RM55 billion 1MDB scandal is so humongous that if divided among 42,837 voters in Sungai Besar, every voter would get  RM1.3 million!

Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak has achieved  world-class notice for Malaysia which none of the five previous Prime Ministers, including his father Tun Razak, had ever done in five decades  – international notoriety as one of world’s top countries infamous for global corruption.

Wherever one goes in the world, Malaysia is now equated with the notorious and infamous RM55 billion 1MDB scandal – which has been described last week by the international financial news agency, Bloomberg, as one of the “world’s biggest financial scandals”.

Everybody knows that the RM55 billion 1MDB scandal is huge, but how huge is it?

I myself cannot fully envisage how astronomical is RM55 billion and I believe that 99% of Malaysians cannot imagine how huge is RM55 billion!

How many zeroes do we have in our bank accounts?  RM100 is two zeroes, RM1,000 is three zeroes, RM10,000 is four zeroes and RM100,000 is five zeroes.

The overwhelming majority of Malaysians will not even have five zeroes in their bank accounts, even if they have property or assets worth five zeroes.

Having bank accounts of more than  six zeroes (millionaires) will be beyond the reach of ordinary Malaysians, but RM55 billion or RM55,000,000,000 is to have 10 zeroes – a completely unthinkable sum of money.

Hidden in the RM55 billion 1MDB scandal is Najib’s RM4.2 billion “donation” scandal, and I don’t think there is a single leader in the democratic world that believes in democracy,  good governance, accountability and transparency who has huge sums of money involving nine zeroes deposited into his private banking accounts and refusing to account for them!

The RM55 billion 1MDB scandal is so humongous that if divided among 42,837 voters in Sungai Besar, every voter would get  RM1.3 million!

Najib knows that the 1MDB scandal is his  Achilles’ heel, which is why he is abusing and misusing his powers to sweep the issue under the carpet  in the country, including sacking the Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, Senior UMNO Minister for Rural and Regional Development, Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal, the Attorney-General Tan Sri Gani Patail in his crackdown against critics and opponents, which include immediate transfers for government servants, shutdown of independent media, arrests and prosecution of critics under a variety of repressive laws, whether Sedition Act, Penal Code, Printing Presses and Publications Act or Multimedia Communications Act.

This is also why Najib had hijacked the Sarawak general election so that he could hail the landslide victory of Barisan Nasional in Sarawak on May 7 as his personal victory – although everybody knows that it was more the “Adenan Satem effect” than the “Najib effect” which resulted in  Sarawak Barisan Nasional winning 72 out of the 82 State Assembly seats in Sarawak.

But Najib’s boast and euphoria about getting a powerful vote of confidence from the voters of Sarawak was very short-lived, as it could only last 17 days – as on May 24, he  was brought back to the reality of the 1MDB scandal when two foreign countries, Switzerland and Singapore, closed down banks and initiated criminal proceedings against bankers implicated in the embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption offences connected with the 1MDB scandal.

Singapore and Switzerland are only among at least half a dozen countries which have launched investigations into embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption involving the Malaysian national sovereign fund, 1MDB, in their respective jurisdictions as more financial institutions and individuals are ensnared in the 1MDB international  web of labyrinthine ownership structure of “shell-companies” to hide the real identity of the beneficial owners – all of which will be exposed to the glare of publicity when prosecutions and punitive actions are taken by the respective regulatory agencies in the weeks and months to come.

With the impending Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar parliamentary by-elections next month, Najib’s strategists are working overtime to ensure that the 1MDB global corruption scandal would not feature prominently in the two by-elections, which explains for the unprecedented action by the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said in Parliament on Thursday to move a Ministerial motion to give priority to PAS President, Datuk Seri Hadi Awang’s hudud private member’s bill motion.

We must not fall into this Najib-Hadi political trap, as 1MDB global scandal must be one of the foremost issues in the two by-elections, as Malaysians have a right to expect the Prime Minister to use the two by-elections to give full and satisfactory explanation about the RM55 billion 1MDB global scandal and not be distracted by the the Najib-Hadi gambit.

(Speech at the Amanah ceramah in Sungai Nibong, Sekinchan on Sunday, 29th May 2016 at 10 pm)

                This entry was posted on Monday, 30 May 2016, 12:18 pm and is filed under
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1MDB scandal taking toll on Malaysia stock market as foreigners sell

Bloomberg

31st May 2016

KUALA LUMPUR/SINGAPORE (BLOOMBERG) – One of the worst global financial scandals is taking its toll on the world’s longest bull market run.

Deepening concerns over 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), the embattled state investment fund at the center of probes from Switzerland to Singapore, has spurred the biggest outflow of foreign funds in eight months. Malaysia’s benchmark stock index has erased most of its gains after climbing to this year’s high in April.

The prolonged impact of 1MDB is prompting investors to seek out other markets in Southeast Asia, according to Baring Asset Management.

“People are probably getting impatient as they continue to hear noises about 1MDB,” Lim Soo Hai, a Hong Kong-based money manager at Baring Asset, which oversees about US$41 billion, said by phone. “We’re hesitant to invest in Malaysia as we’re not seeing a lot of interesting stocks that we can find.”

The exodus of international funds is a dramatic reversal from the first quarter of the year when money managers piled in at the fastest pace in Southeast Asia, propelling the stock index to an eight-month high. The FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index almost doubled from its 2008 lows without succumbing to a 20 per cent drop, making it the longest bull-market worldwide.

After gaining 7.9 per cent from this year’s low in January, the stock index has retreated almost 6 per cent from the April peak. That’s pushed Malaysia’s stock index far behind in the rally by its emerging peers in Southeast Asia even as lower valuations have created some bargains.

“We’re still not invested in Malaysia,” said Raymond Kong, Singapore-based fund manager at One Asia Investment Partners, which oversees US$2.5 billion of assets. “The other Asean markets have better growth prospects and better fundamentals. The 1MDB issue is definitely keeping issues at bay, away from Malaysia.”

For the year, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index has fallen 3.7 per cent, compared with a 4.3 per cent gain in the MSCI South East Asia Index. Thailand’s SET Index has rallied 11 per cent in 2016, Indonesia 5.3 per cent, Philippines 7.4 per cent and Vietnam 6 per cent. The Malaysian gauge is down 14 per cent from its record in 2014.

The scandal surrounding 1MDB deepened last week after Singapore shut down BSI’s unit in the city-state as Swiss authorities began criminal proceedings against the Swiss bank related to money flows from the embattled Malaysian investment fund.

The probes and move against BSI’s Singapore unit are part of global investigations surrounding 1MDB into alleged money laundering and embezzlement. A Malaysian parliamentary committee identified at least US$4.2 billion of irregular transactions by the state fund, and recommended the advisory board headed by Prime Minister Najib Razak be disbanded. Both 1MDB and Najib have consistently denied wrongdoing.

Not all money managers are bearish, especially with the measure priced near the cheapestlevel relative to global equities since the 2008 global financial crisis.

“This is a healthy correction and might be the best opportunity out there to position for the next leg up,” said Tan Ming Han, Kuala Lumpur-based senior investment manager of Amundi Malaysia, whose KAF Vision Fund beat 95 per cent of peers with a return of 14 per cent over three years.

“The current correction is similar to a seasonal downpour resulting from economic, political and global macro noises.”  No-Brainer Chen Fan Fai, Kuala Lumpur-based chief investment officer of Eastspring Investments Bhd, said he’s been buying some “no-brainer” shares such as those with strong cash flow, real estate investment trusts, consumer stocks and infrastructure companies.

“In this tough market, we want to look at companies whose balance sheets are strong and their underlying operations are still generating cash flow,” Mr Chen said. “The only way to outperform the market is through stock-picking. In the long term, good fundamentals would prevail. The problem with short term is that sometimes markets would not behave correctly.”

The drop in Malaysian stocks was also aggravated by a cut in company share weightings by MSCI. Some of the largest shares from CIMB Group Holdings, Malayan Banking to Petronas Chemicals Group saw MSCI reducing their weightings in its indexes, prompting investors to rebalance their portfolios in line with the changes.

Foreign investors sold a net RM3.9 billion of Malaysian shares in the five weeks from the end of April, reducing inflows so far this year to RM2.48 billion, according to MIDF Amanah Investment Bank, citing stock exchange data. That compares with outflows of RM19.5 billion last year and RM6.9 billion in 2014.

The equity outflows also come as Malaysia’s economy is forecast to expand at the slowest pace in seven years in 2016, hit by a two-year slump in energy prices.

“Malaysia has been affected by the weak oil prices. We are in a very lackluster growth environment,” said Baring Asset’s Lim. “These noises we hear on the political front haven’t been very helpful in terms of investor confidence.”

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 31 May 2016, 8:20 am and is filed under
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Call on Najib to relinquish the portfolio as Finance Minister as one step to deal with the headwinds undermining Malaysia’s economy and competitiveness  caused by the  1MDB scandal

The adverse impacts of RM55 billion 1MDB global scandal are beginning to bite on the country’s long-term competitiveness prospects.

The ebullient statement by the Minister for International Trade and Industry, Datuk Mustapha Mohamad that Malaysia maintained its top 20 position among 61 global economies in World Competiveness Year (WCY) 2016 cannot hide the fact that Malaysia’s WCY ranking is the worst in the seven-year premiership of Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

Malaysia’s WCY rankings in the past seven years under Najib’s premiership, falling from the 10th ranking in 2010 to the present  19th position,  were:

2010 –  10

2011 – 16

2012 – 14

2013 –  15

2014 – 12

2015 – 14

2016 – 19

When Malaysia was ranked No. 12 in the WCY 2014, Mustapha gushed and said that the ranking reflected the progress of the Government Transformation Programme and Economic Transformation Programme and that the government expected a much better performance in the annual WCR ranking in the “next three to five years as more of its initiatives begin to bear fruit”.

This unfortunately has not come to pass, as Malaysia has dropped seven positions since two years ago, and looks to perform even worse with the global crackdown on the 1MDB global financial scandal, which started in Singapore and Switzerland last Tuesday, with more actions likely in other countries which are also conducting investigations into multi-billion ringgit embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption offences related to Malaysia’s sovereign fund.

For the second time in a week, international news agency, Bloomberg,  described the 1MDB financial scandal as “one of the worst global financial scandals” which is “taking its toll on the world’s longest bull market run”.

Today’s Bloomberg report  said the 1MDB scandal has  “spurred the biggest outflow of foreign funds in eight months” as “Malaysia’s benchmark stock index has erased most of its gains after climbing to this year’s high in April”.

It quoted money managers as saying that the prolonged impact of 1MDB is prompting investors to seek out other markets in South-East Asia.

It is time that the Malaysian Government and Cabinet boldly address the headwinds undermining Malaysia’s economy and competitiveness caused by the 1MDB global scandal – and one of the  steps is for Najib to relinquish the portfolio of Finance Minister.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 31 May 2016, 5:56 pm and is filed under
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Expert: No ‘Islamic state’ in Quran

Sheith Khidhir Bin Abu Bakar | May 30, 2016

Free Malaysia Today

PETALING JAYA: There is no such thing as an Islamic state and no obligation to create one, according to Law Professor Abdullah Ahmed An-Na’im from Emory University, Atlanta, United States.

Speaking at a lecture entitled “Islam and the Secular State” at the Sunway University here today, Ahmed said that the term “Islamic state” was not mentioned in the Quran or the sunnah (sayings and actions of Prophet Muhammad), nor was it known in any of the languages until the 20th century.

“We do not have this obligation in the Quran or sunnah,” he said. “Islam does not have a prescribed order for a political state.”

In fact, he added, an Islamic state was an “impossibility” as there was no criteria to measure what an Islamic state was.

There were differing views in classic Islamic knowledge on jurisprudence and there was no independent authority that could verify an Islamic state.

“Arabia and Iran both claim to be Islamic states, but to each of them they are heretics,” he quipped.

When asked to comment on Malaysia’s Shariah Index, Ahmed bluntly said that there was no such thing as a Shariah Index.

“Ask them where does it come from and who designed it. There is no Shariah Index.”

(The Shariah Index was set up by various bourses to cater to the ever increasing number of Islamic investors in businesses across the world. The aim is to enable the Islamic financial world to invest in shariah-friendly businesses across the world.)

On hudud, Ahmed said that the term “hudud” was also never mentioned in the Quran or Hadith.

“The Quran and the Hadith provide for crime and punishments, but the definition of the crime is not mentioned in the Quran and is instead created by jurists.

“For example, the Quran says that the punishment for theft is to cut off the hands but it never defines what theft is.

“The definitions are created by the jurists and sometimes they are problematic.

“Some jurists say that stealing public property is not theft as all have a claim to public property.

“But that means that you can siphon millions of public funds into your bank account, but if you take 10 ringgit from someone’s pocket, then you’ll have your hands cut off.”

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 31 May 2016, 7:01 am and is filed under
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Liow Tiong Tai and Mah Siew Keong  should stop being  pawns of UMNO-PAS political plot to polarize Malaysians into Muslims and non-Muslims and make “hudud” the primary issue  in the two upcoming  Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections

Although MCA president Liow Tiong Lai and Gerakan president Mah Siew Keong have threatened to resign from the Cabinet if PAS President, Hadi Awang’s  hudud bill is passed in Parliament, both of them  made it very clear that MCA and Gerakan would remain in the Barisan Nasional coalition.

It is quite unfathomable why two highly-educated persons like Liow and Mah, who have risen to become Cabinet Ministers in the land cannot see the gross contradiction in their positions.

Be that as it may, Liow and Mah should stop being pawns of a deep UMNO-PAS political plot to polarize Malaysians into Muslims and non-Muslims and make “hudud” the primary issue in the two upcoming Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections next month.

There is clearly a concerted attempt to create a “hothouse” political atmosphere and an artificial  “national crisis” in the country by polarizing Malaysians into Muslims and non-Muslims over the “hudud” issue, after the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said, moved an unprecedented Ministerial motion in Parliament after lunch last Thursday to give priority to Hadi’s private member’s bill motion.

Why did Liow and Mah ignore the fact that Azalina’s Ministerial motion  violated the Cabinet decision the previous week and went against the consensus of all Barisan Nasional leaders reached in March 2015 if the Azalina’s action is not part of a political plot to make  “hudud” the primary issue in the two by-elections in Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar, overshadowing all other national issues, in particular the RM55 billion 1MDB global financial scandal.

This a dangerous and irresponsible political game as the real issues in the two by-elections are  not “hudud” but the 1MDB global financial scandal, the premiership of Datuk Seri Najib Razak who has lost the moral  compass of being able to distinguish between right from wrong, GST and a whole host of issues which have seen the country going backwards instead of forward as a united, harmonious, competitive, progressive and democratic country.

Liow and Mah should not continue to be pawns of the UMNO-PAS political plot to create an artificial national crisis over Hadi’s hudud bill, when the problem created by Azalina’s unprecedented Ministerial motion in Parliament last Thursday could be easily resolved.

All that Liow and Mah need to do is to requisition a Barisan Nasional Supreme Council meeting to repudiate Azalina’s Ministerial motion in Parliament as doubly unacceptable, firstly violating the Cabinet decision the previous week; and secondly, violating the consensus of Barisan Nasional leaders in March 2015.

With such a BN Supreme Council emergency meeting to reiterate the Barisan Nasional consensus of March 2015, the problem created by Azalina in Parliament last Thursday would be resolved immediately and fully, and there would be no need to create an artificial national crisis polarizing Malaysians into Muslims and non-Muslims, purportedly over the “hudud” issue till the end of the year, and there would be no need for the rigmarole and “drama”  of empty  threats to resign as Ministers if the “hudud” bill is passed at the end of the year.

My open invitation to Liow on my preparedness to meet him stands, as I really want to know whether it is true that the Malaysian Prime Minister never told him beforehand about the Ministerial motion by Azalina  last Thursday to give priority to Hadi’s hudud motion.

As I had said, if  Najib had told him beforehand about Azalina’s Ministerial motion, Liow should explain what he had done to stop Azalina from proceeding with the Ministerial motion, which doubly violated the Cabinet decision the previous week and the Barisan Nasional  consensus in March last year.

Liow must clarify the political mystery of his ignorance of Azalina’s Ministerial motion as a day earlier last Wednesday, a Minister and head of a Barisan Nasional component party from Sabah had written an urgent letter to Najib expressing the opposition of the MPs of his party to any proposal to prioritise Hadi’s hudud  motion.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 31 May 2016, 1:15 pm and is filed under
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A Colloquium on the RM55 billion 1MDB scandal  should be held separately  in Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar for Malaysians to understand how Malaysia had been catapulted to be among the world’s top nations notorious for global corruption

If  Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak is granted the proverbial “three wishes”, one of them will be to wish that the RM55 billion 1MDB global  scandal which includes his RM4.2 billion “donation” scandal would be buried long and deep and would not continue to hound and haunt him almost on a daily basis.

There is hardly a day where there is no  news on one aspect or other on the 1MDB scandal.

Yesterday for instance, there were at least three news items on the 1MDB scandal, starting early in the morning with the Bloomberg report that “1MDB scandal taking toll on Malaysian stock market as foreigners sell”, followed up by the Finance Ministry announcement of the replacement of the 1MDB Board of Directors to pave the way for the dissolution of the national sovereign fund and thirdly, the opening of the Official Secrets Act  trial of the PKR MP for Pandan, Rafizi Ramli.

The triple items served as yesterday’s daily reminder to Malaysians that despite all Najib’s greatest efforts to sweep the issue under the carpet, the 1MDB scandal, which has catapulted Malaysia to the top of the world as one of the leading nations notorious for global corruption, will not go away – whether inside the country or in the world as illustrated by the recent world-wide crackdowns against IMDB embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption in Singapore and Switzerland.

The three news items raised many  questions about the 1MDB global financial scandal, for instance:

•	The adverse effects on the Malaysian economy and competitiveness as reflected by Malaysia falling to the  worst ranking in the seven-year Najib premiership in the  World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) 2016, when Malaysia is ranked No 19 when in 2010 Malaysia was ranked in tenth position;

•	The failure of the authorities to fully implement the recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) recommendations on 1MDB, especially calling for investigations into the founding managing director and CEO of 1MDB Shahrol Azral Ibrahim Halmi for responsibility for the RM55 billion scandal.

•	The undermining of doctrine of separation of powers and continued subordination of Parliament to Executive control as the Auditor-General final report on 1MDB had not been tabled in Parliament or made public despite clear-cut promises by the PAC Chairman Datuk Hasan Arifin and the Najib government that the Auditor-General’s Report would be made public in Parliament.

•	The abuse and misuse of Offficial Secrets Act to cover up serious breaches of criminal trust and malpractices in government.

Recently, Bank Negara Malaysia has a new governor, Datuk Mohammad Ibrahim who first action raised the question whether Malaysia has a central bank governor who like, the Prime Minister, has lost the moral compass of able to distinguish right from wrong, and to  discern the proper priorities of his duties and responsibilities.

I still cannot get over the very disturbing image of the new Bank Negara Governor’s first important act was to  lodge a police report against Wall Street Journal (WSJ) under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) for revealing a letter from Bank Negara to the PAC Chairman Hasan Arifin stating that the beneficial owner of Good Star Limited, the “genesis” of the 1MDB global scandal, was Penang billionaire Jho Low.

As if the new Bank Negara governor regarded lodging a police report against WSJ as his most important first job, when it should be how to bring a proper  closure to the RM55 billion 1MDB scandal with the global crackdown by other monetary authorities against 1MDB embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption offences!

I am still waiting for Mohammad’s answer the questions:

(1)  Why has Bank Negara closed its case against 1MDB, at a time when global monetary watch-dogs as in Singapore and Switzerland  have just started to take action against money-laundering and other corruption offences related to 1MDB?

(2) Where is Bank Negara’s much touted transparency and accountability when it refuses to reveal what was the compound fine which had been paid in full by 1MDB for failing to comply with Bank Negara directives issued under the Financial Services Act 2013 which, among others, include a requirement for 1MDB to repatriate US$1.8 billion (about RM7.76 billion) of its funds remitted abroad following the revocation of the three permissions granted by Bank Negara to 1MDB in 2009, 2010 and 2011?

(3) Why is Bank Negara keeping its compound fines on 1MDB secret, when everybody knows that the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) had imposed a fine of S$13.3 million on the Singapore branch of BSI  for 41 breaches of its requirements while the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) had ordered the “disgorgement” of “illegally generated profits” of US$95.6 million from BSI, apart from the separate orders of the Singapore and Swiss financial authorities for the closure of the Singapore branch of  BSI and the 143-year-old mother bank in Switzerland?

(4) Has Bank Negara given  a new deadline for 1MDB to repatriate RM7.76 billion of its funds remitted abroad or does the payment of the compound fine by 1MDB means that 1MDB need not bring back  RM7.76 billion of its funds remitted illegally abroad?

It is no exaggeration to say that never before in the nation’s 59-year history since Merdeka in 1957 has the country been so continuously and relentlessly bombarded by the variegated developments and angles of the 1MDB scandal, on a daily basis, and there are no signs that such bombardment will end any time soon.

It is also no exaggeration to say that no single financial scandal in the nation’s history had been  so complex and complicated for the layman to fully understand as the 1MDB global financial scandal.

A Colloquium on the RM55 billion 1MDB scandal  should be held separately  in Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar, where by-elections will be held, for Malaysians to understand all the complexity of the 1MDB scandal and how Malaysia had been catapulted to be among the world’s top nations notorious for global corruption.

Let all Malaysians who are concerned and have views on the 1MDB global financial scandal gather together at these two 1MDB Colloquiums to collectively explore as to what ordinary Malaysians should do about the nation’s first global financial scandal, which has refused to be swept under the carpet by Najib.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 1 June 2016, 9:09 am and is filed under
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If Liow and Mah do not know how to requisition for an emergency Barisan Nasional Supreme Council meeting to repudiate Azalina’s Ministerial motion in Parliament and  uphold Barisan Nasional consensus of March 2015, I am prepared to show them how

I am most surprised that apart from making empty and meaningless threats of resigning as Ministers, both the MCA President Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai and the Gerakan President Datuk Seri Mak Siew Keong had done nothing to undo the unilateral and arbitrary Ministerial motion by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Azalina Said Othman to fast-track the Hadi hudud bill in Parliament last Thursday.

It is now almost a whole week since Azalina stood up in Parliament to fast-track Hadi’s hudud bill, and Liow and Mak should explain why none of them is  requisitioning for an emergency  Barisan Nasional Supreme Council meeting to uphold the consensus reached by all the Barisan Nasional leaders in March 2015 on this issue and to repudiate Azalina’s Ministerial motion as not representing the collective decision of the Barisan Nasional Cabinet?

Or is there an unwritten rule somewhere which is unknown outside the Barisan Nasional that forbids any Barisan Nasional component party from requisitioning for an emergency Barisan Nasional Supreme Council meeting to undo what happened in Parliament last Thursday?

In fact, I would believe that if Liow or Mah or both take the initiative to get the support of the other Barisan Nasional component parties, they should have no problem in getting three-quarters of the 14 BN component parties from supporting the requisition for an emergency meeting of the Barisan Nasional Supreme Council to undo Azalina’s unilateral and arbitrary Ministerial motion  last Thursday.

So why are Liow and Mah impotent, unable to requisition for an emergency meeting of the Barisan Nasional Supreme Council?

If Liow and Mah do not know how to requisition for an emergency Barisan Nasional Supreme Council meeting to repudiate Azalina’s Ministerial motion in Parliament and  uphold Barisan Nasional consensus of March 2015, I am prepared to show them how.

In the larger national interests, I would advise Liow and Mah not to be pawns of those who want to create an artificial national crisis by polarizing Malaysians into Muslims and non-Muslims and make “hudud” the primary issue in the Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections so that national issues like the RM55 billion 1MDB and RM4.2 billion “donation” scandals could be sidelined and ignored.

A day before Azalina moved the Ministerial motion to fast-track Hadi’s hudud bill, a Minister from Sabah who is head of a Barisan Nasional component party tried to stop it and  wrote an urgent letter to the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak expressing his opposition and that of the MPs from his party to such a fast-track Ministerial motion.

This Sabah Minister and Barisan Nasional leader said his party opposed Azalina’s motion “even if it is for tactical purposes”.

The question is why Liow and Mah, by their inaction, condoned Azalina’s Ministerial motion purported for “tactical” reasons, which is the height of irresponsible politics in plural Malaysia.

Furthermore, why are Liow and Mah  reluctant to requisition an emergency meeting of the Barisan Nasional Supreme Council meeting to undo what Azalina had done with her unilateral and arbitrary Ministerial motion last Thursday?

Or are Liow and Mah in cahoots with those in the UMNO-PAS plot to make  “hudud” the primary issue in the Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections so that grave national issues like the RM55 billion 1MDB scandal and the RM4.2 billion “donation” scandal could be buried and forgotten?

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 1 June 2016, 12:39 pm and is filed under
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Reject Hadi’s Bill as it opens doors to hudud implementation

G25

1st June 2016

COMMENT
 In an unprecedented move last Thursday, the government had tabled a motion to suspend its business in the Dewan Rakyat in order to fast-track a Private Member’s Bill brought forth by PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang (MP for Marang).

The motion to prioritise the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) (Amendment) Bill 2016 (‘Hadi’s Bill’) was moved by the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Azalina Othman.

The prime minister in a press statement had denied that Hadi’s Bill was meant to implement Islamic criminal laws, that is to say, hudud. He was reported to have said:

“I would like to clarify to our friends in BN that there was a misunderstanding…I would like to state that it is not for the implementation of hudud. It is just to give Syariah Courts enhanced punishments. From six-strokes of the cane, to more depending on the offences.”

We, members of G25, are not convinced by Najib’s assertion in his press interview on Friday that the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) (Amendment) Bill 2016, is not about implementing hudud.

Whilst we appreciate that the Bill specifically states that the imposition of the death penalty by the Syariah Court is not permitted, the Bill, however, significantly and in a general manner, permits the imposition of other forms of punishment.

Thus, it is open to the contention that, by implication, the Bill permits the state legislatures to empower the Syariah Court to impose any form of hudud punishment other than the death penalty (for example, 100 lashes of whipping for an unmarried person guilty of adultery; or the amputation of hands for theft).

In order to understand its underlying purpose, Hadi’s Bill cannot be looked at in isolation. It is a known fact that PAS and the state of Kelantan are keen to implement hudud and, indeed, the state Legislative Assembly of Kelantan had in 2015 passed the Syariah Criminal Code II (1993) Bill 2015.

This state of Kelantan Bill of 2015 prescribes hudud punishments for offences like adultery, theft, robbery, sodomy, consumption of liquor and apostasy.

However, the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1995, does not permit the Syariah Court to impose hudud punishments; and, hence, this federal law has been an impediment to the state of Kelantan in making the Kelantan Hudud Bill of 2015 a valid state enactment.

Therefore, there is the need for the state of Kelantan to seek Parliament to amend the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1995. And, so, here comes Hadi’s Bill.

A giveaway

It is a giveaway when Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, said that Hadi’s Bill was not to make new laws but to confer on the Syariah Court the powers to implement hudud in Kelantan.

Our belief that Hadi’s Bill has everything to do with the Kelantan Hudud Bill of 2015 is further reinforced by the news report that the Kelantan Menteri Besar, Ahmad Yakob, had urged all Muslims MPs to support Hadi’s Bill should it be debated in the next parliamentary meeting (Hadi had successfully requested Parliament to defer the debate on his Motion to October 2016).

We, in G25, categorically oppose Hadi’s Bill and the Kelantan Hudud Bill of 2015. Although Article 3 of the Federal Constitution declares that Islam is the religion of the federation, still, constitutionally, Malaysia is a secular state, as our forefathers and the framers of the Federal Constitution had intended.

Further, our nation is a multi-religious, multi-racial and multi-cultural. As such, hudud is inappropriate and unacceptable to the vast majority of the Malaysian society.

Moreover, a law such as the Kelantan Hudud Bill of 2015 is unconstitutional by reason of Article 8 (the equality before the law) of the Federal Constitution; as Muslims in Kelantan will be subjected to two sets of laws: the hudud and the Penal Code.

Far-reaching implications

There is also the fear that if Hadi’s Bill were to be passed by Parliament, it will open the door to all other states to introduce hudud and the more severe forms of punishments. The Bill, therefore, has long-term and far-reaching implications.

We urge the state government of Kelantan to focus on improving the lives of the people of Kelantan, the poorest state in peninsula Malaysia with the highest incidence of social ills, rather than being obsessed with hudud.

Surely, the state government of Kelantan needs no reminding that the Holy Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and the pious caliphs who succeeded him had always emphasised the people’s welfare instead of a punitive approach to governing.

We, in G25, take the view that the government has a fiducial and moral duty towards the citizens to build a happy and prosperous Malaysia.

What is more important to the life of the people and their happiness is how well the country is governed to create an environment of peace and stability, with all citizens feeling secure about the future.

Good governance, honest and responsible leadership, and a caring attitude by social and political leaders for the problems of the poor and the disadvantaged should be given high priority as they are essential for the economic and social progress of the country.

Our leaders should focus their attention on these responsibilities in governing the country, instead of playing dangerous politics with hudud.

We, therefore, urge all Malaysians to reject this Bill so that racial and religious harmony can be maintained and the country can progress to achieve our vision for a united, moderate and happy Malaysia.

G25 is a group of retired Malay top senior civil servants.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 1 June 2016, 3:15 pm and is filed under
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48-hour ultimatum to Liew and Mah to requisition for emergency BN Supreme Council meeting to resolve week-long  spat over Azalina’s Ministerial motion in Parliament to fast-track Hadi’s bill or Malaysians have to conclude that the MCA and Gerakan Presidents were privy to Najib-Hadi plot

I am giving the MCA President Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai and the Gerakan President Datuk Seri Mah Siew Keong a 48-hour ultimatum to requisition for an emergency Barisan Nasional Supreme Council meeting to resolve the week-long spat caused by the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Azalina Said Othman for her  Ministerial motion in Parliament last Thursday to fast-track the Hadi’s Hudud  Bill or Malaysians have to conclude that both the MCA and Gerakan Presidents were privy to the Najib-Hadi plot.

There can be no other reason for Liow or Mak not to requisition for an emergency BN Supreme Council meeting to resolve the BN spat over Azalina’s Ministerial motion, when Azalina had acted in violation of the consensus reached by all Barisan Nasional leaders on the same issue in March 2015 as well as the reaffirmation by Cabinet at its meeting on 20th May 2015 of a fundamental Barisan Nasional stand, whether through formal or informal discussion by Cabinet Ministers.

Furthermore, a BN Supreme Council meeting emergency meeting to reaffirm the Barisan Nasional stand not only  of the BN leaders in March 15 last year, but of all UMNO Prime Ministers in Malaysia since Merdeka on the secular  basis of the Malaysian Constitution, would have ended the BN spat on the Hadi bill without creating any artificial national crisis in polarizing Malaysians into Muslims and non-Muslims and distract the country from the real national issues in the country – whether  Malaysia’s social and economic crisis over the nation’s first global financial crisis like the RM55 billion 1MDB and Najib’s RM4.2 billion “donation” twin mega crisis, losing economic competitiveness, fall in educational excellence in our educational institutions or growing economic inequality and injustices in the country.

If the agenda is not to resolve the Barisan Nasional spat over Azalina’s Ministerial motion but to allow the artificial national crisis over Hadi’s hudud bill to fester and ferment in particular during the Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections, seeking in the process to make hudud the main issue in the two by-elections, then I can understand Liow and Mak’s refusal to requisition an emergency meeting of Barisan Nasional Supreme Council to end the controversy.

This is because an emergency Barisan Nasional Supreme Council meeting to end the the BN spat over Azalina’s Ministerial motion would be detrimental to the  objective to make the hudud  the primary issue in the Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections and allow Najib to avoid all accountability and responsibility for the 1MDB and “donation” scandals although other countries have initiated action against institutions and individuals for multi-billion ringgit 1MDB embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption offences.

What  excuses do Liow and Mah have not to requisition  an emergency BN Supreme Council meeting?

Ignorance that there is such an option?

Even this excuse is not open to Liow and Mak as I had publicly suggested this option to them for half a dozen times in the past week.

Surely, a smart and intelligent person who could rise up to become Minister need not be reminded half a dozen times about the  most efficient, speediest and most patriotic way to resolve the BN spat over Azalina’s Ministerial motion, without plunging the country into an artificial national crisis by polarizing Malaysians into Muslims and non-Muslims and distracting the nation from focusing on the real issues affecting country.

Can Liow and Mah give just one acceptable and patriotic  reason why they could not requisition an emergency BN Supreme Council meeting to address Azalina’s Ministerial motion to fast-track Hadi’s hudud bill in Parliament last Thursday?

The refusal of Liow and Mah to requisition an emergency meeting of BN Supreme Council is all the more inexcusable andheinous especially as I expect three-quarters of the 14 BN component parties would support such a requisitioning if Liow and Mak are prepared to provide the leadership.

It is sad to see the MCA and Gerakan Presidents, one claiming to lead the second biggest component party of BN and the other the “conscience” of Barisan Nasional, proving to the political dwarfs when compared to their Sabah and Sarawak counterparts in the Barisan Nasional, like the acting UPKO President Madius Tangau.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 2 June 2016, 11:29 am and is filed under
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Najib’s denial syndrome worst of all six Malaysian Prime Ministers when he could regard Singapore and Swiss crackdowns on multibillion ringgit 1MDB embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption as “a problem of noise”

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s denial syndrome is the worst of all six Malaysian Prime Ministers when he could regard Singapore and Swiss crackdown on multibillion ringgit 1MDB embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption as “a problem of noise”.

Replying to a question on what his government was doing to re-establish the trust of investors  at a panel discussion at a World Economic Forum meeting in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, Najib said the overall trajectory for Malaysia and the rest of Southeast Asia was positive, and he pointed to the long-term trend of rising foreign investment in his country as an expression of confidence.

He said: “The problem is a problem of perception, the problem is a problem of noise.  The noise level is rather high, I admit it. But it belies the strong fundamentals and commitment [of] the Malaysian government to continued reforms.”

The Prime Minister cannot be more wrong, and he must be told in no uncertain terms that his premiership is now a liability and no more an asset to foreign investors weighing their options about their investments in Malaysia – unless he can come clean on the various financial and mismanagement scandals haunting and hounding the country for over a year.

How the two-pronged crackdown on Tuesday last week in  the closure of the Singapore branch of BSI and the reference of the “top six” of  BSI Singapore to the prosecutors for possible criminal action on the one hand and the commencement of criminal proceedings against the 143-year old Swiss mother bank by the Swiss authorities over “money laundering and corruption” offences relating to suspected embezzlement of US$4 billion from 1MDB and the bank’s  liquidation on the other could be dismissed as “high noise level” beggars belief.

Nothing could be more surreal than the   response from the Malaysian authorities, especially Bank Negara Malaysia, suggesting that while over half a dozen countries are not only investigating, but beginning to commence criminal proceedings, against institutions and individuals for money laundering and embezzlement of 1MDB funds of at least US$4 billion, these are regarded as irrelevant or non-events as far as Malaysia is concerned.

Now we see Najib’s denial syndrome, which  borders on the bizarre, dismissing global crackdowns on multi-billion ringgit 1MDB embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption as “high noise level”  when three months ago, the Edelman Trust Barometer Annual Global Study 2016  found that public trust in Malaysia in Putrajaya has been on a downward trajectory, with public trust in the government dipped by 7 percentage points from 46 per cent in the previous 2015 survey to 39 per cent among the general population and dropped 11 percentage points to 34 per cent among the informed public.

I dare say that public trust in Putrajaya, and particular in Najib as the Prime Minister, would have plunge further to unprecedented and precipitous depths in the last quarter, with all the clampdowns and lies in and out of Parliament.

Malaysia should not be complacent like the Minister for International Trade and Industry, Datuk Mustapah Mohamad who said at the World Economic Forum yesterday that the 1MDB scandal had no impact on medium-to-long term investments, when Malaysia’s World Competitiveness Year (WCY) 2016 ranking at No. 19 should serve as a warning, as it  is the worst WCY ranking in the seven-year premiership of Datuk Seri Najib Razak, with Malaysia ranked as No. 10 in 2010.

I fully agree with the former Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin that Najib should bear responsibility for the RM55 billion 1MDB scandal, because of his central and multiple roles in the 1MDB saga – not only as Chairman of the 1MDB Advisory Board, but the unique provision in Article 117 of the 1MDB Memorandum and Articles of Association (M&A) which stipulates that no major decisions whether management, investment or monetary, could be made  without the written authorisation of the Prime Minister.

As Muhuyiddin rightly pointed out yesterday, if 1MDB is unable to pay its gargantuan debts, the responsibility falls on  the government to pay by utilising taxpayers’ money – in the end, the people have to bear the burden caused by the RM55 billion 1MDB scandal.

What Muhyiddin revealed yesterday is most shocking.

He said that most of the cabinet ministers whom he knew and have information on irregularities in 1MDB, particularly involving the prime minister, have chosen to remain quiet.

“Not a single minister dares to come forward to tell the truth; instead, there are those among them who feel comfortable to conspire in defending evils.

“This is the darkest episode in the history of leadership of our country. Those who choose to defend evils and protect falsehood are actually unfit to lead this country.”

Parliament and the national enforcement and investigative institutions have failed to save Malaysia from the RM55 billion global financial scandal.

This is why I am suggesting a colloquium on the RM1MDB Scandal in Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar  on how Malaysia had been catapulted to be among the world’s top nations notorious for global corruption and what could be done to save Malaysia from the repercussions of this global financial scandal.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 2 June 2016, 3:04 pm and is filed under
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The Myth of The Islamic State

by Bakri Musa

2nd June 2016

 Emory University’s Professor Abdullahi An-Naim was recently in Malaysia and commented on the current hudud controversy triggered by PAS leader Abdul Hadi’s private member’s bill in Parliament. I re-post my earlier book review of An-Naim’s “The Myth of the Islamic State” that appeared in October 19, 2008:

The Myth of The Islamic State

Book Review: Islam And The Secular State: Negotiating The Future of Shari’a, by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim

Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

324 pp, Indexed, US $35.00, 2008.

Every so often I would read a book that would profoundly affect me. I have yet however, to get two such books written by the same author, that is, until now.

In 1990 I came across a paperback, Toward an Islamic Reformation: Civil Liberties, Human Rights, and International Law, by Abdullahi A. An-Naim. I do not remember what prompted me to browse through let alone buy the book. Its cover design was nondescript, and neither its author nor publisher (University of Syracuse Press) was exactly well known. But bought the book I did, after scanning only a few pages.

     Despite being only 255 pages, it took me awhile to finish it. I have read it over many times since. It is not that An-Naim’s prose is dense (far from it!) rather that the ideas he expounds are breathtakingly refreshing. They also appeal to my intellectual understanding of my faith.

     That book resurrected my faith in Islam. Brought up under the traditional teachings of my village Imam, I had difficulty reconciling that with the worldview inculcated in me through my Western liberal education. The certitudes that had comforted me as a youngster were becoming increasingly less so as an adult.

     I knew however, a religion that gave my parents and grandparents (as well as millions of others) their anchoring stability despite the terrible turbulences in their life must have something substantive to offer. I took that as a matter of faith. It was just that I was not getting the message, until I read An-Naim’s book.

     I discovered that many of the issues I had wrestled with were shared with and have been dissected by many great minds in Islam of the past. This realization reassured me. Far from weakening my faith, those doubts ironically strengthened it.

Shari’a: A Human Endeavor

In that earlier book, An-Naim developed further the thesis of his mentor, Sudanese reformer Mahmoud Mohamad Taha, that while the Shari’a was based on the Quran and the Sunnah (sayings and practices of the prophet), nonetheless it remains the works of mortals. As such the Shari’a suffers from all the limitations inherent in such endeavors. It is time to revisit it using the same rigorous intellectual tools used by our earlier scholars, while cognizant of today’s universally accepted norms of constitutionalism, gender equality, and human rights, among others.

     That is exactly what An-Naim has been doing with his “The Future of Shari’a Project” at Emory University, Atlanta, where he is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law. Islam And The Secular State: Negotiating The Future of Shari’a is the culmination of his scholarly effort.

     Like that earlier book, this one is also a slow read despite being written in highly readable prose. The book is packed with substantive and innovative ideas that require some digesting and much contemplation. An-Naim’s writing is also precise and concise; he conveys in one sentence what others would take two or three, or even a paragraph.

     An-Naim is a solid scholar but the book is written for a general audience, Muslims and non-Muslims alike. He uses Arabic phrases sparingly, and there are adequate references in English, Arabic, and other traditionally native Islamic languages including Bahasa (Indonesia).

An-Naim asserts, “The historical reality is that there has never been an Islamic state, from the state of Abu Bakr, the first caliph in Medina, to Iran, Saudi Arabia, and any other state that claims to be Islamic today. This obvious reality is due to the incoherence of the idea itself and the practical impossibility of realizing it, not simply to bad experiments that can be rectified in the future.”

     The immediate rebuttal by many Muslims is that there is historical precedent – and a very excellent one – of an Islamic state, that of the first Muslim community in Medinah. Muslims rightly hold that as the ideal, but it cannot possibly be replicated, led as it was by Prophet Muhammad, s.a.w. He was both spiritual and political leader. To have a similar state today would require us to be endowed with another prophet, a blasphemous assumption in Islam.

     Not only is an Islamic state not achievable, it is also not desirable. The very idea of an Islamic state, according to An-Naim, is based on later European concept of the nation-state and the law, not on Shari’a or Islamic tradition.

     Throughout Islamic (indeed, world) history, there has always been tension between ulamas (and religious establishment generally) versus the state and its rulers, with each trying to use the other to further their own ends. Caliphs and sultans have co-opted ulamas to justify their (rulers’) power, while ulamas are not shy in maximizing the bounty they get from the state from such collaborations. In Malaysia for example, they vie with ministers and mandarins for government-issued worldly trinkets as the plushest bungalows, sleekest sedans, and most exalted royal titles.

     A few ulamas have been known to leave their mimbar (pulpit) for political office. Some like Kelantan’s Nik Aziz do not even bother to separate their roles. Islam is actively being subjugated by political rulers while religious functionaries eagerly prostituted themselves to the state.

“As a Muslim, I need a secular state in order to live in accordance with Shari’a out of my own genuine conviction and free choice,” An-Naim declares, “… which is the only valid and legitimate way of being a Muslim. Belief in Islam, or any other religion, logically requires the possibility of disbelief, because belief has no value if it is coerced.”

     He goes on, “Maintaining institutional separation between Islam and the state while regulating the permanent connection of Islam and politics is a necessary condition for achieving the positive role of the Shari’a now and in the future.”

     Caution here, before hurling the epithets! An-Naim’s “secular” state does not mean the atheistic communist regime of the Soviet Empire where religion is completely vanished from public sphere, rather one where the state is “morally neutral” with respect to religion.

     America proudly cites its “strict” separation of state and church. The reality is far different. Prayers are regularly offered at opening sessions of Congress, and as the current [2008] presidential campaign demonstrates, religion is never far from voters’ considerations.

     Muslims yearn for an Islamic state without having the foggiest idea of what that would entail, except for some vague mumbling about it being based on the Quran, Sunnah, and Shari’a. The reason for the longing is obvious; most so-called Muslim states today fail miserably in the basic task of governing. Worse, they regularly trample with impunity on the basic rights of their citizens.

     Perversely, this obsession with the Islamic state detracts these leaders from their basic task of governing, and citizens from taking their leaders to task for this elemental failure. Such fundamental and pressing needs as providing heath care, housing, education, development, and a modicum of freedom are best handled less by fussing over the Shari’a or the Islamic state and more with acquiring the skills of modern management. Today’s Islamists would get closer to achieving their vision of an Islamic state if they would first learn how to build effective and enduring institutions of governance.

Negotiations, Not Religious Fiat

While An-Naim advocates the separation of Islam and Shari’a on one hand from the politics and the state on the other, nonetheless he actively encourages nurturing the relationship between the two, including the state’s regulating the public role of Islam.

     This would first involve reexamining the Shari’a. “For Muslims, Shari’a should be known and experienced as a source of liberation and self realization,” writes An-Naim, “not a heavy burden of oppressive restriction and harsh punishment. No action or omission is valid from a Shari’a perspective unless it is completely voluntary, and there is no religious merit in coercive compliance.” The emphasis is mine, and I would have it in huge fonts framed in every JAKIM office!

     In its time the Shari’a represented a quantum leap in intellectual as well as juridical achievements. It emancipated women. Whereas before, women were part of her husband’s inheritance, to be disposed off like the rest of his estate; under the Shari’a they were entitled to their own rightful shares.

     As that other law professor, Harvard’s Noah Feldman, wrote in his Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, “ … for most of its history, Islamic law offered the most liberal and humane legal principles available anywhere in the world.”

     Feldman notes further that with Shari’a the scholars provided the crucial and fundamental checks and balances on the powers of the rulers. This is exactly what is glaringly absent in many Muslim countries today. Consequently, self-professed Islamic states like Iran and Saudi Arabia have more in common with fascist Germany and totalitarian Russia, both in the traits of the regimes as well as the tendencies of their leaders.

     It was the genius of those early scholars to be able to reconcile the apparent contradictions in the Quran and Sunnah by resorting to “abrogation,” where certain verses of the Quran “override” earlier ones. With that they formulated a coherent body of laws that had served the community well for centuries. They successfully reconciled the earlier Meccan verses that there be no compulsion in matters of faith to the latter Medinah ones relating to apostasy. Likewise, the latter verses relating to the differential treatment of inheritance between sons and daughters to the earlier verses that declare everyone is equal in the eyes of Allah.

     Abrogation was the tool devised by the ancient scholars; it was not a divine mandate. Today’s scholars should likewise use their insights and intellectual prowess to formulate a new Shari’a which should also be based on the Quran and the Sunnah. This is the only basis to make it acceptable to Muslims and not violate our basic beliefs and traditions. Such an exercise must be inclusive, with engagement of the entire community, utilizing the insights from various disciplines.

     If we were to incorporate the Shari’a into the laws of our country, the objective of advocates of an Islamic state, such “negotiations,” as An-Naim puts it, must necessarily also include non-Muslims, especially for a plural society like Malaysia. The consequence of this is that the Shari’a formulated for Malaysia would necessarily be different from those for homogenously Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, just like there are significant variations in the Shari’a in the various fighs (jurisprudence) in Islam.

     In short, An-Naim separates the concept versus content of Shari’a. The concept is readily apparent: a body of just laws applicable to all based on divine revelations (Quran) and the sunnahs. All Muslims agree to that, while most non-Muslims could be readily persuaded to the viewpoint of “just laws applicable to all.” The content however, must necessarily vary with time, place, and culture. That is An-Naim’s central message.

     The central enduring values of the concept of the Shari’a are regularly missed and often confused by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. In the West, as Feldman noted, the Shari’a is caricatured by such odious hudud laws as stoning to death for adultery while ignoring the Shari’a stringent standards for conviction. Contrast that to the gross perversion of justice in many capital convictions in America today, as revealed by the Innocence Project.

     The central premise of the Shari’a is that all – ruler and ruled alike – are subject to its rule. That is the rule of law at its most fundamental level. That is a novel concept in the West for most of its history (the prince being above law) as well as in today’s self-professed Islamic states. Malaysia amended its constitution removing the sultans’ immunity with respect to their personal conduct only in 1993.

     An-Naim has advanced and elevated the debate on the Shari’a and the Islamic state by a quantum leap. His is a much-needed intellectual antidote to those who would mindlessly exhort “Islam is the answer!” to every political problem, as well as those who delude themselves that the myriad problems facing Muslims today would magically disappear once we establish an Islamic state or a caliphate.

     This book will be widely read in the West. I hope it will also reach a wide audience in the Islamic world. Muslims – especially leaders – would do well to expend the necessary intellectual diligence to ponder the totality of the ideas and concepts presented in this book. We should not dismiss them because they challenge our comfortable assumptions.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 2 June 2016, 7:25 am and is filed under
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Islamic law bill splits Malaysian cabinet

Jeevan Vasagar in Singapore

Financial Times

June 2, 2016

Ethnic Chinese ministers have threatened to quit the Malaysian government if a bill giving Islamic courts powers to impose tougher penalties is passed into law.

Critics of Najib Razak, the prime minister, say the bill is an attempt to distract attention from the 1MDB state investment fund scandal ahead of by-elections this month and a general election that must be held by 2018.

The bill, proposed by the Islamist opposition but fast-tracked last week by a government minister, will be debated in parliament in October. It comes at a time of concern over rising intolerance in Southeast Asia, a region once regarded as a model of religious coexistence.

It would give sharia courts authority to impose longer prison sentences, heavier fines and harsher canings but stops short of penalties allowed under an extreme form of sharia law in two states.

Kelantan and Terengganu, in the north-east of Peninsular Malaysia, have enacted hudud, a form of sharia law that allows for stoning and amputation for crimes including theft and adultery. However, these laws have not been enforced as they are held to be against Malaysia’s federal constitution. Sharia courts are limited to the imposition of fines, jail terms and caning.

Outside these states, sharia courts have jurisdiction over civil matters relating to Muslims, such as divorce and inheritance, but not criminal matters.

Analysts say the bill may be a way of gauging the appetite for constitutional change needed to implement hudud. It has provoked consternation in a country with a Muslim majority but is ethnically and religiously diverse. About a quarter of Malaysia’s population is of Chinese descent and 7 per cent is Indian in origin.

Mustafa Izzuddin, a political scientist at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said: “The concern is that it’s a test case, to see how people react.”

Liow Tiong Lai, the transport minister, and Mah Siew Keong, a cabinet colleague, belong to the substantial Chinese minority and have threatened to quit if the bill is passed.

Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, said the ruling United Malays National Organisation was using sharia law as a “wedge issue” to split the opposition, which comprises Islamists and the Democratic Action party, dominated by Malaysian Chinese.

“This is about saving Najib’s political skin,” Mr Robertson said. “Democracy and human rights in Malaysia is being sacrificed in order to avoid answering questions about 1MDB.”

Mr Najib has denied claims of misappropriation at 1MDB, a fund set up at his behest. The affair has led to investigations by authorities in countries including Switzerland, Singapore, the US and Hong Kong. Swiss authorities say there are indications that about $4bn has been misappropriated from Malaysian state companies.

Voters outside big cities have proved largely indifferent to the scandal, returning Umno with an increased majority in a state election in Sarawak last month.

On Thursday a person close to Mr Najib’s office denied the sharia bill was a political ploy. “The PM’s political opponents have been claiming for more than a year that nearly everything is an attempted distraction from 1MDB,” the person said. “However, the draft bill is a religious matter, while 1MDB is a corporate matter. There is no connection.”

Analysts say the bill is likely to sow mistrust between ethnic groups and increase anxiety among religious minorities whose rights have been curtailed in recent years.

Malay-speaking Christians have been barred by a court from using the word Allah to refer to God, with the result that Malay-language Bibles have been confiscated. Last year a lawyer was charged with sedition for accusing a government agency of promoting religious extremism.

Mr Najib’s critics say that alongside a more hardline interpretation of Islam, his government is displaying an increasingly authoritarian streak that has included travel bans on opponents.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 3 June 2016, 6:38 am and is filed under
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MCA has not learnt the  lesson of the 2013GE debacle which reduced it from second biggest BN party to a puny 7/11 party – MCA Ministers saying one thing outside but doing the very opposite inside Cabinet!

It is very clear that the MCA leadership has not learnt the lesson of its 2013 General Election electoral debacle which reduced the MCA from the second biggest Barisan Nasional party to a puny “7/11 party” – MCA Ministers saying one thing outside but doing the very opposite inside the Cabinet.

Just go back to the 1999 General Election – when MCA won 29 Parliamentary seats which is more than the total number of 28 Barisan Nasional parliamentary seats from Sarawak and the 2013 General Election where MCA won a miserable seven parliamentary seats, edged out as the second largest BN party with MPs by PBB which had 14 MPs and only one seat more than  PRS which won six Parliamentary seats!

In 1999 GE, MCA had more MPs than all Sarawak BN parties combined, but in the 2013 GE,  Sarawak BN MPs is more than three-and-a-half times that of MCA, with Sarawak BN MPs number 25 compared to MCA’s 7.

MCA President Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai recently revealed that MCA had over a million members, when maverick columnist Ridhuan Tee Abdullah announced that he was quitting as a MCA life member.

This would mean that only some 30 per cent  MCA members had voted for MCA candidates in the 2013 GE.  The total number of votes polled by MCA parliamentary candidates in the 2013 GE came to 867,851. Assuming that some two-thirds of these votes are UMNO votes, this would mean that MCA had only 280,000 to 300,000 MCA  members voting for MCA candidates – which is 30 per cent or even less of the total MCA membership.

The reason for this shocking state of affairs  is very simple – MCA had not only lost the trust and confidence of Malaysians as a whole, including the Chinese community, but even the overwhelming majority of the MCA card-carrying members.

This is because of MCA Ministers saying one thing outside but doing the very opposite in the Cabinet – and the MCA Ministers’ stand on Hadi’s hudud bill provides the latest example.

MCA’s three Ministers, led by Liow Tiong Lai, have maintained that Hadi’s hudud bill is unconstitutional but how can they be part of the Cabinet whose Minister has expressed support for this bill, even to the extent of moving a Ministerial motion to fast-track Hadi’s bill on the last day of Parliament on May 26?

Yesterday, I gave the MCA President Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai and the Gerakan President Datuk Seri Mah Siew Keong a 48-hour ultimatum to requisition for an emergency Barisan Nasional Supreme Council meeting to resolve the week-long spat caused by the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Azalina Said Othman for her  Ministerial motion in Parliament last Thursday to fast-track  Hadi’s Hudud  Bill or Malaysians have to conclude that both the MCA and Gerakan Presidents were privy to the Najib-Hadi plot.

I do not expect Liow or Mah to either have the courage of their conviction or the principled stand to requisition for an emergency meeting of the BN Supreme Council meeting to resolve the BN spat over Azalina’s Ministerial motion, even when Azalina had acted in violation of the consensus reached by all Barisan Nasional leaders on the same issue in March 2015 as well as the reaffirmation by Cabinet at its meeting on 20th May 2015 of a fundamental Barisan Nasional stand.

In fact, can the MCA and Gerakan Ministers  explain what they had done at the Cabinet meeting two days ago to repudiate Azalina’s Ministerial motion, especially in supporting Hadi’s  unconstitutional hudud bill.

Didn’t they just keep quiet to condone Azalina’s Ministerial motion?

I do not believe that the MCA leadership has learnt the lesson of the 2013 General Elections debacle which had reduced MCA from the second largest BN party into a puny “7/11 party”.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 3 June 2016, 9:40 am and is filed under
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After resignation of Mustapha Kamil as NST group editor over 1MDB global scandal, who is the next journalist of mainstream media who will take a stand for integrity, truth, transparency and good governance?

After the resignation of Mustapha Kamil as New Straits Times group editor over the 1MDB global scandal at the end of last month, who is the next journalist of the mainstream media, whether print or electronic, who will take a stand for integrity, truth, transparency and good governance?

In his Facebook posting on May 31, Mustapha said he had received numerous private messages enquiring why he opted to leave New Straits Times early, and he related “the final moments” before he tendered my resignation “from a place I had until then treated as my second home”.

He wrote:

“On the morning of April 25th I walked into the CEO’s room with my resignation letter in hand. We sat and talked about my wish for a good one hour where naturally, the CEO enquired why I had wanted to do so.

“The CEO is a chartered accountant, a man who took his job very seriously, one who is adept with numbers and besides heading the company, someone whom I also considered a friend…

“There were two things I related to him that morning. First, just as he, a chartered accountant, would not hesitate to qualify a set of flawed accounts, signing each of them not only by his name, but also by the ethics enshrined within the professional body in which he was a member, I too take journalism ethics seriously.

“In my line of work, there is this element called the ‘truth discipline’. It is one that requires a journalist to be correct, right from the spelling of names of persons or places, to all the reports he must file. His responsibility is first to the truth, by which he must then guide society in navigating the path they had chosen.

“Second, I told him that I had weighed the situation for as long as I could but when an American newspaper, headquartered somewhere in Lower Manhattan in New York, wrote a story that got nominated for the coveted Pullitzer Prize, about an issue that happened right under my nose, I began to seriously search my conscience and asked myself why was I in journalism in the first place.

“We had a cordial discussion that morning and the CEO fully understood my predicament and the fact that there was little else that I could do. In my 27 years of being a journalist, I never once subscribed to the saying that if you can’t beat them, join them.

“In this line of work, there is no such thing as the path of least resistance. You have to stick to your principles. Around the world, an average of 110 like us, pay the ultimate price each year to get the true stories out. At the very least, I felt that as a journalist, I had to honour the sacrifices they had made in abiding by the discipline.

“I hope that answers everything.”

The “American newspaper, headquartered somewhere in Lower Manhattan in New York” which  wrote a story that “got nominated for the coveted Pulitzer Prize, about an issue that happened right under my nose” is the Wall Street Journal whose series of reports on the 1MDB global scandal linked to the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak made it on the Pulitzer Prize nomination list in the International Reporting category.

According to the Pulitzer Prize official website, the WSJ had submitted a series of articles published between July and December last year – written by Tom Wright, Bradley Hope, Simon Clark, Mia Lamar and James Hookwood.

They were credited for their work which was described as “masterful reporting that exposed corruption at the highest levels of a fragile democracy, leading to Malaysia’s Watergate”.

Among others, the articles submitted were headlined “Malaysia Leader’s Accounts Probed” (July 2), “Leader Faces Fire Over Fund” (Oct 15), and “The Money Network of Malaysian Politics” (Dec 28).

Najib and his supporters from the ruling BN have repeatedly accused WSJ of peddling false accusations and being used by those with a political agenda to topple the government.

However, WSJ has continued to stand by its reports until today and supported calls for Najib to file a defamation suit against any allegedly false report.

The  resignation of NST, the propaganda mouthpiece of Najib and UMNO, has further vindicated Wall Street Journal’s series of reporting on the 1MDB global scandal, which has already claimed several VIP casualties including a Deputy Prime Minister, a senior Cabinet Minister and Attorney-General who were summarily sacked for wanting to establish the truth of the 1MDB global scandal.

The protracted 1MDB global scandal has stained or destroyed the integrity of several personalities, including the “cari makan” Chairman of the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) who unilaterally and arbitrarily tampered with the PAC Report on 1MDB; the new Bank Negara Governor who is more concerned about lodging a police report against Wall Street Journal (WSJ) under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) for revealing a letter from Bank Negara to the PAC Chairman stating that the beneficial owner of Good Star Limited, the “genesis” of the 1MDB global scandal, was Penang billionaire Jho Low instead of being more concerned about the national stakes and reputation with the  global crackdown on multi-billion ringgit embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption offences; and not least of whom, the good name and reputation of the Malaysian Prime Minister himself.

Are there no more journalists in the mainstream media in Malaysia to uphold the “truth discipline” or who could search their conscience whether they are doing right by their nation, profession and future generations?

The reputation and standing of national institutions, whether the Attorney-General’s Chambers, Bank Negara, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, Police, the Auditor-General’s Office, the PAC and even Parliament itself have suffered in repute and standing by the protracted 1MDB global scandal.

I was suspended for six months for wanting  Najib to answer two simple questions as to where the monies from his twin global scandals – the RR55 billion 1MDB  and RM4.2 billion “donation” scandals – came from and where the monies have gone to, and up now, despite my six-month suspension from Parliament, the country is closer to the answers to these two questions.

Will the Prime Minister answer these two questions in the Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar parliamentary by-elections beginning with Nomination Day tomorrow?

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 4 June 2016, 2:40 pm and is filed under
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Call on Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Chinese Assembly Hall and Federation of Chinese Guilds and Associations to put pressure on MCA Ministers to explain why they dare not requisition an emergency BN Supreme Council meeting to end “once and for all” the problem caused by Azalina’s Ministerial motion in Parliament to fast-track Hadi’s hudud bill?

The response of the MCA leadership to my challenge whether  MCA had learnt from the lesson of its 201	3 General Election debacle which reduced MCA from the second biggest Barisan Nasional party to a puny “7/11 party” (as compared to winning 28 MPs and 68 SAs in 1999 GE) is so predictable and characteristic that it could have been guessed in advance:

“All three MCA Ministers run for cover from the challenge, avoiding any response as the facts used are undeniable and   incontrovertible – that at most only some 30 per cent of MCA’s million-strong card-carrying members voted for the MCA candidates in the 13th general election  on May 5, 2013, as even the ordinary MCA members have lost confidence in the sincerity and trustworthiness of MCA Ministers and leaders.  The task of responding to the  challenge that the MCA leadership should requisition an emergency Barisan Nasional Supreme Council meeting to resolve one-and-for-all the problem caused by Azalina’s Ministerial motion in Parliament to fast-track Hadi’s hudud bill left to low-level MCA officials, who could make ferocious and even extreme statements which MCA Ministers and leaders can claim ignorance.”

This is exactly what happened in the past 24 hours – thunderous silence from the three MCA Ministers but ferocious and even irrelevant outbursts by some inferior MCA underlings, which can be completely ignored as even MCA Ministers dare not endorse them.

It is reported that the Negri Sembilan State MCA, in collaboration with the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Chinese Assembly Hall and Federation of Chinese Guilds and Associations in Negri Sembilan, are organizing a briefing for the public on what Hadi’s Bill is all about today.

I call on Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Chinese Assembly Hall and Federation of Chinese Guilds and Associations to put pressure on MCA Ministers to explain why they dare not requisition an emergency BN Supreme Council meeting to end “once and for all” the problem caused by Azalina’s Ministerial motion in Parliament to fast-track Hadi’s bill?

The three MCA Ministers should be asked point-blank to explain whether the only reason why the MCA leadership dare not requisition an emergency BN Supreme Council emergency meeting to resolve the spat over Azalina’s Ministerial motion was because the MCA top leadership had known and colluded in a Najib-Hadi political plot to fast-track Hadi’s hudud bill – believing that this unprecedented move will give UMNO and even PAS an advantage in both the Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections against Pakatan Harapan and Parti Amanah?

If not, could the  three MCA Ministers explain why a BN Minister from Sabah could know about Azalina’s motion one day beforehand to allow him to write an urgent letter to the Prime Minister to stop such a “tactical” move in Parliament, but the three MCA Ministers could know nothing about it beforehand?

What the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Chinese Assembly Hall and Federation of Chinese Guilds and Associations, and in fact, all Malaysians would want to know is whether the MCA leadership had given Najib tacit consent for Azalina to move her Ministerial motion to fast-track Hadi’s hudud motion, and if not, why are they so reluctant to requisition an emergency meeting of the BN Supreme Council meeting to uphold and reaffirm the Barisan Nasional consensus on the issue on  March 2015 and to demand the sacking of Azalina as Minister for unilaterally and arbitrarily violating the BN consensus?

My 48-hour ultimatum to the MCA President Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai and the Gerakan President Datuk Seri Mah Siew Keong to requisition for an emergency Barisan Nasional Supreme Council meeting to resolve once-and-for-all the problem caused by  Azalina’s  Ministerial motion to fast-track  Hadi’s Hudud  Bill will expire later today, but neither Liow nor Mah would have the courage of conviction or political principle to dare to requisition for an emergency meeting of BN Supreme Council.

But can Liow or Mah justify their cowardly political stance – whether to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Chinese Assembly Hall and Federation of Chinese Guilds and Associations or even to their own membership?

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 4 June 2016, 8:39 am and is filed under
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‘Islamism Is Dead!’ Long Live Muslim Democrats

By HUSSEIN IBISH

New York Times

JUNE 2, 2016

TUNIS — “Islamism is dead!” announced Said Ferjani, a leader of the progressive wing of Ennahda, Tunisia’s main Islamist party, as we drank coffee in a hotel cafe here last month. Mr. Ferjani, a former hard-liner who once plotted a coup against the regime of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, was upbeat as he described the historic transition his party was about to make.

His wing had combined with the party leadership to push through a raft of resolutions that would not only rebrand Ennahda but also break with the tradition of political Islam that began with the Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in Egypt in the late 1920s. According to Mr. Ferjani, Islamism had been useful under the Ben Ali dictatorship when “our identity and sense of purpose” was threatened by an authoritarian state. Now that Ennahda is engaged in open, legal party politics under a new Constitution, which it helped to write, and competes for national leadership, the Islamist label had become more a burden than a benefit.

The party’s co-founder and leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, was more circumspect when I interviewed him at his home. He shifted uneasily when I asked him whether he thought Islamism was dead.

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” he commented. But he did reject the label, saying, “We don’t see any reason to distinguish ourselves from other Muslims.” Both Mr. Ghannouchi and Mr. Ferjani prefer the term “Muslim Democrats” — which deliberately draws an analogy with the Christian Democratic parties of Western Europe — to describe their new, post-Islamist identity.

In particular, Mr. Ferjani’s explicit commitment to the principles of freedom and equality makes him perhaps the foremost post-Islamist political figure in the Sunni Arab world. While he calls himself a conservative and extols “family values,” Mr. Ferjani says he regards sexuality, sexual orientation and gender identity — including the transgender issues preoccupying the United States — as private and personal, and not matters for the state or legal authorities to prescribe.

Mr. Ferjani also adheres to the neutrality of the state on religious matters. He equates religious freedom with freedom of conscience, and believes agnostics and atheists should enjoy the same civil rights as monotheists.

Again, in our interview, Mr. Ghannouchi was predictably more cautious. He advocated equality among Muslims of all sects, somewhat more grudgingly extending it to Christians and Jews, and legalistically referring to “constitutional protections” for atheists and agnostics.

At last month’s Ennahda Congress, the 1,200 delegates approved most of the sweeping changes to the party’s platform that the Ferjani faction and the Ghannouchi leadership had called for. The most important measure drops the party’s commitment to “dawa,” proselytizing Islamic values. This makes the party a purely political organization, with no overt religious mission — a radical break from the Muslim Brotherhood tradition from which the Ennahda movement sprang.

In Tunisia and across the Arab world, liberals, secularists and critics of Islamism remain skeptical. On more than one occasion here in the capital, I witnessed the idea of Ennahda’s new stance evoking peals of laughter from prominent political opponents. They support dialogue, cooperation, even coalition partnership with Ennahda, but this “post-Islamist” declaration they found impossible to take seriously.

It is true that many of the movement’s leaders have not fully reconciled with the idea of moving beyond the Muslim Brotherhood vision. After the 2011 revolution, which helped bring Ennahda to power, the party seemed determined to cling on at all costs — until a critical moment in 2013 when the Brotherhood government of President Mohamed Morsi in Egypt was ousted by a military-backed uprising. After seeing the downfall of its Egyptian counterpart, Ennahda scrambled to protect itself by stepping down and agreeing to a series of compromises.

That experience, combined with a new realism about most Tunisians’ lack of sympathy for an avowedly Islamist government, gave rise to this project of rebranding. There’s no question that it’s all part of Ennahda’s long-term plan to return to power.

But the sincerity of its transformation is hardly relevant. Ennahda is no longer an underground movement or secret society. It is an aboveboard political party that is vying for power in Tunisia’s fledgling constitutional, democratic system.

This was always how Islamism was likely to evolve in practice. There would never be an epiphany in which old-school authoritarian Islamists were instantly converted in a moment of supreme insight into democratic social conservatives. It is necessarily a messy, contextual transition, primarily driven by the search for power in an Arab world where most people are devoutly Muslim but remain suspicious of the proponents of political Islam.

What Ennahda’s critics and supporters alike should understand is that the intentions of its leadership don’t matter — in a democracy, it is public words and deeds, not secret thoughts, that count. Even if the rebranding as “Muslim Democrats” is a cynical ploy, the party will have to follow through to gain power in a Tunisian society that won’t accept old-style Islamism. Muslim Democrats will be what Ennahda has to become.

The future of Islamism in Muslim countries everywhere is deeply linked to the progress of the new-look Ennahda. And its fate is therefore bound up with the survival of the new Tunisia.

Partly against its own inclinations, Ennahda has become the first post-Islamist political party in the Arab world. The stakes, for the region and for the world, in Tunisia’s fragile democratic experiment have just increased immeasurably.

Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington and a contributing opinion writer.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 4 June 2016, 6:50 am and is filed under
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Call on Najib to personally stop the government harassment and persecution of cartoonist Fahmi Reza over his  clown-faced Najib drawings  or institute civil suit against him

The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, cannot pretend continued ignorance about the police and government harassment and persecution of cartoonist Fahmi Reza over his clown-faced Najib drawings.

Fahmi was released this morning after being detained yesterday at Publika in Kuala Lumpur for selling T-shirts featuring a clown-faced Prime Minister Najib Razak.

What should concern Najib and his coterie of advisers is why there is a market for Fahmi’s clown-faced Najib drawings, whether T-shirts or other products, instead of harassing and persecuting Fahmi – which is no different from shooting the messenger instead of addressing the message.

Would there be a market for clown-faced Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, clown-faced Tun Razak, clown-faced Tun Hussein Onn, clown-faced Tun Mahathir or clown-faced Tun Abdullah.

It would be more beneficial for Najib and his coterie of political advisers to ponder these questions than be so trigger-happy as to invoke the law to abuse and misuse powers to harass and persecute Fahmi.

If after due deliberation, they still object to Fahmi’s clown-faced Najib drawings, then Najib should institute civil suit against the cartoonist for defamation proceedings, instead of abusing the processes of the law and his office as Prime Minister to harass and persecute Fahmi.

It is a sad commentary of  the state of human rights in Malaysia and  the freedom of expression available in our times that cartoonists have found that they have become a very dangerous occupation.

Cartoonist Zulkiflee SM Anwar Ulhaque, who draws under the name Zunar, is facing nine charges under the Sedition Act with a possible 43 years in prison, while there is a whole battery of charges  under the Sedition Act against Opposition leaders, activists and critics of government.

Will the UMNO/BN candidates in the Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections champion the rights of Fahmi, Zunar and Malaysians to the right of freedom of expression in Malaysia if they are elected to Parliament on June 18, or they will condone, aid and abet the suppression of human rights in Malaysia – including the harassment and persecution of Fahmi?

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 5 June 2016, 5:10 pm and is filed under
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Call on Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar voters to speak  and vote on behalf of all Malaysians to demand Najib give full and satisfactory accounting for his RM55 billion 1MDB and RM4.2 billion “donation” twin global scandals or to step down as Prime Minister of Malaysia

The Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar voters should speak and vote on behalf of all Malaysians in the two by-elections on June 18 to demand that the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak give full and satisfactory accounting for his RM55 billion 1MDB and RM4.2 billion “donation” twin global scandals or step down as Prime Minister of Malaysia.

In both by-elections, the battle is between the Amanah and Barisan Nasional candidates as far as the 1MDB and “donation” twin global scandals are concerned, as the two topmost PAS leaders have not only become the “advisors” but the “defenders” of Najib in these two mega scandals!

I do not know whether Najib deserves the credit as he  has achieved world-class notice for Malaysia which none of the five previous Prime Ministers, including his father Tun Razak, had ever done in five decades – international notoriety as one of world’s top countries infamous for global corruption.

Wherever one goes in the world, Malaysia is now equated with the notorious and infamous RM55 billion 1MDB and RM4.2 billion donation scandals – which have been described  by the international financial news agency, Bloomberg, as one of the “world’s biggest financial scandals”.

Everybody knows that the RM55 billion 1MDB scandal is huge, but how huge is it?

I myself cannot fully envisage how astronomical is RM55 billion and I believe that 99% of Malaysians cannot imagine how huge is RM55 billion!

How many zeroes do we have in our bank accounts? RM100 is two zeroes, RM1,000 is three zeroes, RM10,000 is four zeroes and RM100,000 is five zeroes.

The overwhelming majority of Malaysians will not even have five zeroes in their bank accounts, even if they have property or assets worth five zeroes.

Having bank accounts of more than six zeroes (millionaires) will be beyond the reach of ordinary Malaysians, but RM55 billion or RM55,000,000,000 is to have 10 zeroes – a completely unthinkable sum of money.

Hidden in the RM55 billion 1MDB scandal is Najib’s RM4.2 billion “donation” scandal, and I don’t think there is a single leader in the democratic world who believes in democracy, good governance, accountability and transparency who has huge sums of money involving nine zeroes deposited into his private banking accounts and refused to account for them!

The RM55 billion 1MDB scandal is so humongous that if divided among 42,837 voters in Sungai Besar, every voter would get RM1.3 million!

Najib knows that the 1MDB scandal is his Achilles’ heel, which is why he is abusing and misusing his powers to sweep the issue under the carpet in the country, including sacking the Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, Senior UMNO Minister for Rural and Regional Development, Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal, the Attorney-General Tan Sri Gani Patail in his crackdown against critics and opponents, which include immediate transfers for government servants, shutdown of independent media, arrests and prosecution of critics under a variety of repressive laws, whether Sedition Act, Penal Code, Printing Presses and Publications Act or Multimedia Communications Act.

But a wrong is a wrong, and it cannot become a right just become one is in power. This is why even Mustapha Kamil had resigned as New Straits Times group editor at the end of last month, precisely because the RM55 billion 1MDB and RM4.2 billion “donation” scandals are just heinous wrongs that cannot be sanitised to become a right because of power positions!

Would the UMNO/BN candidates in Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections dare to take a stand on Najib’s twin global financial scandals?

The world is now looking askance at Malaysia, regarding that something is very wrong with Malaysia when various countries in the world are taking action against  multi-billion ringgit 1MDB crimes of embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption except in Malaysia – as if there are no moral rules and principles in Malaysia.

If there can be political miracles in the Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elecitons – as both constituencies have been impregnable UMNO strongholds for the past six decades – and the Amanah candidates  can achieve the “impossible” to win in the by-elections, it will go a long way to win the moral war for Malaysia in the world, and send out the message to the world and  other countries that Malaysia is no exception as far as moral rules and principles are concerned, and that embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption are  equally as wrongful and criminal  in Malaysia as in other countries.

Can the voters of Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar save the reputation of Malaysia in the world and debunk the perception that the crimes of embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption   are permissible in Malaysia if they involve those in power?

This will be the main question to be decided on June 18 in the Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections.

Najib’s strategists are working overtime to ensure that Najib’s  1MDB and “donation” twin global corruption scandals would not feature prominently in the two by-elections, which explains for the Najib-Hadi plot in Parliament on May 26, where the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said moved a Ministerial motion to fast-track  PAS President, Datuk Seri Hadi Awang’s hudud private member’s bill motion.

The voters of Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar must not fall into the Najib-Hadi political trap, as 1MDB and “donation” twin global scandals must be  the foremost issues in the two by-elections.

I call on Najib to appear at both by-elections to  give full and satisfactory explanation about the RM55 billion 1MDB and RM4.2 billion “donation” twin global scandals as voters must not be distracted by the Najib-Hadi hudud gambit.

(Media Statement in Sungai Besar after the Sungai Besar by-election nomination on Sunday, June 5, 2016 at 10 am)

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 5 June 2016, 4:16 pm and is filed under
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