstly, although couched in the form of a reference of Nurul to the Committee of Privileges, the motion denies freedom of inquiry and finding by the Committee of Privileges as it constitutes a conviction that Nurul is guilty of the charges made by Azalina.

Secondly, it is an oppressive and dangerous precedent to condemn an MP for violating the oath of office as a Member of Parliament “to bear true faith and allegiance to Malaysia” and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” on the flimsiest of grounds, not based on the facts of the case but on whether a majority vote in Parliament could be summoned in favour of the motion.

Would Azalina agree to amend the motion to also refer the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak to the Parliamentary Rights and Privileges Committee as Najib was also in  the centre of a similar controversy last month, when  a photograph appeared on the social media  of Najib  shaking hands with the Jewish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations?

As Nurul’s photographed meeting with Jacel Kiram was as innocent as the photographed handshake between Najib and the Israeli Prime Minister, it is time for the issue to be put to rest.

There is no reason or justification to drag Parliament down to a new  gutter level in the politicking over the issue.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 25 November 2015, 2:15 pm and is filed under
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Has Hishammuddin’s warning that UMNO is suffering from denial syndrome and  losing trust come too late?

UMNO Vice President Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said today that UMNO cannot continue with it denial syndrome as it is now facing an erosion of trust and must find ways to stay relevant.

He said that UMNO must “clearly, courageously and sincerely” admit that UMNO is facing a test of trust as the new generation of Malays do not feel the sentimental connection with the party and they no longer feel like UMNO is addressing issues that concerned them.

Has Hishammuddin’s realization and warning that UMNO is suffering from denial syndrome and losing trust come too late?

This is because UMNO is not only losing the trust of Malaysians and  the Malays population but also the three million UMNO members and 21,000 UMNO branches – and Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s RM2.6 billion “donation” and the RM50 billion 1MDB twin mega scandals are the major “lightning rods” of such rampant dissatisfaction and  discontent not only among Malaysians and Malays as a whole, but even among the three million UMNO members and 21,000 UMNO branches.

The new Public Accounts Committee Chairman, Datuk Hasan Arifin has admitted that he has to “cari makan” as the reason why the Public Accounts Committee is not calling Najib to the PAC investigations into 1MDB although he is the real “star witness” in any meaningful inquiry into 1MDB.

Hasan’s reason may find resonance among the UMNO’s 300 chieftains who dominate the UMNO Supreme Council and the various UMNO divisional leaderships, but this must be a totally unacceptable reason not only among Malaysians, the Malay population but also the three million UMNO members and the 21,000 UMNO branches.

This is why what I had described as the battle of UMNO’s 300 chieftains vs the three million UMNO members is shaping up as a major political development in the country – not only from  now to the UMNO General Assembly on Dec. 8 – 12, but from the UMNO General Assembly to the 14th General Election which must be held in 30 months’ time in 2018.

This is the reason why the  UMNO Supreme Council meeting today is followed with such keen interest not only by the three million UMNO members and the Malay population but also the 30 million Malaysians.

However, there are no signs that the top UMNO leadership is coming out of their “denial syndrome” any time soon, or the UMNO Supreme Council would not have broken with tradition by barring the UMNO Deputy President, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin from addressing the UMNO Wanita, Youth and Puteri Assemblies on the eve of the UMNO General Assembly.

I was suspended from Parliament for six months because I do not want to be a “cari makan” Member of Parliament and want to raise issues which are close to the hearts of all Malaysians, including the three million UMNO members.

The question, “Mana RM2.6 billion?” is being asked by all Malaysians, regardless of race, religion, region or even party politics – for I have no doubt that Najib’s two mega scandals are not only vexing ordinary Malaysians but also the three million UMNO members!

Even Najib’s twin mega scandals had haunted and hounded the Prime Minister’s major international events – the ASEAN and Post-ASEAN Summits in Kuala Lumpur last weekend.

I have no doubt that Najib’s twin mega scandals are issues  which featured prominently to every ASEAN and Asian-Pacific leader who was in  Kuala Lumpur over the weekend, receiving their personal attention and topping the special briefing from their officials, although not a single one of the ASEAN and Asian-Pacific leaders would have committed the diplomatic faux pax of breathing a word of Najib’s twin mega scandals in public.

This was why one commentator wrote a round-up of the ASEAN Summit with the heading:  “ASEAN summit tarnished by Malaysian corruption scandal involving PM”.

After United States President Barack Obama’s meeting with Najib, Obama

said he had raised the importance of transparency, accountability and rooting out  corruption with Najib, though he would not comment on investigations against Najib as he  would not touch on ongoing probes even on the US soil.

It is most demeaning and degrading for the Malaysian Prime Minister to be “lectured” by the US President on the importance of transparency, accountability and rooting out corruption – something Obama would never dream of doing in his meetings with the Prime Ministers of Japan or Singapore for instance.

This is because the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe or Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong could simply shut up Obama by pointing out that in the 2014 Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index (CPI), Japan is ranked No. 15 and Singapore No. 7, while United States is placed lower at No. 17.

Najib could not shut Obama up, not only because Malaysia’s is ranked No. 50 as compared to the United States No. 17  in the 2014 TI CPI, but also because of the New York Times revelation that Najib is being probed by FBI under the US Department of Justice Kleptocracy Assets Recovery Initiative 2010 in connection with  his twin mega scandals.

The  30 million Malaysians, and in particular  the three million UMNO members and 21,000 UMNO branches, are entitled to ask whether Hishammuddin is being serious in his warning that UMNO is facing a crisis of trust deficit, when Najib continues to keep mum on the twin mega scandals and whether he as Prime Minister  is being probed by US FBI as a kleptocrat.

Will Najib break his silence on the RM2.6 billion “donation” and RM50 billion 1MDB twin mega scandals before the end of the current 25-day meeting of Parliament on Dec. 3 or will he wait until the UMNO General Assembly to allow for a full debate on the twin mega scandals?

(Speech at the Pakatan Harapan ceramah at Lembah Jaya, Ampang on Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2015 at 10 pm)

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 25 November 2015, 8:24 am and is filed under
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