Malaysia's Mr 'I Was Surprised'

Mr ‘I don’t know’ brought out the forex issue, obviously to damn his arch foe Dr Mahathir. But he overplayed his hand when he excused former Bank Negara governor (late) Jaafar Hussein as basically innocent and generally clueless as to the humongous shenanigan going on.

It would seem as if he wanted Mahathir and a couple of others to be the main recipients of the damning impact from his whistle-blowing, even though his whistle blowing brought out more questions about him than Mahathir, as I posted in Malaysia's Mr 'I Don't Know' and Malaysia's Mr 'Not Responsible'.

Anwar’s wish to have the forex scandal revived had actually worked against his reputation. For a start, Malaysiakini reader Guna Sahathevan questioned Anwar's 'curious' claim he wasn't aware of, and surprised by the forex activites. Guna then articulated a series of news items showing the 'banking world' knew the Malaysian Central Bank was dabbling in 'gambling'. The series and publishing dates of those news items pointed to the unlikelihood of Anwar not being aware - as I had posted in Malaysia's Mr 'I Don't Know'.

Then, Rosli Yaakop, who was the bank’s economics department deputy manager until April 1994, shot another hole in Anwar's story. Rosli refuted Anwar’s assertions that the late Jaffar Hussein wasn’t directly involved. Rosli said Jaafar was among the main architects of the foreign exchange speculation that caused losses of up to RM 30 billion.

He rejected what Anwar had said. Rosli asserted that, contrary to Anwar's statement, Jaafar did know about the losses because he was right in the thick of it.

Anwar, who was then Finance Minister during the financial debacle, had recently named Dr Mahathir, Daim and Nor Mohamed as the triad who brought about the collosal losses.

Rosli said Jaafar could not be freed from sharing the responsibility together with Second Finance Minister Nor Mohamed Yakcop for the losses that occurred between 1992 to 1994. He added that Nor Mohamed was considered as Jaafar’s blue-eyed boy.

Rosli proved why he knew what was going on: “I was at Bank Negara then and I knew the inside story. Among the main architects of the forex speculation was the governor himself and Nor Mohamed, who implemented the speculation (scheme).”

Just a matter of interest, Rosli is currently PAS Negri Sembilan chief, so perhaps PAS doesn’t love Anwar as much as it used to. Maybe PAS has now fallen in love with Dr Mahathir ;-)

Rosli said Jaffar had initially sought to mitigate the situation by claiming it to be merely losses on paper. This was later disproved, with the real sum amounting to billions of ringgit.

He advised that “Jaafar’s biggest mistake while leading Bank Negara was placing too much trust in Nor Mohamed and failing to discern breach of Bank Negara regulations and (currency) market norms.”

He pronounced that, all said and done, the actions of Jaafar and Nor Mohamed had led the people’s money to “go down the drain” and had burdened the public.

He said: “Looking back, the punishment meted out to the late Jaafar Hussein and Nor Mohamed was overly mild and was not commensurate with the seriousness of the offence.”

However, I feel a bit sorry for the family of the late Jaafar Hussein. Why does Anwar have to dig up a story and then twist it around to an extent that people who knew what was going on would come out to prove him wrong?

Jaafar Hussein as governor of Bank Negara had failed in his responsibility but had already paid for it. He has long gone.

Unfortunately Anwar’s action has raked up the mud, the shameful memories, something best-forgotten for the family of the late Jaafar Hussein. To Anwar it might have been just collateral damage in his attempt to strike at Mahathir, but to Jaafar’s family, where would they now put their face on a matter that had died away long ago but resurrected for Anwar’s personal revenge?