Our comment

With all this talk of ‘restructuring the timber industry’ the PBB secretary-general is clearly seeking to threaten those from the charmed circle of timber cronies who have started to stir up opposition to his GPS coalition – cronies who have benefitted from his party’s policies are expected to remain loyal.

Yet in the process, he has confirmed that Sarawak Report has been right all along in saying that the plunder of the rainforest has “made certain people very rich” and it is indeed time for policies designed for the “overall benefit of the people”.

He should know, since he is one of those very rich people who has inherited the benefits of major shares in vast concessions handed to companies such as Rajang Wood and Keresa Timber, which chopped down hundreds of thousands of hectares.

The Linggi family would deny that these privileges were granted in return for their key support of the Sarawak kleptocrat Taib Mahmud and the PBB party, of which Alexander Linggi is now himself Secretary General.

Of course, such disgraceful patronage ought to be got rid of and of course timber concessions should be openly tendered at the right price and maximum public advantage.

However, Linggi is plainly saying this merely as a pre-election talk to tar his rivals from PSB (funded by timber interests) and convince poor voters for the hundredth time that the GPS parties will do something for them …. finally.

The sad fact is there is no more timber to have a policy about. What is needed is a thorough review of all corruptly issued concessions and a reparation of the proceeds.

Next Sarawak must look forward to greener policies that can restore the forests and deliver for the people not the plunderers, who include his own super-rich family.

GPS have refused to take this path and people should vote them out.

Our comment

The present premier is hereby indulging in a well-worn UMNO-style tactic of blackmailing voters with threats of ill-treatment if they do not support the thugs in power.

Favouring voters who support you and penalising those who don’t is a disgraceful undermining of democracy and a dereliction of the duty of any government to serve the people – ALL of them, equally.

He seems to reckon he can get away with it, using scarcely coded language about how being “aligned” with the federal government will help the people’s “betterment”.

However, the busy leader has plainly not thought to adjust this line of electioneering since the morning and Anwar’s shock announcement that it is actually he who now has the majority of federal MPs and is moving to assume leadership of the federal government.

It means, according to the argument Moo has continued to peddle, that voters in Sabah should therefore do better to vote for Warisan, which is part of the Anwar coalition, and not a defeated PN, who won’t be able to bribe or blackmail anybody once the change takes place as soon as the week after the Sabah vote.

Our comment

This from the leader of a party that just last month was fully engaged in trying to stage yet another backdoor coup in the state, approaching state MPs with offers of millions and bags of cash to get them to defect from the parties they were elected to support.

This from a leader of a party that forms part of the federal backdoor government that took power earlier in the year by the exact same methods and had been using Covid as an excuse to clamp down ever since and prevent proper parliamentary scrutiny of its actions.

The power grabbers have meanwhile illegitimately handed themselves scores of lucrative positions and perks and have been caught time and again breaking all the stringent rules they have imposed on everybody else.

This from the local leader of the PN coalition that has been letting the likes of Musa Aman off his scores of corruption charges purely for political purposes and supported his attempts to seize back power and then overturn the governor’s decision to put the matter to the people persistently in the courts.

Bung and his pals have thrown Musa under the bus now the attempt has failed. But there is no evidence whatsoever that he and his scheming and corrupted allies have changed their ways one bit. To the contrary they have shown themselves to be the same old political crooks they always have been and reminded everyone of their tactics each and every day for the past few weeks.

As for ‘suffering’ under Warisan? This foul mouthed showman would do better to apologise for the dreadful suffering and incompetence so many poor people from East Malaysia have suffered the past few months thanks to the thoughtless, corrupt and incompetent management of PN’s response to Covid.

Our comment

Correction: Sabah is not a poor but exceedingly rich state.

On the other hand most of its indigenous people are poor because the political parties that dominated in Malaysia, of which this ‘PM8′ has been a member for all but a fraction of his career, have stolen the riches from them.

Is this a recommendation to keep voting for these parties, particularly since the coalition which ‘PM8′ now leads barely holds power and has no majority and only exists because he ‘frogged’ in defiance of the electorate and his own promises?

‘PM8′ has attempted a well-worn line of blackmail used over the years by BN/UMNO/PN which is to warn that to vote for the opposition to the federal government will invite punishment and restricted funds. He indicates that Sabahans should therefore cower and be obedient like dogs in hope of scraps from the plunder of their own resources.

Perhaps, instead, it is time the people of this state showed their teeth and challenged those in federal government to show why they deserve Sabah’s vote by supporting the party that offers programmes for the people?

Our comment

The management of this case becomes more sinister and totalitarian by the day.

The two ‘anonymous Datuk Businessmen’ have now been released on unspecified bail!

Not only are the toady Sarawak press keeping silent about who they are, but so is the entire Malaysian media it would seem.

The MACC it would appear are now empowered to go round arresting people without the information being released, holding them on unspecified bail. Who next and who will know if they disappear completely?

Or should this be regarded as special treatment for anonymous VVVVVVIPs suspected of lowly corruption? In which case, Najib, Rosmah, Musa and Zahid (and a score of other UMNO types and indeed thousands of Malaysian citizens) have cause for complaint that they could not also avail themselves of such secrecy.

Such gross abuse of due process can only have been ordered at the highest levels by this back-door government, which on the one hand has postured as piously ‘anti-corruption’ and yet on the other broken the fundamental rules of the constitution time and again to stay in office.

Everyone knows who these men are. What seems clear is their arrest is being used as a threat and blackmail against other targets of those abusers of power from on high for political purposes.

The law is not a weapon to be selectively applied or abused for retribution and revenge.  This is no way to run a government and this frog administration is proving itself a danger to the fundamental freedoms and way of life in Malaysia just like that of Najib Razak.

Our comment

If this DPP thinks his case is the “Mother of All Charges” he has clearly not been listening to what has been going on in Malaysia for the past several months as federal leaders and their wives have been caught up (and found guilty) in global scandals worth billions.

Guan Eng appears to have been verbally accused by a fellow who admits to being a briber and a liar of agreeing to an alleged 10% ‘profit bribe’ for a tunnel that has yet to be started in his state. The witness also claims he made some unrecorded cash donations to the chief minister for his party of several thousand ringgit (Musa Aman would snort) – the sort of donations he says he also made to UMNO politicians against whom no action has been taken.

Guan Eng is now being accused of using his authority to alienate necessary state land to this gentleman’s company following its winning of an open tender for the project in question. It is what the prosecutor describes as “the tail” to his tale. Slam dunk?

DPP Wan Shaharuddin clearly thinks so, since the law officer, who seems to adopt the language of a ball game commentator when referring to grave carriages of justice, announced to reporters that his department only prosecutes when it has a “99% chance of conviction”.

This ought to give Zahid and Najib pause. However, for those who believe in the rule of law and duty of the prosecution to support victims of crime such a statement is truly shocking.

To all intents and purposes it is an admission that the forces of law and order in Malaysia are unlikely to waste their time on a rape, burglary, violent act or fraud…… unless, the political circumstances are such that a conviction will be driven through.

That was the implication of what Wan Shaharuddin said, so perhaps his statement should be ‘clarified’ by those in charge of his department?

Meanwhile, it is noted and tragic that the cowering of Malaysian media by a back-door coup government has extended to a decision by the independent online publication Malaysiakini to close its comments section for this particular story, given the anticipation of public outrage it will provoke. The paper’s editors are being outrageously sued over previous comments with this desired effect.

Sarawak Report will not be silenced in criticising the appalling statements of this representative of Malaysia’s prosecution service and his inappropriate tone in the conduct of a serious matter of criminal justice.

Should he wish to talk about the “Mother of all Land Alienation Cases” he and his fellow prosecutors should turn their attention to the outrageous and pernicious alienations of native lands in Sarawak, featuring plunder and land grabs on a global scale by those politically in charge for their own personal gain to the tune of billions.

However, Taib and his cronies are key supporters of the back door coup government and so therefore presumably Wan Shaharuddin reckons he has nowhere near a 99% chance of a conviction?

Our comment

The many illiterate internet attacks on SR are thus explained. As are the wild claims that SR is paid “millions” sometimes hundreds of millions by various (changing and conflicting) parties to reveal the corruption driving deforestation and ruining lives in Malaysia.

In terms of negative impact against Rosmah and Co’s corrupt agenda, SR’s publications have certainly undermined and countered the hundreds of millions of stolen cash that they have spent on bogus propaganda. Since they now face jail.

However, whilst these creatures claim that SR is being paid they have never once attempted to do the obvious were that the case and offer to buy SR off with a fraction of the money they have splurged on their own useless campaigns.

The answer being that they deep down know that truth cannot be bought.

Our comment

Azmin rarely visited Anwar whilst in jail as he was too busy building his power base and targeting his takeover of PKR. So, he was not “side by side” for years with his party leader, he schemed for years against him.

And all that while he has worked with his now open allies at UMNO and PAS. It was PAS who enabled him to push aside Anwar’s wife Wan Aziz, who had been his party’s choice for Menteri Besar when Anwar was forced in jail.

When he failed to challenge Anwar for the party leadership (having realised he would lose) after GE14 he then took himself off on a luxury holiday with Najib’s cousin and power-broker Hishamuddin to start scheming his defection just weeks after PH attained elected office.

By acknowledging he feels more comfortable with UMNO and PAS he admits what everybody already knows, that he is comfortable with institutionalised corruption and hypocrisy and money politics.

He was at the centre of the previous PH government, so any failures he cares to identify lie squarely at his own door. For the entire period he paralysed his party with his disloyal scheming and constant accusations – pretending to support Dr Mahathir against alleged ‘nagging’ from Anwar to assume his agreed succession, whilst in fact waiting his moment to bring down all his elected colleagues, thanks to his grooming of sad gullible members from East Malaysia who now find themselves (and their electors) offered second class status in an alliance of bigots and brigands.

Our comment

The coup PM says he hopes his message will reach the grassroots. Indeed, he should have no fear, the world get’s his meaning.

He is seeking to threaten this state that it will have less of the ‘funding pie’ if it exercises its right to vote for the policies it prefers, rather than the Malay Muslim supremacist coalition that he heads.

Moo is seeking to blackmail the people of Sabah with a threat to withhold funding and for them to at the same time put their trust in the hands of a group of charged and convicted crooks, who have made clear they think non Malays and non Muslims are a lower form of life. Then, says Moo, the people of Sabah will be better off.

However, Moo and his political party have been making the same threats and promises for over 50 years, save for his short interlude at the reforming PH government, which he pulled the rug from under as soon as he saw his chance.

So, Sabah has plenty of experience to draw from when it comes from accepting the threats and promises of those who seek to overturn governments by buying over representatives who were elected to serve the other side.  UMNO did it before in Sabah and the prosperity of the local people has suffered ever since.

For the past weeks Muhyiddin’s men have been sneaking around in Sabah with bags of cash seeking to subvert MPs again, which is why the election has been called.

When Muhyiddin says there will be “more money” for Sabah if they support his government currently lacking a majority he means more money for politicians he needs to bribe. For decades this rich state has been stripped bare to make a few BN politicians rich and the people have got nothing.

Fat ‘projects’ may be handed out, but the money goes elsewhere and the projects lie undone. The people of Sabah have had decades of Muhyiddin and his party and their famous ‘money politics’.

They know they won’t see a single cent – except RM10 on election day.

Our comment

So often the mighty are brought down by the humble truth from those they got used to treating as doormats along the way.

From the leader of UMNO’s lowly secretary we now know that he knew perfectly well from his own mouth that raiding a ‘foundation’ funded by ‘donations’ from businessmen seeking favours to pay off his credit cards was wrong.

The moment he knew the MACC was investigating he told her to stop using open cheques from the ‘foundation’ signed off by him and to pay off the credit cards with bags of cash instead!

Sadly, 60 years of untrammelled power and so many opportunities to abuse it have allowed this UMNO party to descend into a criminal organisation as the trials of its past and present leader have exposed plainly to the public.

Yet, UMNO allow them to remain in office and remain as representatives, along with so many other exposed crooks within their ranks.

At the same time their members have seen fit to go around claiming that the two years in which they were out of office (hands pulled out of the cookie jars for so short a while) have allowed UMNO to ‘clean’ their party!

There has not been a single expulsion or a single word of criticism by UMNO against its crooked MPs. So take it from the facts – this party is still a criminal organisation of lying crooks.

They lost the election so they seized back control by a coup in order to continue their criminal activities and although they preach racist policies they serve no one but themselves.