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Friday, July 9, 2010

More Qs than As at Bala PC: Who was Baginda a scapegoat for?


Wong Choon Mei, Malaysia Chronicle

The London press conference held by private investigator P Balasubramaniam has raised more questions than it had sought to answer, due largely to the conspicuous absence of Malaysian graft buster MACC and a media, perhaps cowed by a barrage of heavy-handed actions and veiled threats unleashed by Prime Minister Najib Razak in a bid to keep the truth from surfacing.

Yet, despite the Najib administration's mala fide, Bala’s credibility as a witness shone through and his willingness to help investigations into the brutal murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu and her role in a submarines corruption case was accepted with good faith by those attending presser and those back home in Malaysia who followed the event on the Internet.

Bala, a former Special Branch detective, was steady in his testimony and did not give in to sensationalism or embellishment. He held onto to the points he made in his first statutory declaration in 2008, offered some new information and sought to clarify lingering doubts.

In the process, he made several new and rather startling revelations. The most significant was that the man who hired him, Razak Baginda, was merely a scapegoat and deserved to be acquitted from the charges of having abetted two former bodyguards of Najib’s and his wife Rosmah’s in the Altantuya murder.

“As far as I am concerned, Razak is a scapegoat. He has got nothing to do with the murder,” said Bala. “Yes, he was financing her and he had a relationship with her, but as far as I am concerned, he is innocent. In fact, my testimony in court saved him.”

Why is it that all 5 people linked to the murder work for Najib?

A close friend of the PM's, Baginda's firm was given a controversial RM570 million side-deal in the Najib-sanctioned purchase of two Scorpene submarines in 2002.

But if Baginda was not involved, then who was? Frankly, this may seem like a silly question because a quick survey will show that many Malaysians and foreigners who have been following the case already share the same opinion – whether or not Najib and Rosmah like to hear it, defamatory or not.

And this why Najib, his cousin the Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein and the police went all out in the days preceding the presser to let it be known that they were willing and ready to launch a crackdown on the media including bloggers in cyberspace if they did not toe the line. Najib also forbade the MACC to go to London to record Bala's statement even though he can shed crucial light on the case.

“Bala and his three lawyers said many other things during the press conference. Some were just reiterating what he had already said before and some were new information. The new information that could be considered interesting is that not only are the two police officers who murdered Altantuya linked to the Prime Minister’s office, but in addition to Musa Safri, Najib’s ADC, we now have Nasir Safar, Najib’s personal assistant, who was at the scene when they picked up Altantuya in front of Razak Baginda’s house,” wrote top blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin in his Malaysia Today website.

“The point Manjeet (Bala’s lawyer) was making is that it now looks like all those who are somehow involved in Altantuya’s murder work for Najib. We have his police bodyguards, his ADC, his personal assistant, and his best friend and adviser. Can it be mere coincidental that all these five people who are linked to Altantuya’s murder all work for Najib?”

Scapegoats, but for whom?

The questions that Bala's London thriller-presser provoked are in the same vein as those that reverberated nationwide following the pronouncement of the death sentence on the first couple’s bodyguards. Were there masterminds involved and who ordered the killing?

The two special squad police officers, who had never met Altantuya until the night of her death, were found guilty of shooting her in the head and then bombing her body with C4 explosives to prevent identification – perhaps also to hide the fact that she was pregnant as reported by French newspaper La Liberation.

So the cruelty and oppression remains in Malaysia. Unsurprisingly then that a survey released by the Merdeka Centre on Friday showed that 66 percent of its people felt that they were powerless and unable to effect positive change in their own country.

Perhaps, this was how some of the Malaysian media must have felt on Wednesday, the day their bosses probably told them it was better not to ask too many questions or to probe too deeply. The answers that they get may be too 'hot' for them to write out and publish.

Still, we must not allow depression to settle because the fight for democracy is a long journey and a tough one.

On Monday, another battle front opens up in Paris, where Bala will tell all he knows to a French investigating team. Thanks to civil rights group SUARAM, which lodged a complaint on behalf of Malaysian taxpayers, the French authorities are probing allegations of corruption in the submarines deal that Najib inked with French defense firm DCNS.

SUARAM tells Malaysia Chronicle it is optimistic that Bala can help speed up probe and also hopes that the French authorities will display greater professionalism than has been shown by their Malaysian counterparts so far. The NGO also urged the French prosecutors to make public their findings even though it may implicate big-name politicians both in their own country and in Malaysia.

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