Pesky French Lawyer Seeks to Return to KL

Sub scandal lawyer, booted out in 2011, scheduled by opposition to address parliament

French lawyer William Bourdon, the leader of an investigation into a long-running scandal involving €150 million in kickbacks over the sale of submarines to the Malaysian defense ministry, was due to land in Kuala Lumpur today to testify on the probe before the Dewan Rakyat, or house of parliament.

It was questionable, however, whether Bourdon would be allowed into the country. He was unceremoniously bundled out by authorities in July of 2011 after giving details of the alleged scandal in a speech in Penang to hundreds of people at a fundraiser to continue his investigation. Bourdon was taken off a flight at Kuala Lumpur International Airport by immigration officials and was put on another plane out of the country over his protests. 

Bourdon and his team, who had been hired to by Suaram to look into the scandal in dissatisfaction over the government’s investigation of the 2006 murder for hire of the Mongolian translator and party girl Altantuya Shaariibuu, were asked by Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim to answer questions in parliament tomorrow about the affair. 

Bourdon and Suaram have been battered by both the mainstream press, which is largely government-owned, and an army of bloggers who say the scandal has been overblown and that no trial had been ordered by French authorities. Neither Bourdon, Suaram nor Asia Sentinel, which has reported extensively on the case, have ever said a trial was imminent. But the investigation is continuing and investigating magistrates have been appointed by the French courts. 

As Asia Sentinel reported in June 2012, French police acting on a request from Bourdon’s legal team raided the headquarters of the state-owned defense giant DCN and its subsidiaries and came up with a wealth of detail that enmeshed former French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, current Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak and a host of others in the scandal, as well as top officials with DCN. Read more.

Musa Cleared By ICAC:PKR's Geobbels Rafizi Faces Legal Action

By Clara Chooi
Assistant News Editor

November 27, 2012

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 27 — Hong Kong’s anti-graft authority had written privately to Datuk Musa Aman last December to inform the Sabah chief minister that he was no longer under probe for corruption for a RM40 million donation to the state Umno chapter, according to the letter sighted by The Malaysian Insider.

In the December 22, 2012 letter, the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) explained to the long-serving state chief minister that it had started the probe after receiving a complaint against him, saying that this was required by Hong Kong’s laws on corruption.

But the agency said that upon completing investigations and filing a report with its Operations Review Committee (ORC), both the committee and the ICAC Commissioner had agreed not to take further investigative action “on the basis of the facts now known”.
The letter, which bore the ICAC’s letterhead, was signed off by principal investigator Tso Wai-Yan and was addressed solely to Musa at his office in Kota Kinabalu. No other individual was carbon copied on the document.

Sabah BN secretary Datuk Abdul Rahman Dahlan, who showed The Malaysian Insider a picture of the letter on his iPad, said the one-page correspondence could vindicate Musa and the ruling Umno against the firestorm of allegations from opposition leaders here of a major scandal cover-up ahead of the coming polls. Read more.

Anwar Dicing With Malay And Chinese Revolt

Malaysia's Anwar Faces an Islamic Revolt

Asia Sentinel.

PAS says it wants to run any opposition government that might be elected

The always-delicate relationship between Malaysia’s three opposition parties is growing strained again in the wake of the annual general conference of Parti Islam se-Malaysia, the conservative Islamic member of the coalition.

The issues are Hudud – Islamic law – and designation of Malaysia as an Islamic state. The other two wings of the coalition, the Chinese-majority Democratic Action Party and the urban, liberal largely Malay Parti Keadilan Rakyat, want nothing to do with either issue, leaving Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim with the task of trying to bring his coalition back together and particular to keep the Chinese-dominated Democratic Action Party in the fold. 

The controversy gives Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak a made-to-order issue to paint the ruling Barisan Nasional, or ruling national coalition, as a force for moderation that will look after the well-being of the Chinese against the forces of radical conservative Islam. The Barisan has already begun energetically exploiting those issues through government-controlled media. 

Until the Nov. 16 PAS general meeting, according to political analysts in Kuala Lumpur, the issues of Hudud and Islamic law which had been brought up occasionally had been regarded as fealty to rhetoric to keep the conservative wing of the party happy. Indeed, Hadi Awang, the party leader, opened the general conference on Nov. 16 with a speech that emphasized the common agenda – the so-called Buku Jingga, or yellow book on which the coalition is based –and issues over national elections expected to be held in April of 2013, only to have the conservatives stage a revolt. 

PAS has managed to stay largely in the moderate camp on the strength of a clique of leaders called the “Erdogans” after the moderate Islamic Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has headed the Turkish government since 2003. In June of 2011, moderate rank and file members staged a dramatic revolution at the party’s annual congress, electing secular leaders and abandoning the rural-based party’s traditional call to convert the country into an Islamic state. 

The largest party in Anwar’s coalition, PAS had long turned off urban Malays and other ethnic minorities, particularly the Chinese, with its demands for observance of strict conservative Islamic laws. Given the size of its membership, its organizational abilities and its potential to take votes away from the United Malays National Organization, the country’s biggest political party, PAS unity and support are crucial to the opposition coalition. 

At the 2011 party congress, newer, urban followers of PAS, having fled both the racial stridency and endemic corruption of UMNO and the disorganization of Anwar’s PKR, elected a slate of officers headed by Mohamad Sabu, a galvanic public speaker from Penang and former member of Anwar’s Parti Keadilan who was twice detained under the country's Internal Security Act. Read more.

Bung The Kampong Boy: No Stiff Upper Lip

Hantu Laut

A  'foot in the mouth'  MP. 

Bung Mokhtar is king leper of the Malaysian parliament. Uncouth, uncultured and crude as the crudest oil.

Buat malu orang Sabah.

I shall not waste too many words and prolixity on this boorish, loutish, oafish and brutish man. Synonyms that could fill up a ship's hull to the brim of its free board would be a waste on him. 

He is a sorry case of "familiarity breeds contempt"

Yang berhormat!

Bung, does not live up to his august position........ the honourable man, the yang berhormat.

He claimed here that he retaliates in such vulgar manner because a tweet made by some unknown person insulted him first using the "F" word.

Even so, there is no reason to for him to behave in such uncouth, brutish and ill manner. 

MP is expected to exercise "stiff upper lip" in the face of adversity.

Needless to say, he and that "I am handsome and people are jealous of me" minister need schooling and grooming in social etiquette and proper conduct of honourable member.

As they say "you can take Ahmad out of the kampong but you can't take the kampong out of Ahmad" rings true with Bung.

Why the fixation with Tony Fernandes ? 

He is Malaysia's best example of a success story, a man with outstanding entrepreneurial skills, amazing rag to riches success story that have revolutionised air travel for the masses and have made him and his airline a household name in this region. 

Tony Fernandez, is no thief, he is a businessman, who knows how to make money and who is not dependent on the gravy train and government handouts enjoyed by people like Bung and that of his ilk.

Malaysian politicians should learn not to be envious of other people's success, instead, they should learn from it, how to be successful in business.

There'll be less thieves in this country if more politicians earn honest living like Tony Fernandez and Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary.