THE SULUKS’ FIGHT AGAINST MUSA?

ILLEGAL....Knowing Umno's illegal accruing of its 'fixed deposit', PKR had pledged that all illegal immigrants in Sabah would gets permanent resident status if it won the polls.

By : SELVARAJA SOMIAH

OPPOSITION Leader Anwar Ibrahim’s shady past in Sabah has caught up with him in the present to haunt his future. It’s an open secret in Sabah that Anwar, the de facto PKR chief, was among the chief architects responsible for placing illegal immigrants, mainly drawn from Suluk Filipinos, on the electoral rolls.

Anwar was at that time the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister. Which is why calls are getting louder in Sabah for Anwar to be called in as witness to the ongoing RCI (Royal Commission of Inquiry) on illegal immigrants in the state.

Don’t forget: PKR has even pledged that illegal immigrants in Sabah would all be given permanent residency status should the opposition alliance seize the reins of power in Sabah.

Anwar and the Suluk Filipinos are not too happy that Sabah Chief Minister Musa Aman had convinced Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak and mobilised Sabah Umno to pledge support for the RCI.

More alarm bells went off when Foreign Minister Anifah Aman had unexpectedly lashed out publicly against attempts by a special unit within the National Registration Department (NRD) in Putrajaya to issue birth certificates and MyKads to 40,000 people in Semporna alone.

Anifah doubted that there could be that many people in one district alone without personal Malaysian documents.

But the truth is, Semporna is undoubtedly infested with illegal immigrants, especially Suluk from the nearby Sulu Archipelago in the Philippines.

‘Secret weapon’

Anifah’s outburst on Semporna, coming on top of his brother’s public support for the RCI, was the last straw for the Suluk Filipinos.

Led by their “godfather”, they decided that the Aman brothers would have to go sooner rather than later.

Their “secret weapon” was to recycle the Michael Chia tale of being nabbed with S$16 million (RM44 million) at the Hong Kong International Airport. Chia is reportedly “close” to Musa.

But the truth is Chia is a bosom-buddy to Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department. So close is Chia that he had even given Nazri’s son a Hummer SUV, as a gift of sorts.

The story, as it now transpires, is that Chia was never caught at the Hong Kong International Airport with bag load of foreign currency.

What happened was that Chia’s hotel room in Hong Kong was raided by the Hong Kong authorities, acting on a tip-off which came from an estranged business partner of Chia, now at loggerheads.

In that hotel raid, the Hong Kong authorities found in Chia’s room S$16 million (RM44 million).

The Hong Kong case has since been closed but PKR and Musa’s Suluk Filipino political enemies do not want to cease and desist.

They are doggedly flogging the Hong Kong case in various recycled versions and liberally dishing them around among the alternative media.

A new spin from both PKR and the Suluk Filipinos is that Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail is related to Musa through his wife.

Dr M’s style

Hence Gani’s reluctance to prosecute Musa and Anifah “despite the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission [MACC] having concluded its investigations”.

But the fact of the matter is that it’s not the AG who decides on the prosecution of Barisan Nasional leaders suspected of being involved in corruption.

The MACC files on such leaders have to be sent to the prime minister who in turn will have to return them to MACC before they are sent to the AG for further action.

In Musa and Anifah’s case, even if there’s a MACC file on them, it’s unlikely that it has been sent to Najib.

And even if such a file exists and was sent to the prime minister, it is highly unlikely that he would be so foolish as to send it back to the MACC for onward transmission to the AG.

Remember, this is the system first initiated by former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

The MACC files on Eric Chia of Perwaja Steel and Kasitah Gaddam were under lock and key in Mahathir’s office for years.

It was his successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who sent these files back to MACC.

The rest is history.