Our comment

Proud Malaysians of Indian descent might be bemused to be offered the notorious Ramesh Rao as a mentor, paid for by taxpayers like themselves.

Rao now admits from his own mouth that he did favours for his previous bosses, Zahid and the now imprisoned Najib Razak, under the prior BN ‘reign’, hence plainly this cushy employment as part of the ‘unity government’ deal.

The thousands of other political appointees who have just been signalled their marching orders will doubtless be mulling that there could be no more political an appointment than this one. They will entitled to ask how much his salary is on the public purse and how his job description was devised (so soon after the new government was established).

They might well further ask what interview process was undertaken (was anyone else allowed to apply)?

Another pertinent matter is what professional background Ramesh Rao will be bringing to his mission to uplift fellow Indians into the professions he describes. His own background would appear to be that of a professional huckster who faithfully performed a whole series of dirty tricks for his now acknowledged masters, Najib and his deputy, whom at the time he of course denied he worked for.

Ramesh Rao has emerged as having acted as a conduit in the sleazy Bala affair, when the Najib family had banished the key witness in the Altantuya case abroad to shut him up. When the bodyguard eventually insisted on coming home in 2013 to speak out on the truth he tragically died soon after.

Rao then set about orchestrating Bala’s poor widow into an ill-executed attempt to exculpate Najib from his role in the affair in a disastrous press conference, all in his capacity as a supposed ‘NGO leader’.

Likewise, this same ex-Najib functionary was hard on the case of seeking to discredit Sarawak Report over its exposure of 1MDB and Najib’s enormous thefts. Again taking advantage of a vulnerable person (Lester Melanie) again through a botched press conference. Rao attempted to publicise alleged testimony against the SR editor that she ran a ‘master forgery’ at which all the damning documents were framed.

He even took the opportunity to publish a death threat against her for ‘going against’ his boss Najib.

The FBI, numerous other investigators and the Malaysian justice system have chosen to disagree on the evidence presented, totally vindicating Sarawak Report and yet again making a right old fool out of Rao the bankrupted ‘NGO’ and special agent to Najib.

Back to the Altantuya murder and the multiple attempts to distance Najib, in 2017 Rao was again touting press statements, this time one illicitly recorded by one of the convicted killers, Sirul Azhar Umah, from his prison cell in Australia. The purpose of the statement which came into Rao’s hands was to yet again exonerate Najib (the killer being Najib’s bodyguard).

Sirul has acknowledged he had been paid, of course.

Rao is therefore a discredited and proven multiple deceiver, who has acted deceptively several times to wash the reputation of a now convicted mega-crook.  It makes his appointment as a public servant a sad disgrace, and a very poor beginning for a government that has laid out its stall on the basis of tackling corrupt public appointments.

The unity government is of course a compromise arrangement including some of the worst elements of the past regime that shamed Malaysia. As one of the main agents for Najib and his deputy (now DPM once more) – as was always widely suspected but which he now admits – it would seem that Ramesh Rao learned many things in the process of his work.

Perhaps that included the sort of information that gets a chap a job to shut him up?

• 27 Dec 2022
• BM 翻译
• 0