Tun M, Lim Kit Siang and Liew Chin Tong will not like this article
Raggie Jessy Rithaudeen
Following is an article I wrote that The Third Force published on the 15th of September 2017. Tun Dr Mahathir, Lim Kit Siang and Liew Chin Tong are not going to like it:
It was Tun Razak, not Mahathir, who put Malaysia on the world map
“Trump promised his supporters to bring Hillary Clinton and Loretta Lynch to justice. The US president knows the duo conspired with fired FBI director James Comey and the US DoJ to protect Mrs. Clinton by concealing evidence from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Now, considering that the same players were involved with the 2016 DoJ announcement, do you actually think Trump believes Najib is guilty of anything?”
THE THIRD FORCE
For the past two years, the DAP has been going around town telling everyone that the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak, was a wanted felon in the United States (US). According to the party’s de facto chief, Lim Kit Siang, Najib was a kleptocrat who defrauded Malaysians by siphoning money from 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund.
But not only did the Prime Minister’s recent visit to Washington quash that perception, it proved that the President of the US, Donald J Trump, valued Najib’s friendship and aspired to seek greater cooperation with his administration. And that only made Kit Siang look like a total fool.
Embarrassed, the senior Lim got Liew Chin Tong to shift the conversation by penning an article for Free Malaysia Today (FMT). The Kluang Member of Parliament (MP) got to work immediately and accused Najib of destroying the country’s good name, a name he insisted was “put on the world map” by none other than Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
And that is what prompted this article.
Today, we will attempt to answer key questions that will reveal either one of two things – that Najib is indeed a wanted felon who destroyed the country’s good name, or that Chin Tong is just as big a liar as Kit Siang is and wrote the article in a desperate attempt to redeem the senior Lim’s dignity.
So, without further ado, let us begin.
Does Najib’s US visit have anything to do with 1MDB?
Let’s get one thing straight;
Not only is 1MDB the least of Najib’s concerns, it isn’t even a concern at all. The Prime Minister stopped worrying about the wealth fund the minute he discovered Mahathir’s and Clare Rewcastle Brown’s roles in sabotaging it. Once the conspiracy was uncovered, Najib knew exactly what needed to be done to prevent the fund from collapsing.
As a matter of fact, it may be Mahathir who has some worrying to do.
Members of the US administration are currently in pursuit of evidence pointing to instances of corruption involving the Clinton Foundation. It is only a matter of time before they discover the USD5 million that I accused team Mahathir of funnelling to facilitate an announcement by the US Department of Justice (DoJ). Now, has the former premier ever triggered action pursuant to law against me for making that claim?
No.
And neither has lawyer Matthias Chang, the man I accused of helping Mahathir insert the term Malaysian Official One (MO1) into the DoJ’s 2016 report. Come to think of it, I even accused Matthias of meeting up with Andrew McCabe to hand over top secret government information to the FBI and to solicit the DoJ announcement.
Now, did Matthias or Zeti sue me?
No.
And what about Clare Rewcastle Brown? The Sarawak Report Chief Editor claimed to possess the “smoking gun evidence” to prove Najib’s complicity in siphoning 1MDB funds. Yet, she failed to furnish a London Court even a shred of that evidence to support claims by Sarawak Report that Najib solicited political favours from Dato’ Seri Abdul Hadi Awang by offering the latter a RM90 million bribe.
So how can anyone trust what she says anymore?
And if we can’t trust her, how can we trust Mahathir? The former premier went on record to say that his allegations were based largely upon the “smoking gun evidences” Ms. Rewcastle published via Sarawak Report. But if her publications can’t even hold in the court of law, how can we expect them to hold in the court of public opinion?
Then why did Chin Tong play down Najib’s US visit?
For a number of reasons.
First up is the fact that Trump himself extended the invitation to Najib. Not only did that quash Kit Siang’s claim that the Prime Minister was wanted by US authorities, it made the senior Lim look like a total clown. To redeem his dignity, the senior Lim got Chin Tong to shift the discussion by accusing the Prime Minister of destroying the country’s name.
Had the senior Lim penned the article himself, Malaysians would probably have brushed it off as another attempt to hoodwink the rakyat. With Chin Tong, however, Kit Siang reckoned that Malaysians would be more receptive, as the Kluang MP was seen by many to be “progressive and intelligent.”
But that is not all.
Kit Siang knows better than anyone that Trump would be the last man on earth to want to meet Najib if indeed the Prime Minister was guilty of spiriting dirty money through the US financial system. Not many are aware that the Trump administration was founded on the principle of “draining the swamp,” meaning, the US President is determined to weed out corruption that seeped through the US administration during the Obama-Clinton era.
And to drain the swamp, Trump promised his supporters to bring Hillary Clinton and Loretta Lynch to justice. The US president knows the duo conspired with fired FBI director James Comey and the US DoJ to conceal evidence that was incriminating against Mrs. Clinton from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Now, considering that the same players were involved with the 2016 DoJ announcement, do you actually think Trump believes Najib is guilty of anything?
Now do you see why Kit Siang asked Chin Tong to play down the Prime Minister’s visit?
So Chin Tong was up to no good. Well and fair. Still, was Mahathir the first Malaysian to put the country on the world map?
No.
But that is the idea the former premier indoctrinated throughout his leadership. Back in the eighties and throughout the better part of the nineties, there was no internet or alternate “news portals” for people to get their scoops from. The only source of information available was that published by the mainstream media and the occasional publications by Harakah, The Rocket and Aliran Monthly.
Suffice to say, information that made its way to newsrooms was heavily scrutinized and somewhat tailored to suit Mahathir’s bigoted slants. His manipulative ways caused Malaysians to lose their faith in local dailies, such that the Najib administration is having a tough time convincing Malaysians that the government no longer advocates stylized reporting or shoddy journalism.
Nonetheless, it was through these manipulations that Mahathir got Malaysians to forget the contributions of the late Tun Abdul Razak, the first Malaysian leader to moot “the Neutralisation of Southeast Asia,” a proposal that ended with the ZOPFAN (Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality) declaration signed by Foreign Ministers of ASEAN member states in 1971 Kuala Lumpur.
But that is not all.
Razak was also the first ASEAN leader to have the guts to normalize relations between Malaysia and China. He had the foresight and wisdom to realise that China would one day emerge a world economic superpower and a force to be reckoned with. But the move served only to raise eyebrows in the West.
The World Bank, in particular, was concerned that a Sino-Malaysian accord would involve the question of maritime security within waterways surrounding Malaysia. Its leaders were aware that these waterways – the South China Sea and the Malacca Straits – would one day hold the key to China’s trade proliferation in oil and energy with Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
It was with this awareness that the global elites marked Malaysia on the world map for very sinister reasons. Razak inadvertently triggered an alarm that brought about discussions pertaining “a Chinese threat.” The elites began to formulate ways to impose jurisdiction over Southeast Asian economies just to prevent Chinese wealth from seeping through the Southeast Asian region and to prevent China from discussing energy with Malaysia.
It is for this reason, above all, that Soros and his team are dead against the leadership of Najib Razak. With 1MDB, Najib was seen treading the path of his late father, who opened the door for bilateral trade agreements with the Chinese government. The elites knew then as they do now that these agreements would slowly graduate into maritime security arrangements and nuclear energy ventures that would hinder their quest for dominance over the South China Sea and the Malacca Straits.
Was that the reason Mahathir looked east?
No.
Mahathir feared that a Sino-Malaysian accord would work in favour of the MCA and the DAP. By looking east, the former premier was able to get the Mahathirists to front for business empires belonging to local Chinese and kept each faction contented through the delusion of unity. Had he furthered on his predecessor’s policies, it would have been difficult to advocate the “Ali Baba business formula” as the Chinese government would probably have opposed it.
But wasn’t Mahathir revered by the West?
Not at all.
On the contrary, he was accused by the West of stifling press freedom in Malaysia. One of Mahathir’s loudest critics was John Berthelsen, a onetime a correspondent with the Asian Wall Street Journal (AWSJ). In 1986, the former premier censured AWSJ for posting a series of articles authored by Berthelsen and a Raphael Pura that accused his administration of fraud.
The publications cost Berthelsen and Raphael their work permits and prompted the New York Times (NYT) to censure Mahathir for attempting to conceal his crimes. In a 30th of September 1986 release, the paper quoted a Leonard R. Sussman as saying that the climate for press freedom in the whole region had deteriorated because of Mahathir’s dictatorial and oppressive ways.
But that’s not all.
Even after leaving office, Mahathir deliberately held up copies of an authoritative biography that was critical of his 22 years in office. The biography, the Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times, was conceived through a book that was written by the late Barry Wain, a former correspondent with the AWSJ who was himself based in the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur.
Yes, the Western civilization recognized Mahathir as a dictator and an oppressor in all but name. The US, in particular, considered his administration to be fundamentalist and accused him of fanning anti-Sematic fears. But instead of quashing that perception, the former premier fuelled it further by telling reporters in 2001 that Malaysia was not just an Islamic state, but a “fundamentalist one.”
When the elites could no longer tolerate his antics, they rang the alarm and signalled George W Bush to confront him. On the 16th of October 2003, the former US president pulled Mahathir aside during an Apec summit in Bangkok and told him that the “consequences would be grave” if he pulled another stunt and decided to stay on as Prime Minister.
Yes, that was how badly the West thought of Mahathir and his administration. And we haven’t even begun to talk about the years of oppression that saw the former premier encumbering his critics using the now defunct Internal Security Act (ISA). In 1998, Amnesty International even declared Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim “a prisoner of conscience” and censured Mahathir for detaining him without trial.
Yet, Chin Tong wants you to believe that it was Mahathir who “put Malaysia on the world map,” that it is Najib who destroyed the country’s good name. But what the Kluang MP forgot to tell you was Mahathir’s role in smearing Najib’s good name by paying Sarawak Report a hell of a lot of money to demonize the Prime Minister and to sabotage 1MDB.
And today, Mahathir is Pakatan Harapan’s Top Dog
