Mohd Nazri: "There's a Ghost in Parliament"

Last week former MAS towkay Tajudin Ramli claimed that Dr Mahathir had done him in on his purchase of MAS shares - he averred t’was a top ministerial secret act to save the Central Bank from the severe embarrassment of losing money speculating in the international market.

While I cannot say whether his purchase of MAS shares was indeed instigated by Mahathir, I did question the timeliness of Tajudin’s revelation, just when things were hotting up between Dr Mahathir and PM AAB. As people say, coincidences are usually very rare, in fact unlikely in such cases.

The revelations, regardless of its veracity, has been of course damaging to Dr Mahathir. In Boleh-Land, no one cares too hoots about truth, evidence, facts and suchlike inconvenient stuff – what we need are juicy scandals and gossip.

So while Dr Mahathir was in Turkey pottering around the plains of Ilium (or Troy - aiyah, just showing off I know one or two words of western classical studies) or in the bazaar of old Istanbul, the mud racking of him had continued here in Malaysia, or to be more precise, where it mattered most for UMNO politicians like you-know-who, right in Parliament among the UMNO MPs, who represent the make-or-break factor for UMNO leaders.

Flyers purportedly from individuals linked to Tajudin described in detail poor dearie Tajudin’s ‘predicament’ over the bailout and buyback scandal surrounding the national carrier, and portrayed the business tycoon as a victim in the MAS saga – naturally a poor sweet naïve victim of the evil scheming Dr Who. Disgracefully, those anonymous mud racking sheets were distributed in the august House of Representatives, the Dewan Rakyat.

There were exclamations of horror that such an august House should be subjected to a variation of the traditional Malay poison letters or surat layangs. An internal investigation was launched virtually immediately to determine who was the culprit who had dared to place those offensive flyers on the seats of some honourable MPs in Parliament.

But alas, despite the most strenuous and detailed efforts, the investigators could not determined who was behind the distribution of the flyers. Acting Law Minister Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz lamented the lack of result from the investigation despite the Dewan Rakyat being covered by closed-circuit television (CCTV). Examination of the CCTV footage did not reveal the perpetrator.

When the press probed insistently, Nazri retorted angrily: “The case is closed. How to take action? You want me to take action against a ghost?”

Well, there you have it from the Law Minister of Malaysia – the culprit had been a hantu (ghost).

As we Malaysians know, in Malaysia the term hantu also carries a special meaning, precisely for such occasions. But in the meanwhile, let us consign the investigation of the Parliamentary hantu into the category reserved for Loch Ness monster, Orang Minyak and the Johore Bigfoot.

We are aware these mythical monsters are out there but like those other strange creatures called transparency, accountability and proprietary, they're damn hantu-ishly elusive within the hallowed confines of Parliament.