Following is an article published by The Malay Mail Online complete with responses by TTF (in blue):
Note: Title was edited at 6.36 am. More to come soon….
LONDON: Malaysia’s Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad maintained he is still himself and operate in his usual style.
TTF: Oh yes, we’re aware of that.
It’s back to the dark ages of Mahathirism, where administering the country means making your children and cronies super rich while keeping the races deprived but hopeful.
When asked by an audience at his talk on “The Future of Democracy in Asia” at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, on Attorney-General Tommy Thomas’ remarks about him in an interview that he was a reformed character, Dr Mahathir said Thomas was both right and wrong.
TFF: Sorry? Tommy Thomas said what??
Tell me, did he not discuss with you plans to have Chief Justice Tan Sri Richard Malanjum manipulate the court process to ‘nullify’ Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s Port Dickson contest?
Or is he ‘planning’ to discuss the matter with you?
No?
Go ahead then, tell me I’m wrong.
C’mon, I’m waiting…
“I am still myself. I still operate in the same way, but I have to show respect for the wishes of the others, and particularly with regards to what they call cronyism,” he said.
Dr Mahathir explained he was actually helping people who were capable of making profiting from whatever business they were doing.
TTF: That’s right, it’s not called cronyism.
When you appoint yourself as Chairman of Khazanah and get one of its subsidiaries to hand over multimillion ringgit contracts to companies run by members of your family, it’s called nepotism, not cronyism.
Sheesh, to think that reporters get all these terms mixed up…
Say, I wonder what you call it when one of your friends … you know, Tan Sri Vincent Tan… is allowed to snap up government related shares at dirt cheap prices right after you scare the bejeezus out of investors by alleging that the national debt is RM1 god-zillion.
Or was it RM1 trillion?
“If you ask someone with no business knowledge and ask him to conduct business which he has no business knowledge, then you invite failures. So, when you give contracts — today we must do by tender, before there was limited tender, now with full tender, everybody can make a bid,” he said.
TTF: Huh? Tenders?
Care to run that by me again?
So the contracts that were awarded to your children’s companies by Petron and Telekom were through open tenders? And there was no element of power abuse involved?
On his relationship with PKR president-elect Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Dr Mahathir said he would hand over his premiership to Anwar when he would retire in two to three years.
“I have no problems with him,” he said.
TTF: Oh yes, you don’t.
You’ll just throw him in jail once your knight in shining armour, Zahid Hamidi, is able to con enough UMNO MPs to cross over into PPBM.
You’ll use the excuse that the royal pardon he was granted contravened terms of the Federal Constitution of Malaysia and that you “overlooked the fact” for some reason or other.
You’ll then throw in some new evidences currently in your possession to impress upon people that “Anwar has yet to change his old ways.”
Responding to a question about the 1MDB, the prime minister said that the priority was to go for cases where evidences had already been gathered.
For example, in the US, the money was used to buy properties and to produce a film, he said.
“The money that was laundered was our money. We have a right to that. We will negotiate with the Americans,”he said.
TTF: Let’s all wait for the so-called ‘evidence’ related to 1MDB to surface.
To date, Najib and Rosmah have yet to be charged for a single case related to the fund.
Dr Mahathir said the 1MDB issue would be dealt “one by one” and at the moment, it was about abuse of power by the former prime minister.
TTF: Bottom-line is, Najib and Rosmah have yet to be charged for a single case related to 1MDB.
On a question about countries involved in 1MDB, he said: “There are people who break the law in our country. Sometimes they run away to other countries. We do our best to negotiate. We cannot go to war.”
TTF: Huh??
I thought the question was about “countries involved in 1MDB?”
Source: The Malay Mail Online
