Down the slimy slippery slope we go...

Musa Hassan stays on as IGP (!!!???!!!)

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 3 — The Home Ministry has renewed Tan Sri Musa Hassan’s contract as the Inspector-General of Police for one more year until September 2010, despite the opposition’s claims that he is biased and has not brought down the national crime index.

The 38-year veteran police officer currently has a two-year contract that expires September 13. The Police Force Commission had recommended the one year extension for the 57-year-old law graduate in July, The Malaysian Insider reported on July 13.

He came to national prominence 11 years ago when investigating sacked deputy prime minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s corruption and sodomy cases. Anwar, who is now opposition leader, has accused him of fabricating evidence.

Anwar’s Pakatan Rakyat has also blamed Musa for not fighting crime but instead pandering to the ruling Barisan Nasional government by harassing and detaining activists, opposition leaders and supporters.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak last week ordered Musa to take action against a group of protesters who dragged along a severed cow-head in a dispute over a relocated Hindu temple in Shah Alam.

Witnesses said the riot police on duty did not take action while opposition politicians complained of double-standards by the police, citing the heavy action against activists wearing black, holding candle-light vigils and Pakatan assemblymen trying to have state assembly meetings in Ipoh.

Musa joined the police service as an inspector on Nov 11, 1969. Since then, he has held several important posts including as Malacca prosecuting officer in 1973, Bukit Aman Narcotics Division director in 1981 and Kuala Kubu Baru Police College lecturer in 1986.

He held the post of Bukit Aman prosecution/criminal law deputy assistant director in 1995 and was Johor chief police officer in 2003. In 2004, he was appointed Criminal Investigation Department director before being made Deputy Inspector-General of Police a year later.

Musa succeeded Tan Sri Mohamed Bakri Omar as the Inspector-General in September 2006 despite allegations of corruption.

In July 2007, Attorney-General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail ordered the then Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) to close their investigations that linked Musa to the release of three members of illegal betting syndicates.

He was then given a two-year extension in September 2007 when he reached retirement age.

Veteran Umno leader Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah had also weighed in on the proposed extension a month ago, criticising the routine extension of service for top civil servants which he said creates cults of personality and promotes a cosy relationship between senior officers and their political masters.

[Source: The Malaysian Insider - images courtesy of Google]

And now the Wicked Queen is snugly ensconced in her Palace of Iniquity.
Her loyal minions, the Chief of the Uruk-hai and his Trained Goblins,
are ready to paint the town red...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, FOLKS!

STATUTORY DECLARATION FROM A FORMER ADC TO MUSA HASSAN

TEOH TAKES MACC WITH HIM

By Tunku Abdul Aziz

JULY 23 — The death, while under the care of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, in mysterious circumstances of Teoh Beng Hock last week promises to weaken further the already fragile public confidence in the government and its agencies in our country.

Regaining public confidence will not be a walk in the park for the government given its abysmal record of dealing with deaths in police custody. The government should never have adopted such a patently careless and cavalier attitude when dealing with matters of public concerns. The loss of trust in the government and its agencies is extremely unfortunate because by doing the “right thing” they could have earned and retained our respect, confidence and gratitude.

The initial handling of the Beng Hock “death in custody” case by the MACC could hardly be described as professional and this has fuelled a million and one speculations. All this is extremely unfortunate, but understandable. People simply do not trust the very organisations that are supposed to protect them anymore and, for many, the suspicion they harbour is based on their bitter personal experience of official encounters with the country’s enforcement agencies. Can the government fairly blame the people for feeling angry and resentful with the way the police, and now the MACC, apparently conduct their work?


I have never hidden my true feelings about the MACC. I have been critical of this organisation which, a few months ago, I described in my weekly Sin Chew column, as OLD WINE IN A NEW BOTTLE. I wrote in my opening paragraph:

“What a waste of public funds! The creation of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission will go down in history as a feeble and pathetic final clutch at the straws by a sitting duck prime minister best remembered for his inexhaustible supply of good intentions but with nothing to show for them. The MACC was hastily conceived against a murky background of a web of duplicity and deceit. It was a desperate attempt at deluding the people of this country and the world anti-corruption community that the Abdullah Badawi administration still had a lot of fire in its belly to make corruption a high risk and low return business. The whole process was nothing more than a charade, a sleight of hand that we have come to expect from this government. In the meantime corruption continues to be in robust good health.”


I also touched on the much hyped “Hong Kong model” upon which the new corruption fighting machine is apparently based — the less said the better about this. It is clear for all to see that the MACC falls far short of the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption’s template on at least two counts. The first and most obvious short coming is an absence of a legal provision that will allow a MACC officer to call anyone to account for his wealth and lifestyle that are obviously beyond his known legal income. There is the anti-laundering provision, but this is not the same.

The second is its much touted independence. The MACC is NOT independent. No one believes it is independent because its leadership has allowed it to become a political instrument that is seen by the people to work to the Barisan Nasional agenda. This is because we are manning the MACC with the self-same functionaries who developed second guessing into a fine art form under Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s special guidance. They cannot reasonably be expected to change their work practices which have become almost second nature to them.


I should feel happy because I have been totally vindicated by the recent events but I cannot, in all conscience, bring myself to rejoice amidst a great human tragedy, the totally unexpected death of Teoh Beng Hock, a young loyal Malaysian of great promise who believed passionately in change for a better, safer Malaysia.

If the government wants to retain its legitimacy to govern, it must rededicate itself to the principles of international best practices predicated on justice for all, transparency and accountability in the conduct of the affairs of state. It must clean out its unsavoury stables of corruption because it is corruption that has reduced this country to its present sorry state. As for the MACC, in its present form it is of no use to either man or beast.

Pakatan Rakyat leaders at Teoh Beng Hock's funeral on 20 July 2009

Its senior officers have to accept full responsibility for what has gone so horribly wrong so soon after its establishment. Seriously, they should get on their bicycles in full ceremonial uniform dripping with gold plated buttons and other bits and pieces and ride off into the sunset of shame and degradation.

[Teoh Beng Hock, right, had a promising career in politics and, at 30, was looking forward to beiing a young father and husband. Pic from his Facebook album]

EGO WARS: The Healthy vs The Diseased

From long observation I have come to the inevitable conclusion that humans fall into three broad categories: Healthy Egos, Diseased Egos, and the Unawakened Lumpenproletariat.

Healthy Egos are unstinting in their admiration and appreciation of true grit and genuine talent whenever they come across it. They are always ready to jump to their feet and applaud a job well done, a speech masterfully delivered, or a dangerous feat successfully accomplished.

A very positive sign indeed is the ever increasing popularity of truth-speaking political voices like those of Anwar Ibrahim, Raja Petra Kamarudin, Lim Kit Siang, Karpal Singh, Haris Ibrahim, Gobind Deo, Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, Nik Aziz, Husam Musa, Sim Kwang Yang, Kim Quek, Walski, Helen Ang, Art Harun, Nathaniel Tan, Bernard Khoo, Anil Netto, Tunku Aziz, Brian Yap, Pak Sako, Vijay Kumar Murugavell, Kenny Gan, John Lee - and now we must include in the list sociopolitical commentator and activist Wong Chin Huat (who got arrested on May 5th under the stupid Sedation Act for encouraging people to wear black in peaceful protest against Umno's hooliganistic power grab in Perak).

It reveals that there are a lot more healthy egos in Malaysia than anyone might have thought possible, after 22 years of heavy-handed misrule under that shameless distorter-of-truth, Dr M.

Diseased Egos are entirely self-serving, narcissistic and easily threatened by authentic ability and genuine goodness. Therefore they resort to snideness, sarcasm and insidious forms of cynicism. They also tend to project all their own worst traits on others, assuming that everybody has his or her price and can be bought, bribed or intimidated into compliance and docility. The ones with diseased egos are firm believers in upholding the status quo. They find it impossible to accept the possibility that genuine goodwill and harmony will ever prevail in a multicultural, multiracial country like Malaysia. They are convinced that the Pakatan Rakyat government will turn out exactly the same as Barisan Nasional. "Just give them two terms in power," the diseased ego opines. "Politicians are all the same!"

How does a healthy ego get infected and become diseased? One plausible explanation is the traumatic effect on vulnerable young psyches that ridiculous "teachings" about eternal perdition inevitably have. Once a child believes himself or herself to be "sinful" it will morally begin to downward spiral and end up incapable of empathy. Most diseased egos will be found to suffer from severe emotional disorders mainly due to lack of parental affection in their tender years. Is there a cure for diseased egos? Most certainly... but it's a fairly expensive treatment, so please refer to my banking details on the sidebar and deposit RM25,000 into my account before emailing me for some clues.


The Unawakened Lumpenproletariat is the Sleeping Giant that will radically transform the political landscape when it finally awakens - as all hibernating beasts must. Those whom we call The Long-Suffering Rakyat are the ones who will determine how the story of democracy unfolds. But as long as they can be kept asleep or in a permanent consumerist trance, they pose no threat at all to the status quo.


Thank heaven for financial meltdowns and massive retrenchments. When our kids can no longer afford to switch cellphones every six months or upgrade to the latest iPod or even chill at Coffee Bean or Starbucks, they might begin to wake up, take stock of the shit that's being shoveled down their throats, and register themselves to vote... Umno/BN OUT!

Asia Sentinel on the ascension of "a scandal-ridden party hack" to power

NAJIB IT IS

Asia Sentinel | 29 March 2009

Malaysia's leading ethnic party names a scandal-ridden party hack as its head and the country's leader

On Friday, Malaysia is scheduled to end months of waiting to announce its new prime minister, Najib Tun Razak, after the United Malays National Organisation, the country's biggest ethnic party named him their leader during their annual convention.

Najib told the UMNO parley, held in Kuala Lumpur last week, that it is crucial that his party reform itself or it will lose its hold on the electorate. But Najib's history, and that of the party itself, portends instead a return to the politics and practices that got the national ruling coalition into trouble in the first place, losing its historic two-thirds majority in the national parliament in national elections last year. Najib's ascent to power more likely represents a clear preference by UMNO stalwarts to return to cronyism, money politics and corruption after a six-year interregnum from the authoritarian reign of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

The new prime minister's history may make it problematical whether the leaders of major countries are going to want to be seen with him. Concerns include hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable contracts steered to UMNO cronies and friends, not to mention continuing allegations of his involvement in the murder of the Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu following the controversial purchase of French submarines and, more recently, his role in sabotaging the opposition in the state of Perak and his shuttering newspapers and thwarting opposition candidates during his own party's elections last week.


The convention itself was a good example. Opponents of the Najib team were denied places on the ballot by a panel supposedly charged with cleaning up money politics, although they let Najib's allies slide by after having committed the same offenses. The result was that the deputy president, Muhyiddin Yassin, and all three vice presidents are from the Najib faction although the Najib forces were unable to prevent Khairy Jamaluddin, the son-in-law of ousted Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmand Badawi, from becoming head of the important UMNO Youth wing. They also were unable to stop Shahrizat Abdul Jalil from defeating longtime party hack Rafidah Aziz to take over the Wanita, the women's wing of the party, also a Badawi ally.


The final election night erupted into name-calling, with allies of Mukhriz Mahathir, the son of the former prime minister, charging that Khairy had bought the votes to make him head of UMNO Youth. Mahathir Mohamad himself railed against the two candidates against his son, calling them corrupt. Rais Yatim, the foreign minister, who lost out in one of the vice president races, demanded that UMNO's disciplinary board investigate the entire new supreme council over allegations that they had delivered gifts and money to delegates in the effort to win their seats. Mahathir Mohamad has repeatedly launched furious attacks on UMNO leaders, calling them corrupt although he showed up at the last night of the convention to be seen with Najib and others.

The UMNO-owned New Straits Times described the top party positions as having "given much-needed breathing space to Najib as he sets out to unite UMNO and push the party to undertake the reforms he has promised. He will have less of a task to deal with the factionalism that so often arises after a bitterly fought contest in the party." But in fact, UMNO appears to be as much riven by factional politics as it was going into the convention.

As early as April 7, the party faces the first of three important by-elections – one for a seat in the Dewan Rakyat, or national assembly, and two more for state legislative seats. The first test is for a Perak seat in which support for the Barisan appears to be waning.

"The problem is not the opposition, but within our own ranks," a local leader told the Kuala Lumpur-based website Malaysian Insider, referring to the perennial problem of factionalism within Umno.

Najib has sought to nullify the opposition with force. Last Monday, a rally led by Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim was broken up by police who fired tear gas at the audience. Other rallies have been cancelled as well. Two opposition newspapers were suspended for three months, presumably because the two papers have hammered away at allegations of Najib's connections with the two men on trial for killing Altantuya in October of 2006 and her role in the €1 billion purchase of French submarines that netted one of his closest friends €114 million in "commissions."


To say Najib brings considerable baggage with him is an understatement. While attention has focused on allegations of corruption in the submarine purchases, the fact is that as defense minister from 1999 to 2008, Najib presided over a cornucopia of defense deals that poured a river of money into the coffers of his close friends and UMNO cronies. A September 24, 2007 story in Asia Sentinel quoted Foreign Policy in Focus, a think tank supported by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, as saying that "many foreign arms manufacturers generally used well-connected Malaysians as their lobbyists for contracts."

Three contracts approved under Najib have been widely cited by the opposition and fit well into Foreign in Policy in Focus's patronage scale. They have been forced back into public attention by his ascension to the premiership and by the exoneration under questionable circumstances of Abdul Razak Baginda, one of his closest friends, for Altantuya's murder.

Spending for defense accelerated across the board after Najib, called "the driving force" behind Malaysia's military modernization program by Foreign Policy in Focus. The shopping list, the think tank reported, "includes battle tanks from Poland, Russian and British surface-to-air missiles and mobile military bridges, Austrian Steyr assault rifles and Pakistani anti-tank missiles. Kuala Lumpur was also negotiating to buy several F/A 18s, the three French submarines and Russian Sukhoi SU-30 fighter aircraft.

It was the Sukhois that, after the French submarines, became the second controversial purchase brokered by Najib. The deal, worth US$900 million (RM3.2 billion), was through a Russian state company, Federal State Unitary Enterprise 'Rosoboronexport' on May 19, 2003. A company called IMT Defence Sdn. Bhd. was appointed the local agent for the Russian company and received 12 percent of the purchase price, US$108 million (RM380 million). The principal figure and chairman of IMT Defence is Mohamad Adib Adam, the former chief minister of Malacca, the previous Land and Development Minister and a longtime UMNO stalwart.

The involvement of IMT Defence only became known because in March 2005, a former director of IMT, Mohamad Zainuri Mohamad Idrus, filed suit against several Adib-related companies, alleging that Adib and his sister, Askiah Adam, "wanted to prevent him from exposing the reality of the Sukhoi deal." In 2006, Mohamad Zainuri lodged a police report alleging that Adib had stolen the US$108 million (RM 380 million) commission that was supposed to be channeled to the company.

According to Mohamad Zainuri's report, Adib had secretly registered a new company in the federal island of Labuan, Malaysia's offshore banking center, bearing a name similar to IMT Defence Sdn Bhd, allegedly in order to channel the commission illegally to the new company. The report was then sent to the Commercial Crime Investigations Department Headquarters. No report, however, has ever been released to the public.


Then, in late 2007, a third military scandal surfaced. Malaysia's Auditor General, in a report tabled in Parliament on September 7, alleged that a contract to build naval vessels given to PSC-Naval Dockyard, a subsidiary of Penang Shipbuilding & Construction Sdn Bhd, which is owned by another UMNO crony, Amin Shah Omar Shah, was near failure.

PSC-Naval Dockyard was contracted to deliver six patrol boats for the Malaysian Navy in 2004 and complete the delivery by last April. Those were supposed to be the first of 27 offshore vessels ultimately to cost RM24 billion plus the right to maintain and repair all of the country's naval craft. But only two of the barely operational patrol boats had been delivered by mid 2006. There were 298 recorded complaints about the two boats, which were also found to have 100 and 383 uncompleted items aboard them respectively.


The original RM5.35 billion contract ballooned to RM6.75 billion by January 2007. The auditor also reported that the ministry had paid out RM4.26 billion to PSC up to December 2006 although only RM2.87 billion of work had been done, an overpayment of RM1.39 billion, or 48 percent. In addition, Malaysia's cabinet waived late penalties of RM214 million. Between December 1999, according to the Auditor General, 14 "progress payments" amounting to RM943 million despite the fact that the auditor general could find no payment vouchers or relevant documents dealing with the payments.

The auditor general attributed the failure to serious financial mismanagement and technical incompetence stemming from the fact that PSC had never built anything but trawlers or police boats before being given the contract. Once called "Malaysia's Onassis" by former finance minister Daim Zainuddin, Amin Shah (right) was in trouble almost from the start, according to a report in Singapore's Business Times in 2005. The financial crisis of 1997-1998 meant he was desperate to find funds to shore up ancillary businesses, Business times reported.

After a flock of lawsuits, the government ultimately cut off funding in 2004 amid losses and a net liabilities position. Boustead Holdings effectively took control from Amin Shah, reducing him to non-executive chairman.

Umno veteran and former deputy prime minister Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah wrote in a recent blogpost: "The scandal is bringing shame to the nation and damaging our international credibility. For the honour of the nation, for the honour of the office of prime minister, for the honour of the sovereign institutions expected to endorse, confirm and lend authority to him should he become prime minister according to Umno's plans, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak should finally face these suspicions and implied charges, submit himself to legal scrutiny, and come clean on them."


"Swearing on the Al-Quran is not the way out," Razaleigh continued. "Scoundrels have been known to do that. The truth, established through the rigorous and public scrutiny of the law, is the only remedy if an untrue story has gained currency not just internationally but at home among a large section of the people. Najib should voluntarily offer to testify at the trial of the two officers charged with killing Altantuya Shaariibuu. He could also write to these newspapers and if necessary he should take legal action against them to clear his name and that of our country."
The case has troubling aspects that have increasingly been noted in British and French newspapers after Asia Sentinel raised them in 2007. They bear repeating.

According to testimony in the trial of the two men accused of killing her, Altantuya accompanied her then-lover Abdul Razak Baginda (left) to Paris at a time when Malaysia's defense ministry was negotiating through a Kuala Lumpur-based company, Perimekar Sdn Bhd, to buy two Scorpene submarines and a used Agosta submarine produced by the French government under a French-Spanish joint venture, Armaris, which in turn was bought by DCNS, a French contractor, in 2007. Perimekar at the time was owned by a company called Ombak Laut, which was wholly owned by Abdul Razak.

The contract was not competitive. The Malaysian ministry of defense paid €1 billion (RM4.5 billion) to Amaris for the three submarines, for which Perimekar received a commission of €114 million (RM510 million). Deputy Defense Minister Zainal Abdidin Zin told the Dewan Rakyat, Malaysia's parliament, that the money was paid for "coordination and support services" although the fee amounted to a whopping 11 percent of the sales price for the submarines. Altantuya, by her own admission in the last letter she wrote before her murder, said she had been blackmailing Abdul Razak Baginda, pressuring him for US$500,000. She did not say how she was blackmailing him, leaving open lots of questions.

The French government has never shown any enthusiasm for investigating French companies alleged to be involved in corruption in gaining contracts overseas. It appears likely that it will in this case.

After Altantuya was murdered, one of her accused assassins, Sirul Umar, in a written confession, said he and his boss had been offered RM50,000 to RM100,000 to kill her. In the 22 months since the trial began, nobody in court has thought to ask who was going to pay the money. Abdul Razak Baginda was exonerated by the court and has left the country to study at Oxford.

Again, What Did Najib Know And When Did He Know It?

VOTE FOR THE RAKYAT ON APRIL 7TH 2009

50,000-100,000 turned up in Taiping on 29 March to support Nizar Jamaluddin's candidacy for the parliamentary seat of Bukit Gantang. (Pic courtesy of Knights Templar)

BUKIT SELAMBAU (N25): S. Manikumar (PKR)

BUKIT GANTANG (P59): Mohd Nizar Jamaluddin (PAS)


BATANG AI (N29): Jawah anak Gerang (PKR)

Congratulations to all three Pakatan Rakyat candidates for the Bukit Selambau, Bukit Gantang, and Batang Ai by-elections on April 7th. Judging by the epic turnout (some say as many as 100,000 showed up) for Nizar Jamaluddin in Taiping, the people of Malaysia have absolutely had it with Umno/BN.

The only vote Najib Razak will ever get from me is for "Most Despicable Politician In Malaysia." I can think of only one word to describe all the self-serving creeps who endorse Najib as PM...

CONDEMNED!