A HIDEOUS EVIL PREYS UPON THIS LAND...

Teoh Beng Hock, 30, political secretary of DAP state assemblyman Ean Yong, was to be married today. However, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission hauled him in for interrogation Wednesday evening... and on Thursday afternoon he was found dead outside their Shah Alam office. (Pic courtesy of The Malaysian Insider)

THIS IS RPK'S TAKE ON THE WHOLE GRIM AND GROTESQUE AFFAIR...

The MACC has been a tool of those who walk in the corridors of power for a long, long time. Officially, Barisan Nasional has 14 component members with Umno as the lead partner. Unofficially, Barisan Nasional has seventeen component members. The Election Commission is the fifteenth component member of Barisan Nasional, the Malaysian police the sixteenth, and the MACC the seventeenth. They all serve the interests of Umno and the Prime Minister.

The writing was already on the wall very much earlier. Alarm bells were wailing like banshees. But this was largely ignored. It was ignored because it was Malaysia Today that had triggered the alarm bells. Malaysia Today is not the most reliable source. It does not offer the best of information. What Malaysia Today dabbles in are rumours and innuendoes.

“Where is the smoking gun?” they ask. “Show me the body!” they demand. No gun, no body, then no crime has been committed.

Teoh's body was found around 1:30PM, 16 July, on the 5th floor roof of Plaza Masalam. MACC is located on the 14th floor. (Photo from Malaysiakini)

Well, today, there is a body. It is the body of a most unfortunate Chinese opposition member who was arrested and tortured by the MACC officers. Yes, he was tortured. And he was tortured because the MACC wanted him to talk.

But he could not talk. He could not talk because there was nothing to talk about. The MACC wanted him to finger his comrades in the opposition. They wanted him to implicate his friends in the opposition for various crimes that the MACC alleges had been committed by those in the opposition.

[Shukri Abdull, MACC director of investigations, pictured at left (Malaysiakini)]

He tried to explain that he is not being stubborn. He tried to explain that no crime had been committed. He tried to explain that he could not possibly implicate his comrades in the opposition for various crimes if these crimes are merely a figment of the MACC’s imagination.

So they continued to torture him. And he could no longer stand the torture. After all, he is not the macho type of man. He is but a gentle man who only wanted to get married this weekend. That was all that he wanted.

They threatened to kill him if he refuses to talk. With tears running down his cheeks he begged for mercy and pleaded with them not to harm him. They threatened to throw him off the top floor if he refuses to talk. Sobbing like a baby he went down on his knees and begged for his life.

They dragged him across the room and opened the window. Then something went terribly wrong. It was supposed to be just a threat. They just wanted to put fear in him. They did not really want to throw him off the top floor. They just wanted him to see what the ground floor looks like from the top floor.

The unfortunate young man panicked. He went ballistic when he saw the distance he would have to travel before hitting the ground floor. He struggled. They could not hold onto him. Gravity took over and the life of this young man was prematurely snuffed out.

The MACC then announced that they had released him the night before. They failed to announce that they had not released him from custody but released him from this world. Then they suddenly found his body the day after. He jumped. He committed suicide. He took his own life. He was never tortured. He was not dragged to the window with the threat that they would teach him how to fly.

This has been going on for far too long. The MACC acts like God. They kidnap families and torture those they arrest. They threaten those they interrogate with death if they refuse to talk.

Candlelight vigil for Teoh Beng Hock outside the MACC office in Shah Alam attended by hundreds. (Pic courtesy of The Malaysian Insider)

And now one young man has really died. But no one will be punished. No one will be punished because they will say the young man took his own life. Why he took his own life no one knows. He was never tortured. He was never threatened with death. He was not made to look how far down the ground floor is. He was not accidentally dropped when he panicked and struggled and they could not get a good grip on him.

That is what they will be telling you and me later today.

[Read the entire post here...]

Kim Quek: "Say No to Najib!"

WHY NAJIB MUST BE STOPPED FROM BECOMING PM

Posted in Malaysia Today | Friday, 13 March 2009 11:30

By Kim Quek

Minister Nazri Aziz’s barefaced denial of any wrongdoing by the attorney general and inspector general of police in Anwar Ibrahim’s black eye case in the face of incontrovertible evidence is an affront to common decency and an insult to people’s intelligence.

Answering a question in Parliament on March 11, Nazri said the then Anti-Corruption Agency (now the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission or MACC) had completed the investigations and concluded as early as September last year that both AG Gani Patail and IGP Musa Hassan were innocent of Anwar’s written complaints of fabrication of evidence. If that is the case, why didn’t the AG’s chamber use this conclusion to counter Sessions Court Judge Komathy’s decision to reject AG’s request to transfer Anwar’s sodomy trial to the High Court on ground of AG’s entanglement in the black eye case? Shouldn’t the prosecutors have used the AG’s “confirmed” innocence as the perfect argument in the first instance, instead of fighting doggedly from one court hearing to another just to ensure that Anwar’s trial could be taken away from Komathy and transferred to another judge in the high court?

Coming on the heels of a spate of daring and shameless breaches of the constitution and the laws beginning from the illegal power grab in Perak, Nazri's move to cover up for the AG and IGP is perceived as the latest manifestation of a new pattern of lawlessness demonstrated with increasing boldness and arrogance by practically all the institutions of state that include the election commission, police, judiciary, prosecutors, civil service and the MACC.

GLIMPSES OF THE NAJIB ERA

It is no coincidence that this new phenomenon of crass contempt for the rule of law only cropped up after Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi passed on the effective running of the country to prime minister-in-waiting Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak at the beginning of the year. Let us take a brief look at some of these events.

On February 3, the Election Commission illegally usurped the authority of the Speaker of the Perak state assembly to reject the resignations of Pakatan Rakyat (PR) assemblymen Jamaluddin Radzi and Osman Jailu, and refused to conduct by-elections in their respective constituencies.

The next day, Najib suddenly appeared at a press conference with four so-called ‘defectors’ from Pakatan Rakyat, after more than one week of cloak-and-dagger political machinations of “mysterious disappearance, hopping, double-hopping, kidnapping and bribery.” Najib claimed that Barisan Nasional (BN) had the majority to rule Perak with the assembly tied at 28 vs 28 with ‘3 friendly independents’, though the resignations of these ‘3 independents’ had already been accepted by the Speaker.

On February 5, after granting an audience to Najib and assemblymen supporting BN, the Perak Sultan ‘ordered’ Mentri Besar Nizar Jamaluddin and his cabinet to resign in a press statement. But Nizar declined to resign on the ground that he had not lost the support of the majority of assemblymen and instead, he reiterated his request for the Sultan’s consent to dissolve the assembly for a fresh election to resolve the political impasse.

The next day, the Sultan appointed a new Mentri Besar, Zambry Kadir.

Meanwhile, Mentri Besar Nizar (who has not resigned to this day) and his cabinet were physically evicted by the police from the state government building, almost immediately after the Sultan ‘ordered’ Nizar’s resignation on February 4. However, Nizar and his cabinet have continued to carry out their duties, initially at the official residence of the Mentri Besar, and later at another office after moving out from his official residence.

While both Nizar and Zambry and their respective cabinets have been functioning in parallel, a number of suits and counter suits have been filed between the two camps to claim legitimacy of government.

THE TREE OF DEMOCRACY

Confrontations between the two camps came to a head when the Speaker V. Sivakumar (left) called for an emergency sitting of the assembly to be held on March 3, which was rejected by Zambry as ‘unlawful.’ On the eve of the meeting, a circular appeared in the Secretariat Building to say that the building (where the State Assembly is housed) would be closed the next day. And Perak Chief Police Officer, Deputy Commissioner Zulkifli Abdullah warned that no one, including assemblymen, should gather at the building, upon advice by the pro-BN Assembly Secretary Anton Sabri that the emergency session was ‘invalid’.

The Speaker however warned that neither CPO Zulkifli nor assembly clerk Anton should try to thwart a legitimate sitting of the assembly duly convened by the Speaker, as any such attempt would be deemed a breach of Section 124 of the Penal Code, an offence punishable by seven years' imprisonment.

On the morning of March 3, PR assemblymen were denied entry to the State Assembly by a barricade of riot police under the command of Ipoh OCPD Asst Comm Azisman Alias who warned the assemblymen to disperse on pain of arrest. Also physically repelled by a group of rowdy BN supporters who threatened violence, the assemblymen retreated to a rain tree nearby, where the emergency sitting was formally convened by Speaker Sivakumar. This rain tree has since been celebrated and commemorated as the “Tree of Democracy.”

In this melee, a series of breaches of law were committed by public servants – State Secretary, police, Assembly Secretary – who failed to maintain neutrality and non-partisanship in politics in the current power struggle between PR and BN:

* Pro-BN State Secretary Rahman Hashim for illegally giving order to seal off the State Secretariat Building.

* Pro-BN Assembly Secretary Anton Sabri for usurping the authority of the Speaker to interpret the laws governing the state assembly.

* Pro-BN CPO Zulkifli Abdullah for illegally deploying his force to thwart a legitimate assembly sitting based on his ridiculous decision to accept the word of the assembly clerk instead of the rightful authority which is the speaker.

* All three have breached Section 124 of the Penal Code.

* All three are guilty of political partisanship, in violation of the civil service code to maintain political neutrality and their vows to uphold the constitution.

SHAMEFUL COURT SCENES

On the same day of the assembly under the rain tree, the tussle for power between PR & BN took place in another arena – the Ipoh High Court, where Judicial Commissioner Ridwan Ibrahim granted an order whereby Speaker Sivakumar "is restrained from convening any unlawful meeting purporting to be a meeting of the Perak state legislative assembly.”

I regret to say that JC Ridwan has brought disrepute to the judiciary due to multiple irregularities as well as hollowness of substance of the order.

In the first place, when he gave the judgment on March 3, his tenure as judicial commissioner (a probation judge) had already expired (on February 28 in fact) and hence the court hearing was unlawful. Subsequent belated renewal of Ridwan’s contract could not validate his judgment, as at the material time when the judgment was made, Ridwan’s status as judge had lapsed.

Second, he illegally barred Sivakumar’s lawyers from representing him and instead assigned the assistant state legal adviser, Zulkarnain Hassan, to represent him without his consent. This is a ridiculously unjust imposition on Sivakumar, as the state legal adviser Kamal Shahid is in the enemy camp, not only representing Zambry in a Nijar vs Zambry suit, but has also been publicly named by Nizar as one of the five architects who plotted the fall of PR in Perak. Besides, Sivakumar had never authorized or talked to Zulkarnain.

Third, JC Ridwan’s refusal to hold the hearing in open court on such an important case of public interest was unreasonable and smacks of suspicious intent.

Fourth, Ridwan gave his order in unacceptable haste, having deliberated for only 10 minutes on a 90 minute submission by Zambry’s lawyers without Sivakumar’s participation. Since this is a case which might be argued for having infringed on the constitutional principle of separation of power, it is not possible for Ridwan to do justice without hearing the full arguments on these constitutional aspects from both parties and without him deliberating fully over the issues raised.

As for the substance of Ridwan’s order, he only prohibits "unlawful meetings." Ridwan’s logic is puzzling. If a meeting is "unlawful," it is null and void. Is there any necessity to prohibit it then?

Sad to conclude, what we witnessed in the Ipoh High Court is a fumbling probation judge who, in his over-eagerness to comply with the wishes of BN, has transgressed fundamental justice. One may ask, why should the court have assigned such an important case to such an inexperienced probation judge (whose tenure had lapsed to boot), if there was no evil design? This is but one of many examples that our judiciary continues to mire in a state of utter impairment.

(Courtesy of Knights Templar)

CONTINUING SABOTAGE

While these debacles in Perak are going on, relentless sabotage has been carried out against the PR governments in Kedah and Selangor. These are in the form of harassment on PR assemblymen to defect or to quit, with bribery and threats and even sexual scandal.

In Kedah, various PR assemblymen reported offers of millions of ringgit to hop party. Notably, assemblyman Arumugum was so severely harassed with bribery and threats that he resigned his seat and escaped with his entire family to India to avert possible damage to his party. These incidents have been repeatedly reported to the police and MACC, but no effective action has been taken.

In Selangor, MACC chief commissioner Ahmad Said Hamdam (left) openly and dubiously accused Mentri Besar Khalid Ibrahim of abuse of power over the petty issues of maintenance of his personal car assigned for official use, and the distribution of 46 cows to the poor during an Islamic festival, after a swift investigation; while he shamelessly kept mum over numerous reports of multi-million-ringgit corruption against BN leaders - cases which have been sleeping for years without any action. PR Assemblywoman Elizabeth Wong was harassed to resign her seat after her nude picture secretly snapped during her sleep was exposed in BN-controlled media. Though the suspected culprit was known, the police made no effort to bring him to book.

These blatant double standards practiced with increasing frequency and vulgarity by law enforcing agencies, judiciary and prosecutors, and their overt political partisanship have disgusted the public and caused the popularity of BN in general and Najib in particular to plunge. But instead of making reforms to salvage public support, UMNO has pursued the opposite course of lawlessness and repression under the de-facto leadership of Najib.

Little wonder that the people are increasingly apprehensive whether Najib will bring the country to a state exceeding the darkest days of Mahathirism, now that they have seen the reckless destruction of political tranquility in Perak under PR’s exemplary rule of racial unity and clean and pro-rakyat government.

THE ALTANTUYA CURSE



On top of these worries is the curse of Altantuya’s murder which hangs over Najib’s head like Damocle’s sword. Najib should realize by now that no matter how many times he swears innocence, he cannot possibly cleanse himself of this taint - unless and until he and his aide-de-camp Musa Safri are subject to a proper investigation and exonerated by a court of law perceived as just and fair (certainly not the present court).

Now that Najib is about to take over the baton from Pak Lah, we may ask ourselves the final question: Do we want to see a Malaysian prime minister dashing around the international arena with the Altantuya tag hanging around his neck, as world leaders could not possibly be unaware of this Altantuya taint?