The new elegance of 'Dunno'

Once again, in malaysiakini, we learnt from the tireless Lim Kit Siang how our PM hasn’t been quite on his expensively-shoed toes.

The Opposition Grand Olde Man rapped Mr Elegant Silence for not even knowing who is the minister named in a NGO’s report (inclusive of evidence) about a high level corruption case, already submitted to the PM.

I guess that would now change his elegant title to Mr Elegant Dunno.

malaysiakini also informs us that ‘Last month, Movement for Democracy and Anti-Corruption (Gerak) submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office a 632-page report containing allegations of criminal breach of trust and misappropriation involving a senior cabinet minister.’

‘Ayoyo’, as Humpty Dumpty would probably exclaim (if he dares). And may KTemoc add on behalf of those very quiet MCA blokes: ‘Karn neen nay’.

Gerak chairperson Ezam Mohd Noor (he formerly of the de facto party) had stated that the voluminous report included documentary evidence made up of statements from the Companies Commission of Malaysia, receipts and invoices amounting to millions of ringgit, and best of all, police reports lodged by a listed company against the minister in the 1980s - guess the police & ACA have been sleeping, or perhaps they're still working 'diligently' on the 1980's case.

Well, though Ezam didn’t name the minister, he did reveal that the minister is an UMNO member. The naughty bloke apparently used RM 30 million of public company funds to clear personal debts.

Wouldn’t that be considered as CBT rather than corruption? Or, hopefully both!

Strangely, for a senior UMNO cabinet minister, why would he even need to relieve the company of a mere sarp sarp suoi (chicken feed) RM 30 mil? I wonder whether it had been a case of arrogant belief that, no doubt it’s just loose change, it was there for his convenient use, to dip his grubby hands into the petty cash box whenever he liked, without fear of discovery or even being questioned. Hmmm, I wonder what sort of ‘personal debt’ would that have been?

Anyway, back on track - What had embarrassingly occurred has been AAB telling reporters a couple of days ago he didn’t know who this naughty minister is. Mind you, he did say he was informed of the report and would ‘study it’ ;-)

That sent poor conscientious Lim up the wall. He bemoaned the sad fact that AAB, with the evidence in his manicured hands, doesn’t even know the identity of the accused minister

Doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know, or worse, can't let you all know?

Lim asked caustically: "If Abdullah takes 10 days to state publicly that he is aware ... how long more would he need to announce what he proposes to do about it?"

"Or will he just pass the buck and kick the football elsewhere, starting a merry-go-round which will drag out the issue in an inconclusive manner for the next few years?"

"Is it credible that a prime minister who is serious about his pledge [about the National Integrity Plan] and commitment to make anti-corruption his top priority can allow 10 days to pass without bothering to find out who was the (allegedly corrupt) Umno cabinet minister."

Hmmm, somewhile ago, AAB has claimed that he was still in control of the nation and he’d rid the country of corruption - ah, in his own way and own time, of course. He reminded us that things couldn’t be changed overnight.

OK, even taking his explanations at face value, that things would take time to change, let’s ask a few questions that I and millions of other Malaysians have not been satisfied with, namely the lack of resolutions (and probably unlikely resolution) in very simple cases of dodginess. These are issues that I can immediately recall without too much probing:

(1) What has happened to the case of Cyclops in the Monkey House? I am talking about the 'close one eye' sin and not his disgusting 'leaking' grubbiness.

PAC chairman Shahrir Samad claimed somewhile back he was waiting for the police investigation to complete before the PAC can assess the Cyclops case. Well?

Then, the police investigation is into criminality whilst the PAC should be looking at parliamentary propriety, or propriety of the MPs

But we need to bear in mind that poor Shahrir had been 'punished' for daring to take a decent bilateral stand (initially anyway) against Cyclop's shameful close-one-eye mentality. He has been whipped back into line (Shahrir, that is - did you for even one moment think it was Cyclops?)

(2) Police issues such as:

(a) A Japanese student being extorted by policeman of RM500
(b) Chinese wives being abused at police station by policemen, & hubbies extorted

and

(c) the mother of them all, a very recent allegation that our police has dodgy links to the underworld. Most staggering of all, Raja Petra Kamarudin of Malaysia-Today alerted us to the link between the Police, IGP’s son and BK Tan, the alleged Kingpin of the organised crime syndicate, through a company called Web Power Sdn Bhd.

(3) Rela members sent to city, to beat up imported Indian workers who had the nerve to question management, right in front of Indian Hi-Comm - question: why and who sent those thugs?

(4) Libra-ECM-Avenue case – how could AAB as Finance Minister be not aware of the merger?

(5) Menteri Besar rorting the tsunami funds, meant for the needy.

There’s more but the above should suffice for this posting.