Citizenship-for-votes: Mahathir says it's Anwar's fault

After dragging the late first prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad today has named another person to be blamed amid the series of revelations at the ongoing royal commission of inquiry into Sabah's immigrant problem.

Blaming his arch rival Anwar Ibrahim for dishing out citizenship to immigrants in exchange for votes, Mahathir said Anwar would “sometimes do more (than is required)” in offering citizenship to foreigners.

"What happens on the ground is often different from the directive (from above),” said Mahathir, implying that Anwar had been taking orders.

Mahathir said Anwar and the officers on site in Sabah had taken matters into their own hands and did not follow instructions from the top.

"He had a hand in it," said Mahathir, adding that he had ‘knowledge’ of possible wrongdoings by Anwar.

Mahathir also said he was prepared to testify in the inquiry, where several witnesses have recalled how foreigners were given instant Malaysian identity cards to alter Sabah's demographics as well as to engineer a BN victory during elections. He had earlier questioned those who were against immigrants being granted Malaysian citizenship, saying that by the same logic, the late Tunku should also be condemned for agreeing to grant citizenship to one million immigrants in then Malaya.

'Vatican plot'

Meanwhile, prominent blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin claimed that the citizenship-for-votes exercise was to prevent a “Vatican–Philippines” plot to turn Sabah into a Christian state in 1990s and eventually secede from Malaysia.

“Hence the Malay-Muslims from Peninsula Malaysia had to ‘do something’ to bring down the Christian government of Sabah and prevent ‘Christian’ Sabah from leaving Malaysia to join the ‘Christian’ Philippines. And that would be to dilute the Christian population of Sabah by bringing in Muslims and giving them voting rights, meaning also identity cards,” he wrote.

Petra had also named Anwar as director of operations for Sabah BN which had been reporting to Mahathir then.

“However, this was not something that only those two could pull off...Hence Seri Perdana, the army, the police, the Immigration Department, the National Registration Department, the Elections Commission, etc., all had to play a part in keeping Sabah Muslim and to prevent Sabah from leaving Malaysia to become part of the Philippines,” he added.

Petra argued that West and East Malaysia had differing views on the ‘stunt’ to save Sabah.

“To the Sabahans, those from West Malaysia or from Kuala Lumpur are traitors. To the Malays-Muslims from West Malaysia, those who managed to thwart the Vatican/Philippines plot to pull Sabah out of Malaysia to become part of the Philippines are patriots who have served Islam well,” he said

-Harakahdaily