Drama Qe5

L. Cassius ille quem populus Romanus verissimum et sapientissimum iudicem putabat identidem in causis quaerere solebat 'cui bono' fuisset.

The famous Lucius Cassius, whom the Roman people used to regard as a very honest and wise judge, was in the habit of asking, time and again, 'To whose benefit?'

- Cicero

In Malaysiakini news article Najib denies involvement in 'conspiracy', Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Shahrir Samad was quoted chiding Anwar Ibrahim: "It (the entire incident) is too much (and) seems to be like a drama, more so Anwar is a drama queen."

Hmmm, I hope that reference to Anwar as a Drama Queen (rather than kaytee’s ‘Drama King’ in my previous post Saiful Bukhari Azlan - Victim or Villain?) is not Shahrir’s Freudian slip.

None of the ministers (Shahrir Abdul Samad, Azalina Othman Said and Mustapa Mohamed) including DPM Najib, who were photographed with Saiful could remember him. They claimed they have posed with various people who visited them or their offices, as politicians are expected to do.

Meanwhile Ong Kian Ming and Oon Yeoh have written a piece for Malaysiakini titled Liwat-gate: Who's behind this? where, hardly surprising, they wrote:

"One thing that most people concur is that Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is not behind it. He had the same 'deer caught in the headlights' reaction when asked about the latest developments, just like when Sapp and Yong Teck Lee announced that they no longer had confidence in him."

"Furthermore, nothing in his style or demeanor gives us any indication that he has the kind of mean streak that would allow him to agree to this kind of ruthless and dirty tactic. He is no Dr Mahathir Mohamad."

I disagree – please see my post Underestimating AAB.

My uncle told me AAB reminds him of some aspects of a TV character called Lieutenant Columbo (played by Peter Falks) during the late '60s to '70s. Wikipedia has this to say of Lt Columbo:

"Lt Columbo is a shabby, seemingly slow-witted police detective (once described as rumpled, but loveable) whose fumbling, overly polite manner makes him an unlikely choice to solve any crime, let alone a complex murder. However, as the perpetrators eventually learn, appearances can be deceptive -- Columbo actually only uses his deferential and absent-minded persona to lull them into a false sense of security."

In my opinion, AAB is a master of 'act dunno' too, though of course, unlike Lt Columbo, he doesn't dress shabbily - no, au contraire.

But having expressed my opinion on AAB, I am not suggesting he has been responsible for the affair. At the end of all this, we must ask that question that Cicero attributed to the Roman judge Lucius Cassius, CUI BONO?

Indeed, to do so, we must look at the overall set of events and not just the sodomy allegation by itself.

Invariably Ong and Oon’s suspicions fall on Opposition Malaysia’s favourite punching bag and archfiend, Dr M, a man who, after leaving office, couldn’t even manage to speak to UMNO members during the pre UMNO annual assembly campaign when he attempted to get himself elected as a divisional delegate.

So, do you believe he's capable of organizing the highly complex scandal?

Ong and Oon's dislike of Dr M was evident in statements such as “The second person who would benefit from this would be Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak. To be fair, nothing in Najib's character or demeanor suggests that he has the kind of Machiavellian streak that Mahathir possess in copious quantities.”

Doesn’t the term ‘… copious quantities …’ ;-) speaks 'volumes' (pun intended) of their prejudice?

Quite frankly, it's still early days to tell, but I concede in their favour that 'time, tide and journalists' deadlines' wait for no man.

As for Najib ..... Oh, please allow me to disgress for a while. l want to take this opportunity to share a Chinese belief my mother told me (not that I took any notice of it).

When I was young, my most luxurious dish was duck eggs (laid daily by the three ducks we kept), fried, scrambled, hardboiled, etc.

But mum would not allow me to eat any of the cooked eggs left overnight. Apparently only women and girls could do so. After persistent questioning of her seemingly unfair decision, which earned me more than a couple of slaps for harrassing her, she finally revealed the fear that Chinese have for males eating cooked eggs left overnight.

She whispered ominously that their balls would grow embarrasingly huge. What has this old housewife tale got to do with Najib? Quite frankly I AAB-dunno; ignore me, it's just kaytee's crazy mindless mental meandering.

But needless to say, I did check mine after I covertly ate the forbidden food a few times, but alas, there was no Godzilla effect ... well, at least for me.

What has been apparent in the Gomorrah* case has been the dearth of facts but bountiful availability of strange and coincidental claims.

* kaytee is an equal opportunity blogger, and decides that Sodom has been unequally favoured in comparison to Gomorrah. I encourage bloggers to practise equal opportunity by resorting to terms like "He accused so & so of gomorrah-ising him."

And what have been the bountiful availability of strange and coincidental claims? I personally reckon these would be:

(a) Anwar advisd of an assassination attempt on him by the intelligence service of a foreign power just immediately after the police report on the alleged gomorrah-ising was submitted. It would appear that Saiful was a failure as a Judas when there was amble opportunities for him as a personal aide to poison Anwar one way or another with untraceable poison;

(b) a high drama played by Anwar in seeking media-attention grabbing political asylum in the Turkish Embassy, where it was claimed that the Turkish Ambassador had invited him to take refuge in his Embassy. The Ambassador has discredited that claim in assuring Foreign Minister Rais Yatim that there was no such invitation, averring that Anwar himself had asked to stay, and he obliged on 'humanitarian' grounds;

(c) an unexplained resignation email purportedly from Saiful Bukhari Azlan, sent inexplicably one day after the date of the alleged gomorrah-isation and judiciously one day before the police report;

(d) Anwar’s claim of an earlier intention (but disrupted/aborted by the police report) to announce his candidature in a by-election as well as the party defection of 4 UMNO MPs ..... though the supposed defection of 2 SAPP MPs, who had been most conspicuous by their silence and truancy from voting on the fuel subsidy motion in Parliament, has yet to eventuate.

Alas, if not for the most kacau-ing police report, he would have had 40 4 UMNO MPs in the PKR bag by now. Blast!

But what has been factual has been the diplomatically insulting warning to Malaysia from the US State Department, but then we know that the USA has an arrogant disposition towards meddling in other nation’s internal affairs, but lamentably has never been balanced nor consistent in its treatment of nations around the world (eg. Israel).

What has been factual too is that Anwar has certainly marshalled international attention to his alleged ‘plight’, coincidentally when his campaign to undemocratically unseat an elected government through his disgraceful deformasi encouragement of party defections by BN MPs a la the 1994 Sabah state election, was faltering.

What has been factual too is that Anwar has managed through his Turkish Belly Dancing drama to force the PM, DPM and 2 ministers to provide official assurances for his personal safety (perhaps with some behind-the-scene gentle raps on their knuckles by Uncle Sam), thus acknowledging indirectly his now even more elevated political status.

What has been factual too is that the UMNO ministers right down from the PM, DPM even unto retiree Dr M, and not excluding KJ, have all been 'found guilty until proven innocent' by the usual suspects via the Malaysian manoeuvre called 'Fling enough poo and surely some will stick'.

One wonders who has benefitted from all the drama ensuing from the police report?

Indeed, what a serendipitous 'blessing in disguise' has been the police report for the Deformasi movement!

CUI BONO?


Footnote: See this for an explanation of my post title ;-)