Friday Jottings: The fingers kept pointing back
Friday, March 29th, 2024 - THE Madani Government may not want to admit it, but their self-proclaimed reform credentials are being shredded almost daily.
Actually, its reforms agenda was a non-starter, a still-born when it decided to team up with the Ahmad Zahid Hamidi-led Umno.
It became apparent that the promised reforms were lip service for polls when Ahmad Zahid was appointed the Deputy Prime Minister. And when his 47 cases were given the DNAA (discharge not amounting to acquittal).
The Madani apologists were however quick to defend the presence of Zahid in their reform midst, that it was a necessary evil to thwart the rise of the green wave.
But the problem is that it did not end with Zahid.
Take the latest police reports that were lodged against Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim former political secretary Farhash Wafa Salvador when he secured substantial shares in Heitech Padu involving some RM40 million.
To add twist to the tale was that Heitech is one of three companies short-listed for a RM1 billion Government contract.
The reports lodged raised the spectre of cronyism and corruption, one of the clarion calls of Anwar and his political supporters.
Nepotism was the another but that became contentious very early in formation of the current Government when Anwar’s daughter Nurul Izzah was appointed to an advisory role in the Finance Ministry of which Anwar holds the Ministerial portfolio.
Anwar being the Finance Minister while being the PM too is a betrayal of the promised reforms as it was a point of beratement against former PM Mohd Najib Razak who held both positions.
It was concluded then that the 1MDB scandal became possible because of Najib being the PM and the finance minister simultaneously.
Then there are accusations of bailing out Government-linked companies with the Boustead Naval Shipyard (BNS) being renamed Lumut Naval Shipyard (Lunas) and injected with new funds was cited as an example.
What is interesting is that all the catchwords – cronyism, nepotism, bailout and corruption – were integral in Anwar’s efforts to dislodge previous leaders and Governments.
But for those who had observed Anwar’s political rise, his accusations against his political enemies may very well his own.
Lest his apologists forgot, at the height of the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997/98, the accusation of the then PM (Tun) Dr Mahathir Mohamad practising nepotism and cronyism were brought up by Zahid, then Umno youth chief, during the Umno assembly.
Except for the naïve, popular opinion was that Anwar, then Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, had put Zahid up to it to further unsettle Dr Mahathir who had his hands full dealing with the crisis.
But not one to take things lying down, Dr Mahathir staged a counter attack, making public lists of recipients of Government contracts and preferential Bumiputra share allocations.
What was revealed showed that Anwar’s family and close allies were among the biggest beneficiaries of the Government wealth distribution agenda.
The sloganeering of cronyism and nepotism became muted almost immediately.
But after he was sacked, the sloganeering re-emerged and Anwar had by then re-branded himself as a reformist who was out to put an end to the evil practices.
And his supporters, civil societies and the Opposition parties bandied together to mount a challenge of the government but was unsuccessful and remained to be in the opposition until Dr Mahathir led them to the unprecedented victory against Najib in 2018.
But Anwar could not emulate that success and was substantially short to form the Government until Zahid and Umno decided on a post-electoral pact which resulted in the formation of the Government today and cause of numerous woes and contrary to the promised reforms.
Starting to be exposed for not being the reformist as he self-proclaimed, and unable to fulfil the many reform promises, Anwar persisted with his accusations of corruption, nepotism and cronyism on Dr Mahathir.
Against, Dr Mahathir, not one to take things lying down, sued Anwar for the accusations and asked him to prove all the allegations in the court of law.
After all, over years that had passed, Anwar and his agents had been claiming to have boxes of proof of Dr Mahathir’s shenanigans and all they had to do was to produce the proof in the courts.
Instead, Bloomberg’s report that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission’s had ordered Mirzan and Mokhzani Mahathir to assist the agency with an investigation into their father, Dr Mahathir, revealed yet another twist to the tale.
It is probably the first public revelation that Dr Mahathir is the actual target and not the children despite them being ordered to declare their assets dating back to 1981, the year Dr Mahathir assumed the Prime Ministership in the first around.
So, instead of providing proof to the courts of law to prove the allegations of Dr Mahathir’s wrong-doings, the MACC is now deployed to conduct the “fishing” expedition to find “proof” of Dr Mahathir’s wrong-doings.
It is by any measures an extreme if not a ridiculous demand given that the records of assets were more than 40 years old and that Government agencies, including the Inland Revenue Department, only requires everyone to keep their records for up to seven years or thereabouts.
Regardless what may emerge or not, the whole exercise raises questions as to what happened to the boxes of proof which had been kept since 1998, which is less than three decades ago.
By any count, it would be easier to prove something kept more than 20 years ago than having to search for something, that may or may not be there, over a period of more than 40 years ago.
Simply put, if the proof were there as claimed, if they were submitted to the court in the suit filed by Dr Mahathir, and after that, submitted to the MACC.
By any measure too, if the boxes of evidence had been there all along, surely the custodians would have kept them well guarded and protected and surely the boxes would have at least been pest-proof. If it wasn’t, then the boxes held nothing or there were no boxes.
Somehow, the myth of the termites emerges.
- Shamsul Akmar is an editor at The Malaysian Reserve.
