“Today, all people want to know is the reason the state government agreed to pay Consortium Zenith Construction Sdn Bhd RM208.75 million for mere pieces of paper. They want to know what happened to the RM11.23 million the state paid HSS Integrated Sdn Bhd and whether the company fronted as a consultant to arrange kickbacks for politicians. Until and unless Guan Eng clarifies these matters, nobody is going to believe a word he says, not even if it concerns his own mother or even the cat that occasionally loiters around his backyard”
THE THIRD FORCE
Sometime in mid 2016, Pakatan Harapan embarked on a mission to showcase Malaysia as a kleptocratic nation. Its leaders decided that the best way forward was to harp on the idea that the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak, had siphoned billions worth of taxpayer-ringgit from 1MDB. Then, the minute a United Kingdom (UK) judge ruled that Najib wasn’t corrupt (READ HERE), the billion-ringgit story quickly fizzled into thin air.
The ruling was in response to claims made by Clare Rewcastle Brown at a Case Management Hearing in London. On that day, the Sarawak Report Chief Editor told the judge that the Malaysian Judiciary and Prime Minister were corrupt and complicit with the president of PAS, Dato’ Seri Abdul Hadi Awang. The bold yet reckless claim was made at a London court where Hadi initiated legal action against Clare for alleging that he received a RM90 million bribe from Najib.
To date, the Sarawak Report Chief Editor has yet to furnish the court with the truckloads of “smoking gun” evidence she claims to possess against the Prime Minister. That aroused suspicion among her supporters, who knew that such evidence had the potential of convincing the judge that Najib was more than capable of bribing anyone, forget Hadi. Slowly but surely, they began to see that Sarawak Report was nothing but a fake news portal designed to overthrow governments through the ink of deceit.
The London case put such a damper on Pakatan’s mission that the PPBM-led anti-kleptocracy rally at Padang Timur barely amassed 4,000 supporters. Hadi, on the other hand, was able to showcase his worth by bringing together 250,000 people at the PAS-organised Fastaqim 2.0. But it is the 21,800-ordinary folk who flocked the Kenduri Bersama Rakyat by the Prime Minister that sealed Clare’s fate for good. Today, the majority of Malaysians are convinced that the Sarawak Report Chief Editor had taken them for fools by furnishing fabrications to discredit Najib.
Today, people no longer believe anything the opposition has to say about Najib. They are convinced that Clare’s paymaster, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, is determined to destroy the Prime Minister even if it means sabotaging the government or destroying the economy. The Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) into the nineties forex scandal revealed to them just the kind of kleptocrat the former premier truly was. On the 21st of August 2017, Malaysians discovered that his administration deliberately concealed from parliament the RM31.5 billion Bank Negara gambled away through the forex market in the nineties.
It is for this reason, above all, that the people are finding it difficult to accept the claims he’s making against the Prime Minister. They find it peculiarly odd that he chose to forge an alliance with a kleptocrat from Penang despite accusing Najib of being one. If the recent spate of scandals rocking the island state is anything to go by, Lim Guan Eng may well go down in history as “the Chief Minister who robbed Penang of its worth and the people of their faith in him”
But not everyone can be intimidated.
Last Thursday, officials from the MACC disclosed that they had leads pointing to elements of corruption in the multibillion ringgit Penang Undersea Tunnel project. Then, just yesterday, The Third Force revealed that something was terribly amiss with the independent consultant the state appointed to evaluate the project (READ FULL STORY HERE). The tunnel controversy is the second in a string of corruption claims that have been proffered against Lim Guan Eng by seekers of truth and justice.
Ever since the Chief Minister was produced at the Penang High Court to face corruption charges, people began to take note of the discrepancies in the information he provided them. The illegal factory that inflicted villagers in Kampung Sungai Lembu with cancer fuelled suspicion that he would go to any lengths just to protect his cronies and make a fast buck. But it is the undersea tunnel project that convinced everyone that Penang under Pakatan Harapan was destined to become the nation’s kleptocracy hub.
Today, all people want to know is the reason the state government agreed to pay Consortium Zenith Construction Sdn Bhd RM208.75 million for mere pieces of paper. They want to know what happened to the RM11.23 million the state paid HSS Integrated Sdn Bhd and whether the company fronted as a consultant to arrange kickbacks for politicians. Until and unless Guan Eng clarifies these matters, nobody is going to believe a word he says, not even if it concerns his own mother or even the cat that occasionally loiters around his backyard.
Now, tell me, is it not ironical that Clare Rewcastle Brown has yet to discredit Guan Eng, or even Mahathir for agreeing to work with the most tainted Chief Minister Malaysians have ever seen?
