When Barack Obama’s administration began planning the US president’s November trip to Asia to attend various summits and deal with a number of important issues including the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in the Philippines and the annual ASEAN summit in Malaysia, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak was a favorite of Obama’s, a White House visitor and January golfing partner.
Today, Najib has become almost an international pariah, bogged down in two massive Zimbabwean-level scandals – one over the disappearance of billions of dollars from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad fund and another over how nearly US$700 million ended up in his personal accounts at AmBank in Kuala Lumpur, then disappeared out again to unnamed accounts overseas without explanation.
More bad news
Obama and PM Najib
Najib’s international reputation was severely tarnished again this week with a report on the Al Jazeera news network raising questions anew over the notorious 2006 murder of Mongolian translator and party girl Altantuya Shaariibuu. The program, which got Australian journalist Mary Ann Jolley kicked out of the country as she was reporting it, tied text messages by convicted murderer Sirul Azhar Umar, currently held in Australia, to the prime minister’s office. Sirul appeared to be asking for a bribe to shut up and was reported as saying “I won’t bring down the Prime Minister.”
That leaves Obama with a problem. At all of the meetings he will have during his November trip, his former golfing partner will be a conspicuous presence.
The US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, in an email, said only that the White House has not announced a visit by President Obama to Malaysia.
“I know for sure that Washington is concerned right now about what to do or how to handle Najib and the November trip. Since the infamous golf game, so many things have happened, and as a US government official you would have to be living on another planet – or an alternate universe – not to know what is going on in Malaysia today, and the truth about Najib,” said John Malott, who served as Ambassador to Malaysia from 1996 to 1998 and who has become one of the prime minister’s loudest international critics.
“So my sense is yes, there has been a major shift in Washington thinking about Najib. And their number one concern now is how to handle the November visit. They need to protect Obama. At the end of the day, Washington, as always, has two goals – foreign policy, how to advance American interests abroad (in ASEAN), and two, domestic – how to protect the president politically from any criticism here at home.”
The attitude of the administration in Washington towards Najib – at least to this point – is puzzling, and misguided. While he has cut a polished figure on the international stage, with impeccably tailored suits and a cultured English accent, the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur has been warning about Najib since at least the 22-month trial of the two convicted murderers of Altantuya, which ended in 2009.
Then-Ambassador James Keith and his staff sent detailed cables to the State Department in Washington – obtained by WikiLeaks in 2011 and reported by Asia Sentinel – that indicated the embassy staff was closely following the trial of the killers and frequently discussed whether Najib was connected to the killing.
The diplomats, like much of the public, also speculated that the trial was being deliberately delayed and feared what one diplomatic cable calls “prosecutorial misconduct” that was being politically manipulated. The embassy officials based their concerns on sources within the prosecution, government and political opposition.
Ambassador Paul Jones, who followed Keith, praised Najib, however, and was so enthusiastic about the country that he was given a “datukship,” a low-level honorific in the country’s convoluted system of quasi-royalty. That is technically a violation of the US Constitution, which prohibits such awards from foreign governments. A steadily rising diplomat, Jones emphasized strengthening ties between the two countries. He played Sherpa to the visits of both Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Malaysia. He has continued his rise through the ranks of the State Department bureaucracy, now serving as principal deputy assistant secretary. - http://www.asiasentinel.com/
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