by Wong Choon Mei
Prime Minister Najib Razak and wife Rosmah Mansor have a lot
to answer to. Already overflowing in scandal over massive corruption and
ordered by the court to testify in Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim's sodomy
trial, for which he has accused them of plotting, a former US ambassador has
dropped a bombshell.
John Malott, now the president of the Japan-America Society
of Washington DC, was in charge of the mission in Kuala Lumpur from 1995 to
1998. He told of how Najib had struck an alliance and understanding with Anwar,
who was then deputy prime minister, and how Najib later betrayed Anwar.
Both leaders were from the ruling party UMNO, whose members
were then restless and unhappy with the ham-fisted ways of Mahathir Mohamad,
the prime minister who ruled Malaysia from 1981 to 2003.
"When I was in KL,
Najib’s personal think tank was called the Malaysian Strategic Research Centre,
or MSRC. MSRC basically was two people, Rohanna Mahmood and Razak Baginda.
Rohanna told me that Najib and Anwar had reached a secret agreement. When
Mahathir was gone, Anwar would be PM and Najib would be Deputy PM. That was the
deal," John Malott wrote in his article published in Malaysia Chronicle on Tuesday.
"That never happened, of course. When the going got
tough, Najib stood by, and let Anwar go to jail."
Indeed,
sensing a shift in the wind, the wily Mahathir gathered together his trusted
lieutenants including former Finance minister Daim Zainuddin and slapped on
sodomy and graft charges against a stunned Anwar, who was then the darling of
the Malay community and UMNO grassroots. This was the modus
operandi Mahathir
was accused of using to nip in the bud potential attempts by Anwar to challenge
him at upcoming party elections.
Nuked
until he could never stand up again
Malott revealed even more
shocking information in his article entitled Malott
drops a bombshell: A secret pact between Najib and Anwar.
Razak Baginda, who years later acted as a negotiator for
Najib in the RM7 billion Scorpene submarines purchase, told a US embassy staff
that a decision had been made to "nuke" Anwar until he could
"never stand up again politically.”
Baginda told a senior Embassy officer, “The decision has been
made. They are going to “nuke” Anwar politically for all time to come. “Until
he can never stand up again politically.”
After that, a senior officer in the Special Branch told an
Embassy officer, “We are going to keep filing charge after charge after Anwar
so he will be in jail for the next hundred years.”
"Can there be any doubt about what was going on then –
and what is going on now?" said Malott, describing the onslaught by Anwar's
enemies as a "political decision".
The ex-Ambassador's startling revelations rang a bell for
Chua Jui Meng, who in the late 1990s, was the BN Health minister.
"Yes,
I remember Malott, he was a very active ambassador. He visited me in my
ministry and never struck me as being pro-Anwar. He gave a lot of time to the
other departments in the government as well. There was no reason to be
pro-Anwar anway. I think Malott is cheesed off at what's happening now because
this took place when he was around and was privy to a lot of top-level
information," Jui Meng, now a PKR vice president, told Malaysia
Chronicle.
"But I am glad that he has spoken up and made public the
information he had at his disposal. This will help to inject some justice into
our very skewed system and put some perspective in the anti-Anwar propaganda
churned out by the mainstream media on a daily basis. That is wholly unfair.
What I can share with you is that Najib has always been someone who swings with
the wind and win. And that says it all."
Treachery
most vile
However, Najib not only stood by, letting Anwar remain in
jail and getting beaten up by a senior cop keen to please Mahathir, 10 years
later in 2008, he and wife Rosmah had a 'chat' with a young man called Saiful
Bukhari Azlan.
Two days after meeting Najib, who was then deputy prime
minister and very anxious to sit in the PM's chair, Saiful lodged a police
report, accusing Anwar of sodomising him. It was a reprsal of the script Anwar
accused Mahathir of writing in 1998, in which he had been accused of sodomising
his wife's driver. From prime minister-in-waiting, Anwar lost everything. His
family was forced to shift out of their government quarters and he was forced
to spend the next 6 years in jail.
It was only after Mahathir retired that the country's federal
court dared to overturn the manifestly fabricated sodomy charges against him.
But not only has history repeated itself in 2008, Najib too
appears to have succumbed to the same dark forces that had guided Mahathir.
"Ask
around Umno circles and you will hear this too. Najib has never been known to
be loyal nor decisive. His political history is chequered with betrayals and
opportunism beginning with his betrayal of Tengku Razaleigh in 1987," PKR
strategy director Rafizi Ramli told Malaysia Chronicle.
"Najib will say anything to secure the post he wants, so
I am not surprised by Malott's disclsoure. It was an open secret. Everybody
knew Mahathir sought Najib's support after sacking Anwar and Najib let Anwar
down even though he was part of Anwar's Wawasan 2020 team. That is why he
nearly lost his Pekan seat in the election after that."
Indeed, when defending himself against the second-round of
sodomy charges, Anwar said as much during open court on Monday.
“This entire process is nothing but a conspiracy by Prime
Minister Dato’ Seri Najib Razak to send me into political oblivion by
attempting once again to put me behind bars. I therefore declare that I have no
faith whatsoever that justice will prevail in these proceedings notwithstanding
the valiant efforts made by my defence team. As I have said at the outset, this
is not a criminal trial. It is a charade staged by the powers that be to put me
out of action in order that they remain in power.”
Source : MC
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