Remembering the Asian Statesman: Lee Kuan Yew

October 10, 2015

A little bit of history will not harm anyone. That sounds trite. I feel that history is about repeat itself, particularly in Malaysia. It would appear that we seem to forget its lessons. Why? Simply it is because our leadership and public officials and pundits are not grounded in reality.

Our Prime Minister, Najib Razak, is unable to deal with our national problems, preferring to delude himself with his spins and lies, and recklessly clinging to power with the support of his fawning public officials, and doing all he can to prolong his hold on power and postponing the inevitable.

Today, Najib Tun Razak, is the most unpopular (and hen pecked too) Prime Minister in our country’s history and has to resort to draconian laws and repressive measures to silence his critics in civil society. I wonder how long he can continue to stay in his job when our economy is slowing down and when will UMNO Malays  wake up to realise that their President can longer lead our country.–Din Merican

Should Najib resign?

July 11, 2015

by Hafidz Baharom

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com

Personally, yes. He has tarnished the office of Prime minister with his continued failure in doing the one thing he had to do: lead. And quite frankly, I would rather he do so before succumbing to his “media triggered” depression, letting this country fall further into economic ruin and then promoting a “Twinkie defence”. Or, before he calls for martial law.

So respectfully, it is time to clock out, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak. And I’ll tell you why? In fact, I’ll write it out. The recent exposé by The Wall Street Journal has eroded whatever little confidence I have in the Prime Minister’s government, but I doubt his die-hard fans are quite in that position yet.

These are probably the same people who think the Titanic was an unsinkable ship that did not sink. Or to use Monty Python, still believe the parrot isn’t dead and is just “pining for the fjords”. Malaysians are a sarcastic and humorous people who have recently been able to channel this – directly or indirectly – through social media.

And with the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) public relations quagmire and the currently happening probe into how the Prime Minister had millions (or billions) placed into his personal accounts, the authorities have taken measures to try and keep this “parrot” alive through any means necessary.

Let us look at what is being suggested by these – for a lack of a better word – morons. First we have the conspiracy theorists, which include the Prime Minister himself. Initially, he had accused former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad of conspiring against him with the foreign press. When this was too ridiculous for the press to buy, or even the general public, he moved on to saying that the Dow Jones was conspiring to topple his government.

While there is a task force which is investigating these allegations, our Attorney-General found it necessary to task the police to look for who leaked the documents, even without first confirming that these documents were real or faked.

You read right. Insofar as the scandal has surfaced, the documents have been branded as “tampered documents” without any proof or revelation of the authentic ones from the parties involved. Why? Is it because the documents are classified under the Official Secrets Act, perhaps? And yet, a task force was established to investigate these allegations by an American newspaper based on these documents, and the Prime Minister is mulling action against the paper.

Personally, I would like to see this in court simply to see our Prime Minister take the stand and have the government prove that the documents released were  not real, untampered and untrue. It would allow the Sarawak Report, The Edge and The Malaysian Insider to then sue the Malaysian government for defamation and be vindicated.

Also, since the Journal is not published in Malaysia, it is outside the jurisdiction of the Royal Malaysian Police. In fact, can the Police actually take action against the Journal in any way or form since it is published and read online?

I sincerely doubt it. I’m guessing it is the same reason both Raja Petra Kamaruddin’s Malaysia Today and Clare Rewcastle Brown’s Sarawak Report are based beyond our borders. Perhaps our internet regulator will consider adding both websites in their Green Wall list – a list of websites inaccessible to the Malaysian public.

Speaking of which, we had a regulator weigh in saying that spreading false news on 1MDB was punishable by law. The Malaysian Commission for Multimedia and Communication (MCMC) found it necessary to even post this on Facebook.

Pro-government supporters are even considering the shutdown of the social network for nothing more than allowing Malaysians their right in expressing their views in the most hilarious and sarcastic ways possible – something that was guaranteed when we were granted Multimedia Supper-corridor (MSC) status.

Even going so far as to say it would make Malaysians more “productive”. Perhaps they would be so kind to practice what they preach and do so themselves, to set examples for the rest of us.

Of course, the typical UMNO leaders have also weighed in by saying that this is a foreign, Jewish conspiracy, but that is so overplayed by this government and its supporters that it rings on deaf ears. And then we have a leader of a bank who insisted on voicing his dissatisfaction and questioning the authenticity of the documents on social media, being shared by pro-government factions and being proven wrong. Sadly, his recant was not shared with the same enthusiasm as his calling the Journal stupid.

And he’s now being investigated by his employers, a move that I also do not support. We must not stifle anyone’s ability to express their thoughts on social media, and we should know where to draw the line between our individual and our jobs in the realm of social networks. For many reasons, this has been blurred drastically in the last decade when employers, the authorities and even insurance companies decided it a valid source of information.Even journalism has taken entries on Facebook as a source of news, as experienced by a fellow The Malaysian Insider columnist.

But all this makes it necessary for us to question a few things. Primarily, our government has embarrassed itself through its inability to follow up on former Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s promise for reform towards transparency, especially in the case of 1MDB.

Instead of allowing Malaysians and its stakeholders to openly view the wheeling and dealings of this company under the Ministry of Finance, the company chose to shun the press to the point of refusing to even allow reporters covering them from viewing their pitch at property events.

Even the Pime Minister himself destroyed his credibility in the court of public opinion. From being too fast on the draw during Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s guilty verdict, his “golf diplomacy” trip to Hawaii during the worst flood since 1971, the insistence on flying to the Middle East during earthquakes in Sabah, yet the quick draw ability to comment on “gay parades” and 24-hour eateries callously shows his failure in setting priorities for a country.

Adding on to this was his no-show from the ironically named “Nothing2Hide” closed door forum, his insistence on continued sniping instead of a face to face session with Mahathir, the MARA scandal and even the continued hiring of people to help his faltering public image.

All I can say is, this government was led by an ineffecive leader and an even worse a Cabinet that has led to the exhaustion of their political capital built up in the past 60 years, all spent up in the last decade. But don’t take my word for it. Let us wait for Merdeka Center to conduct their poll. Better yet, take a look at the Edelman Trust Barometer. In 2012, the Malaysian government scored 52%. In 2015, that number went down to 45%.

Erosion of trust, inability to defend the nation, an ineffective cabinet of dunces, a public persona of ridicule and allegations of underhanded dealings and nepotism, and more importantly, bankrupting the ruling party’s political capital, all of which have been highlighted by both government and alternative media.

UMNO Uses Whistleblower’s Arrest to Defend 1MDB

June 28, 2015

by John Berthelsen

http://www.asiasentinel.com/politics/umno-use-whistleblower-arrest-defend-1mdb/

Malaysia’s political establishment is using the arrest of Xavier Justo in Thailand to try derail questions over the ill-starred 1Malaysia Development Bhd Fund that go far beyond whether the whistle-blowing Swiss national did or did not steal and doctor documents and pass them to Sarawak Report, a critical blog run by a British reporter.

The United Malays National Organization has mounted a full-court attack on Sarawak Report and the Malaysian financial publication The Edge, threatening to crack down on The Edge’s printing license and driving a campaign through allied bloggers, the UMNO-owned New Straits Times and other media.

Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak himself threatened action against Sarawak Report, which responded angrily that there was no wrongdoing. At the same time, there appears to be a move to tie Mahathir Mohamad, the nonagenarian former premier and 1MDB’s fiercest critic, to allegations that the case against 1MDB has been doctored. 

For months, 1MDB has been under significant pressure both from the political opposition and some members of Najib’s own UMNO to come up with answers over what has become of RMB42 billion [US$11.3 billion] in liabilities the state-funded investment company has accrued since it came into being six years ago. Some sources in Kuala Lumpur say as much as RMB25 billion may be unrecoverable. Najib and company officials have been scrambling to find funds to meet regular interest payments, some of which have been deferred, apparently for lack of funds to meet them.

Thais Nab Justo in Koh Samui

Justo was arrested by Thai police in the presence of reporters and photographers from the UMNO-owned New Straits Times to record the event and print a front-page story accusing the “heavily tattooed Justo” of a long series of sins including theft and attempting to blackmail officials of PetroSaudi International, a controversial oil exploration firm closely connected to 1Malaysia Development Bhd, whose problems are said to threaten Malaysia’s entire financial structure. 

“This shocking story had the country talking,” according to the New Straits Times. “Who is Xavier Andre Justo? How could such a sorry figure have ignited a major Malaysian political storm? What motivated this man, so disconnected from the nation of Malaysia, to launch such a callous attack on our people without a thought for the consequences? The answer appears to be cold, hard cash. Greed can be a route to riches, but it can also be a dangerous road to ruin, as Xavier Justo is learning the hard way. Now, he finds himself in a Thai jail awaiting prosecution on charges of attempting to blackmail and extort money from his former employers; with further charges to follow in the United Kingdom and Switzerland.”

Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi threatened to take action against Sarawak Report and The Edge, a leading financial and investment news publication, both of which for months have been breaking embarrassing stories on the parlous state of 1MDB’s finances and on the connections between flamboyant young financier Low Taek Jho and Najib. Jho Low, as he is known, and Najib were instrumental in establishing 1MDB in 2009. Najib remains as the fund’s chief financial advisor.

 Home Minister’s Threat

Zahid charged that The Edge and Sarawak Report had been “spinning the facts” over the state of 1MDB’s finances. The government is armed with colonial-era legislation under the Printing Presses and Publications Act and the Communications and Multimedia Act to attempt to deny licenses to what it deems to be offending publications.  With Sarawak Report headquartered in the UK, however, Zahid’s threat remains an empty one.

Justo, who left PetroSaudi several years ago, somehow got back into the company’s computers to download 3 million emails that allege damaging information on the transactions with 1MDB and a company closely connected to Jho Low, as he is known.

There have been attempts to tie Justo’s revelations to Mahathir.  In a report by Malaysia Today, a blog also operated from the UK, Raja Petra Kamarudin said he had been told Sufi Yusof, Mahathir’s secretary, had made “a number of trips to Thailand over the past year to meet [Justo] and the Thai authorities are trying to establish this through immigration records.”

If the Thai authorities manage to establish that some of the documents and e-mails were, in fact doctored, Raja Petra wrote, “and that Sufi did make a few trips to Thailand to meet [Justo] and was aware of, or was a party to, this fraud, it is not going to look good for Dr Mahathir.

A Furious Brown  Answers

Clare Rewcastle Brown, the UK-based blogger who publishes the Sarawak Report, fired back with a furious 1,600 word riposte in which she threatened to sue for libel and defended on a case by case basis the documents that PetroSaudi officials alleged were doctored.

“Sarawak Report will be demanding satisfaction over these false allegations of ‘tampering,’” she wrote. “We suggest these misrepresentations are added to the list of potentially criminal activities by PetroSaudi, whose false charges on this point currently number amongst the allegations that have landed [Justo] in a jail in Bangkok.”

The blog, Brown said, “has closely researched the extremely serious and libelous allegations, which claim documents relating to our coverage of the PetroSaudi 1MDB joint venture were ‘tampered’ and ‘distorted’ in order to ‘creatively alter’ the truth. We can now prove that these allegations are demonstrably untrue, by examining the evidence on which they were based.

So, she wrote, “our message to those who have accused us is check your facts before you sound off your accusations and start to worry about libel suits, if you have defamed us or an innocent man who is now in jail. We can confirm that there is zero evidence brought forward so far to substantiate the claims of ‘distortion’ made over the past 48 hours by the New Straits Times and taken up by certain media, bloggers and UMNO politicians.”

Indeed, she charged, “the little evidence that has been provided by these parties can be shown to confirm the exact opposite, which is that there has been no tampering of documents. Even so, people who could also have made the very same checks have falsely alleged that Sarawak Report and the Edge newspaper lied and deliberately misled readers with ‘distorted’ information about 1MDB’s missing billions.”

The New Straits Times, she said, never bothered to substantiate “grave and libelous charges” by showing their readers the actual evidence.

“As Sarawak Report pointed out yesterday, we corroborate our claims, so why can’t they? The reason turns out to be that it is startlingly easy to show that the claim is completely untrue.”

The Prolific Fault-Finder faces an uphill battle against Najib Razak

May 30, 2015

by Terence Netto@www.malaysiakini.com

COMMENT: Probably the most prolific fault-finder ever in Malaysian politics is Dr Mahathir Mohamad. The faults he has found in others have led to the deposing of one Prime Ministers (Abdullah Badawi) and the replacement of three Deputy Prime  Ministers (Musa Hitam, Ghaffar Baba and Anwar Ibrahim).

This harvest of position-forfeiting flawed individuals is the most extraordinary collection of the fallen a decapitating politician is responsible for. However, in focusing on his third prime ministerial quarry, Najib Abdul Razak, Mahathir’s finds his modus operandi has been well learned and, as a result, a counter of some effectivity is being deployed.

The going is not so easy for Mahathir this time and that is because his adversary has mined some insights from Balthasar Gracian whose understandings of the springs and wheels of political mechanics exceeded Niccolo Machiavelli’s from whom the former Prime Minister has, undoubtedly, learnt an awful lot.

Nobody learns the art of politics from a book, The Prince, certainly not PM Najib whose reading tastes must run to books on management which explains the plethora of managerial jargon in his administration.

It’s unlikely that Najib has ever heard of Gracian, a Spanish Jesuit, an aloof and aphoristic cleric more concerned with worldly affairs than with a spiritual vocation he conceived in the 17th century. In ‘The Oracle’ (1647), Gracian prescribed the route to power. The good priest wrote: “To enslave our natural superiors by the use of cunning is a novel kind of power, among the best that life can offer.”

No doubt, Najib considers Mahathir his natural superior; the oleaginous way he has, until recently, tackled his predecessor has made it difficult for the older man to get Najib in his cross hairs with something less than charity.

That’s probably why there was a time-lag of six months between Mahathir’s withdrawal of support for Najib, announced last August, and an outright declaration of hostilities, made two days after Anwar Ibrahim was consigned by the Federal Court to Sungei Buloh on February 10.

Mahathir has moved with more lethal alacrity when it suited him. It was a mere week between his public humiliation of then Deputy Prime Minister Anwar at the opening of the UMNO building in Penang in late August of 1998 and Anwar’s sacking from party and government in the first days of September that year.

Till the last, Anwar has hoped that what was sinister but hidden in all the preceding weeks would not arrive at the abrupt and cruelly public denouement it did in September.

Mahathir is a systematic and relentless man, moving step by step, stage by stage towards the attainment of his goals. Nothing is spontaneous, everything is planned. Not for nothing was he, a medical doctor, the first occupant of the PM’s office from the sciences and not the humanities, as his three predecessors in the post were.

The scientific habit of holding facts in solution marks his approach to political affairs: he owes no allegiance to what is true, except that which it suits him to say, at any one time, is true.

A plum pudding of a chance

Both Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Mahathir’s second prime ministerial casualty, and now Najib let go a plum pudding of a chance to nail the Mahathir when they had the opportunity.

Abdullah shelved the Royal Commission of Inquiry’s (RCI) report of March 2008 on the Lingam videotape which recommended that legal action be taken against Mahathir and a slew of political and judicial officials for offences that included case- and judge-fixing. Those were no small offences. You only allow someone to get off the hook on those charges if you cared not for what the let-offs do to the system.

Even graver than the fault of case- and judge-fixing is that of granting shady foreigners citizenship, just so their votes can help win elections. In addition to electoral fraud, the sins here savour of treason.

Yet, Najib and his cohort of senior civil servants and former and serving judicial officers contrived to shunt the Royal Commission of Inquiry into illegals in Sabah from arriving at a conclusion that would have been disastrous for Mahathir though the testimony adduced before the RCI moved more plausibly towards indicting Mahathir than the tendered evidence that he committed a sexual crime moved against Anwar in his trials for sodomy.

Fat chance you get any favours from Mahathir for let-offs you grant him once he has already decided that you are his next target.

However, it now seems that the Najib forces have an arrow in their quiver: the newly-formed Citizens for Accountable Good Governance (CAGG) has asked Mahathir to account for the billions of ringgit in taxpayers’ money that were squandered during the 22 years (1981-2003) that he was PM.

In a nice display of chutzpah, the NGO’s spokesperson Mohd Zainal Abidin said they are not taking sides and would go after other Prime Ministers, including Najib, once they are done with Mahathir.

Mohd Zainal threatened to file a citizen’s lawsuit for the amount of RM50 billion against Mahathir should he not explain the ventures that incurred losses of over RM100 billion under his prime ministerial watch.

This development only means that Mahathir’s battle to oust Najib is more steeply uphill now, with the onus of eviction of Najib on reasonable grounds falling more onerously on Mahathir himself.

Given that Mahathir is the unrelenting sort, he will not give up but will have to come up with more compelling reasons than he has thus far offered for Najib’s ouster.This is now a clash between a relentless force and an immovable object with not a little guile, a la Gracian, behind it.

Who is going to win is not as important as the vitalness of an inevitable byproduct: the battle will destroy in the Malay mind what it has been hard for it to grasp – that UMNO has been more blight than boon to its long-term future.

If that happens, it will be a supremely good upshot.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.
 

UMNO leaders complicit in 1MDB cover-up

May 24, 2015

Phnom Penh

COMMENT

by Matthias Chang@ http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com

The Prime Minister cum Financial Minister (above), being a member of Parliament cannot be deemed ignorant of this fraudulent misrepresentation. Answers to parliamentary questions, whether from backbenchers or the opposition, are vetted before presented in Parliament. If the cash has been “diverted” or “unaccounted for” there is a basis for a charge of criminal breach of trust by all the relevant personalities involved in the transaction. There may also be elements of corruption.–Matthias Chang

It is elementary, Mr.Najib. You cannot be ignorant of what constitutes cash. Even a child knows what cash is, and when cash is deposited in a bank, the bank statement would reflect the cash deposited in the bank. Any paper or document other than cash cannot be deposited and reflected in a bank statement as cash.

Documents such as share certificates, treasury notes or bonds or other documents that are not considered as money, when deposited in a bank for whatever reason or placed in a fixed deposit box are never ever reflected in a bank statement.

The Minister of Finance, treasury officials, and members of the 1MDB Board of directors and its advisers are all experienced in finance and cannot by any stretch of the imagination be deemed ignorant of what is cash.

The balance sum amounting to US$1.103 billion is not some chump change and, when converted to Malaysian ringgit, would be more than RM3 billion. Therefore it is inconceivable that the Prime Minister, who is also the Finance Minister, and senior officials in the Ministry of Finance and Bank Negara do not know the difference between cash deposited in a bank and some “paper assets” to be held by the bank in Singapore, allegedly as custodian.

Therefore it is unpardonable that the Prime Minister, who is also the Finance Minister, and senior officials in the Ministry of Finance and Bank Negara do not know the difference between cash deposited in a bank and some “paper assets” to be held by the bank in Singapore, allegedly as custodian.

So when Ministry of Finance replied to Tony Pua’s queries in March 2015, surely its officials must have checked with the bank in Singapore or examined the relevant documents from 1MDB before confirming that 1MDB had “redeemed its balance of investment from the Cayman Islands in cash and transferred it to BSI Singapore”.

However, MOF has now issued a contradictory statement. A news report said, “The Finance Ministry has corrected its Parliamentary written reply in March that said the US$1.1 billion transferred by 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) from Cayman Islands to Singapore was not in cash.

“According to the latest written reply to Petaling Jaya Utara MP Tony Pua, the Ministry said the money that was “redeemed” was in the form of assets in US dollars.”

We cannot but agree that this is the Malaysian scandal of the century. Heinous and despicable crimes have been committed.

Why?

1. For MOF to have issued the statement in March, forged documents must have been presented to show that cash was in fact deposited. This was corroborated by the current CEO, who said recently that the bank statement reflected that cash was so deposited. But the bank in Singapore has denied that cash had been deposited.
2. The criminal offence of fraud and forgery is prima facie established and all the relevant personalities concerned with this transaction must be charged and it is for them to offer their defence in a court hearing
3. When the statement by MOF/Prime Minister was made in Parliament that cash was deposited when it was not true, the august house was misled by a fraudulent misrepresentation. It was a blatant contempt of the house. The entire country was misled. The rakyat was cheated and led to believe a falsehood.
4. In the past, members of Parliament were suspended for making a mere misrepresentation with no adverse financial consequences to the country. The members were penalised because the misstatement constituted an affront to the integrity of the proceedings of Parliament as well as to Parliament itself.
5. The Prime Minister cum Financial Minister, being a member of Parliament cannot be deemed ignorant of this fraudulent misrepresentation. Answers to parliamentary questions, whether from backbenchers or the opposition, are vetted before presented in Parliament.
6. If the cash has been “diverted” or “unaccounted for” there is a basis for a charge of criminal breach of trust by all the relevant personalities involved in the transaction. There may also be elements of corruption.
7. The period between the March 10 and May 20 announcements in Parliament would by any measure be construed as a period when there was a massive cover-up. And all those personalities involved are accomplices in this cover-up.

The Deputy Prime Minister, the heads of Wanita UMNO and UMNO Youth and the members of the party’s Supreme Council, have failed to demand answers and to insist on seeing all the relevant documents so as to verify for themselves the truth or falsehood of the allegations brought by all concerned citizens. They should have done so especially after the bank in Singapore had declared the banking documents showing cash was deposited was a forgery. Alarm bells ought to have rung loud and clear, but these leading members of Umno chose to bury their heads in the sand and slavishly declare their so-called undivided support to the Prime Minister.

The Board of 1MDB even had the audacity to threaten to sue any one who dared question its integrity. Shame on you, UMNO.

The Prime Minister must resign and if UMNO leaders do not demand the resignation of the Prime Minister and continue to use their public office to deny this irrefutable confession by the MOF then they are all complicit in this heinous crime.

All the UMNO leaders who have accused Tun Mahathir Mohamad of wrongfully criticising the Prime Minister and sounding the alarm bells and raising the red flag of imminent crisis should humbly seek forgiveness not only from him, but from the entire country. The rakyat demands a public apology and the culprits must be charged in court for their crimes.

Matthias Chang is a Barrister and once served as the political secretary of Dr. Mahathir Mohamad

New Political Party in Malaysia–Parti Ikatan Bangsa Malaysia (Ikatan)

May 15, 2015

Phnom Penh by The Mekong

Tan Sri Kadir,

I am sorry that I am unable to be with you and your friends at the launch of Ikatan. It is interesting to note that 76 you still have enough energy and determination to be in the rough and tumble of Malaysian politics. It will be tough to make a comeback given the fact you have been associated with UMNO Baru, a corrupt and racist party over many years and have served both Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

Your immediate challenge to convince voters that your party is in for the long haul, not a flash in the pan; that you have the sustaining power in terms of finance and organization;  and a team of outstanding and highly motivated leaders, political strategists, and operatives to carry your message throughout the length and breadth of our expansive country. I  think you now must explain fully why this change of heart and the need to return to politics.

You have made all the encouraging remarks at the launch, giving hope to Malaysians who are desperate for change. I wish you and your team, backers and supporters all the best. As an old friend and fellow Kedahan, you have my good wishes for your continued good health. Your second chance has come but please be sure that you remain true to your cause and not succumb to the temptations of power.--Din Merican

by Alyaa Azhar@www.malaysiakini.com

Former Information Minister Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadzir today launched a new political party named Parti Ikatan Bangsa Malaysia (Ikatan) which he claims to be ‘pro-rakyat’.

“After struggling so hard for more than two years and with the help of a court order, Ikatan is finally registered,” Kadir said in his speech to some 300 people in attendance at the launching ceremony in Seri Kembangan.Kadir said his party was neither pro-BN nor pro-opposition and was instead closely aligned with the spirit of the country’s founding fathers and the aspirations of the country’s future generations. He also explained that the party’s focus would not be on the next general election, which is due in 2018.

“Hence, we are free to push our position on the various issues facing the country that would bring maximum benefit to the rakyat, the country and to our future generations. We need not be ‘populist’,” Kadir added.

‘We will be more issue-based’

Asked at a press conference held after the launch, Kadir said Ikatan would make a stand (on whether to contest in the next general election or not) when the time comes. As to whether the party planned to work together with other political parties, Kadir reiterated that the party is not placing its focus on the next general election.

“We are more concerned about various issues in the country. As such, we will be more issue-based.If we are on the same wavelength with Pakatan on certain issues, then we are with them. It’s the same if the government has good policies. What is good for the rakyat, we will give our support,” he said.

He also expressed confidence that many out there actually supported the party. “Many want to support us, but they are probably scared that they will not get contracts. “Many out there support us. But I prefer new faces. Although they are new, they know what’s happening in the country,” he said, adding that the party will be guided by the values of the country’s founding fathers.

Pointing out how the current spirit has veered far from the spirit then, issues such as corruption and power abuse are rampant today, he said.

“Back then, all these things did not happen. Our leaders knew that they cannot touch the rakyat’s money,” Kadir said, adding that the rakyat were initially successful due to the strong foundations set by the founding fathers.

Nevertheless, as based on 6,000 years of human history, Kadir said bad habits would set in for any government that remains in power for more than 30 years, continuously. “The present government in our country has been in power continiously for more than 57 years. It is not surprising that decadence and corrupt practices have set in.

“Corrupt practices are committed on a huge scale, without any feeling or consideration for the ordinary rakyat,” he said. Kadir also expressed confidence that without corruption, Malaysia would have long become a high income and developed country.

‘Close one eye, or else…’

“When you are already corrupt, it comes naturally to abuse power, which leads to wastage. If the political leadership is like that, when those under you want to steal a little, you close one eye. Because if you don’t, then your secret will be out. So it’s just like ‘I scratch your back, you scratch mine’,” he said.

Stressing that he was speaking on behalf of the souls of those who have passed on, Kadir added that he believes they were all “crying in their graves” as they  looked at the country’s current state. He also denied that he had launched the party because he was “ambitious”.

“I have been a minister, I even had to pujuk Pak Lah (former prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, right) for nine months for him to let me resign.I deserve to have a good life, but I can’t sleep soundly thinking about our founding fathers,” he said.

Asked on whether the party supported former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad or Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak in the tiff between the two, Kadir said his party would wait for investigations that are currently under way. “If the Prime Minister is wrong, then he is wrong and he will be punished. If he is not wrong, then what can we do? We just want investigations on 1MDB to be expedited. If he is not wrong, we won’t say he is in the wrong because that would be opportunistic politics,” he said.

Asked to comment on Najib’s leadership, Kadir said he preferred not to be “personal”. “We will not be personal in fighting for issues,” he said.

Meanwhile, the 76-year-old said they were determined to be a “massed-based” party with divisions and branches throughout the country.

“On Malaysia Day (Septeber 16), we hope to introduce to the rakyat the whole national leadership of Ikatan from all over the country. The recruitment drive for members starts today and those interested can register online,” he said.

Apart from Kadir’s speech and the press conference today, the launch saw party members leading the audience in reciting the “Rukun Negara”. The “Amanat Merdeka” of the country’s first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra, was also read by his grandson, Tunku Muinuddin Putra, who is also Ikatan’s Vice-President.