Smut video, scumbag and Umno politics

What was a member of the Malaysian royal household, allegedly from Selangor, doing at a screening of the sex video at Shangri-la hotel?

COMMENT

The story surrounding the Carcosa smut video has been retold so many times by so many people. Before Carcosa there was Flamingo. Before Flamingo there was even a private viewing for five people at the Shangri-La hotel.

I think those five people at the Shangrila screenimg should be hauled up for questioning. At each of these viewings, the main protagonists were present – Shazryl Eskay Abdullah and Rahim Tamby Chik.

At the Shangri-La screening, there was another businessman, a member of an opposition party and a member of one of the royal households in Malaysia.

It seems each of these people was to be conditioned to pursue a specific agenda. This was to have been achieved by having each of these people believe that the male person doing the sex act is (PKR de facto leader) Anwar Ibrahim.

The leading member of an opposition party was invited so as to give validation of the sex video.

The businessman – perhaps his role was to convince those people with whom he is closest. Rahim and Eskay – they are now the new paragons of virtue – the chosen ones to be the standard torch- bearers of the new morality.

It’s the role of the member of the royalty that is baffling. If the royal houses think they want to become involved in politics, please do so and expect the institutions to be attacked.

He is said to be a crucial link in BN’s effort to destabilise the Selangor government and kick out Khalid Ibrahim.

Khalid is to be replaced by someone more pliable to BN and Umno.

But first let’s focus on the video. We have not seen it, but let us agree that it’s a sex video.

Charge them

The producers of the video themselves said so – this is a video showing a person who is a leading opposition party leader in the act of engaging in sexual intercourse with a prostitute. It is therefore a pornographic material.

Why should the veracity of the smut video be established?

Why should we waste more public money and resources?

For the last 13 years, our country’s focus was transfixed to matters of the anus. It has been really “annus horribilis” for Malaysians.

As we shall show later, it will not be “annus mirabilis” for Umno if they think the misfortunes visited upon Anwar, either caused by others or brought upon by himself, are bonuses for them.

This is not a legal case yet – so it’s all politics.

Why should we offer protection to the three people who brazenly and smugly admitted they were behind the video?

I am also disturbed and hope others are too at the not too bright answer given by a top police officer to journalists who had asked if he was going to make any arrests. The top cop asked the journalists to tell him “to arrest on what charges”?

Well charge them with peddling pornographic material, for one. The whole issue has been politicised to a level of importance beyond what it deserves.

Anwar got away for the first time on technical grounds. That case and episode need not be reprised over and over again. Unless, the intention is politics.

Same here. The video is nothing but a tool for politics. The video hasn’t seen its day in court. So it has no legal significance yet.

Loyalty and friendship

If it does, the whole country will be thrown into a political cauldron once more. The sadder thing is, it involves basically Malays.

I am more interested to look at the moral issues there. To my mind, there is this question of loyalty and friendship.

Even among thieves there seems to be a code of honour.

The Eskay guy, some say, was a one-time masseuse with the national football team who ended up offering his services to political luminaries.

That’s how he got into intimacy with many leaders. Perhaps this was how he got close to Anwar in the first place. A close friendship developed between the two and Eskay wasn’t slow to leverage on the friendship he had with the nation’s number two.

It was Eskay who delivered the first cut. And the first cut is always the deepest, they say.

No matter what reasons Eskay gives to rationalise his decision to squeal on his friend or conspire to frame a friend, he should be treated as the leper that he is.

All Umno leaders must distance themselves from this kind of character. He gives a new meaning to friendship and loyalty.

The smut video is all about politics at the moment. Eskay has an ongoing case with the contractor who was to build the crooked bridge.

He will receive his money soon as the contractor has been commanded with a decree to pay up lest the whole affair becomes messier.

Here is a challenge to Eskay. If Eskay has the interest of the nation at heart as he claims to have, then he should pursue the matter in open court.

Let all be in the open. Malaysians would like to know who else are involved in the crooked bridge deal.

Malaysians want to know the identity of not only the fornicators but also plunderers and conspirators stealing money from the public.

Let’s expose all this economic pillage and those behind the theft with the same vigour and pious motives these people associate the revelations of the sex video with.

The writer is a former Umno state assemblyman and a columnist with FMT