Shahbudin: Azalina disgraceful on RM2.6b outrage

It’s better to scrap the Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission (MACC) and the Special Task Force.

KUALA LUMPUR: If there are those who are happy over Hasan Malek being dropped from the Cabinet, a political analyst thinks that such feelings should be held back as it appears that there are others like him in government given to blabbering and idiocy as well.

“Hardly three days after being re-appointed to the Cabinet, having been dropped in 2009, Azalina Othman Said emerged not only as another Hasan whom she replaced but indeed even a more chronic version,” said Shahbudin Husin. “Azalina has shown signs of suffering from a high degree, level four, of sycophancy and slavishness.”

Azalina, warned the analyst, shows that the Cabinet was composed of people who don’t have a finger on the pulse of the nation.

“If there are indeed people willing to hand over such large sums of money to government leaders, without expecting anything in return, it’s better to scrap the Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission (MACC). Likewise, the Special Task Force investigating the RM2.6 billion issue and the 1MDB scandal should be disbanded.”

Azalina was willing to give her opinion, said Shahbudin, devoid of all mental normality, and far from showing any evidence of the education she has received so far, on the RM2.6 billion issue coming in between Umno Deputy President Muhyiddin Yassin and the party president and Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, and being the reason why he was sacked as Deputy Prime Minister.

As long as there’s an opportunity to degenerate into sycophancy, added the analyst, it seems all other considerations can be swept aside and even stepped on.

Azalina, said the analyst, outdid even herself when she declared that the RM2.6 billion in Najib’s personal banking accounts wasn’t really a big issue. “She said it was more a case of the discretion of the person who gave that money.”

“She further added that it was not wrong for the recipient to receive the money as long as it was done with his permission and the recipient had a right to receive them.”

Azalina further said, noted Shahbudin, that “if someone gave me money under my name and told me to look after all of you with it, based on my relationship with the giver, what’s wrong with it?”

If a leader who is responsible to the people and has been exposed to corruption and returns home with bags of unexplained monies, warned Shahbudin, his own parents would demand an explanation. “If we go to a bank to open an account with let’s say RM500,000, the officials there are duty-bound to ask many questions on the intended deposit.”

“Bank Negara itself has anti-money laundering regulations which require any large sums of money coming in or going out to receive its clearance.”

Hence, stressed the analyst, it’s not logical to state that the transfer of RM2.6 billion was a normal event, one between the giver and the recipient, and not to be questioned by others as if “they had no right to do so”.

The language coming from Azalina, added the analyst, was no different from the numerous statements made before by Hasan, and include the notorious one advising the people not to eat chicken if the price of the bird goes up.

Another sign of Hasan’s idiocy, he noted, was a statement where he said that given an absence of complaints, his Ministry had concluded that the people were satisfied with GST and the oil price going up at the pump.”

Shahbudin advised Azalina to use her brains a little and consider where such an extraordinarily large sum of money, RM2.6 billion, could have come from. “Didn’t the Wall Street Journal report on Friday 3 July allege that the monies originated from 1MDB? If the said monies were from 1MDB which has since chalked up RM42 billion in debts, doesn’t it belong to all of us?”

The analyst argued that even if there was someone willing to give RM2.6 billion to Najib, the question was whether he gave it for free, with no strings attached, to a head of government. “It’s a certainty that he would want something back in return. What’s the price? Land? The nation’s dignity? Or just sell the country in return?”

If the recipient wasn’t a Prime Minister, i.e. a head of government, the analyst wants to know whether he would receive such an extraordinarily large sum of money. “By saying that there’s nothing wrong for a recipient to receive such monies from the giver, it unfortunately shows that it wouldn’t be surprising if we have many leaders like this, Azalina, in the Cabinet who are thinking along the same lines as her.”

It’s clear that if the people are going to go by Azalina’s interpretation on the RM2.6 billion issue, said Shahbudin, it appears that Cabinet Ministers and other leaders in government have a right to collect as much money as possible for themselves and that no one has the right to question them on the source of the monies and the reasons why they were receiving them.