Come on, Singapore!

Just read about the embarrassment the Singaporean authorities are feeling over their colorful polo team swim trunks ... I think our progressive kinsfolks across the straits are over-sensitive in this day and age! Haven't we all seen it all? I say, let's be liberal about it!

Come on, Singapore, show everyone how open-minded you are!

The Lingam Whistle-Blower?

What an unexpected twist in the ongoing Malaysian judiciary hanky panky scandal. Here's the story, without further comments from me, with the extract from Malaysiakini-the online news portal that provides news mainstream media has left out.

Video-clip man worries about his safety
K Kabilan & Steven Gan | Jan 12, 08 11:41pm

Businessman Loh Mui Fah, 58, today claimed that he was worried for his personal safety over his role in the Lingam tape scandal.

In an exclusive interview with Malaysiakini today, Loh admitted that his son, Jwo Burne, had recorded lawyer VK Lingam’s telephone conversation with former chief justice Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim on the night of Dec 20, 2001.

Loh added he and his son had went to Lingam’s house for dinner and to consult him on some legal matters.

Explaining further the harassments he had faced since the grainy 14-minute video clip was made public by opposition party PKR last year, Loh said that officers from the Anti-Corruption Agency had been tailing him day and night.

ACA officers had once intercepted him while he was on his way to Singapore, and also visited his office and home simultaneously where they threatened to ‘take away’ Loh’s youngest son.

“I have also received threatening telephone calls... asking me to watch out and that they will finish me,” said the businessman, who was also coy on his business venture apart from saying that it involved IT and forestry.

Loh said that he had written to Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on Nov 5, saying that he was willing to assist in the investigations into the Lingam tape should there be an assurance that “his safety would be guaranteed”. [see letter below]

“But nothing happened. I have had no reply from the prime minister,” he lamented.

Loh added that he had also emailed the three-member panel formed by the government to look into the authenticity of the Lingam tape, offering to assist in their probe. Again, he added, he had not heard from them.

Tailed day and night

Last month, the ACA ‘harassment’ and threatening phone calls became so unbearable and that Loh said he lodged at least one police report.

“The intrusion into my private life was bad,” he told Malaysiakini when met at his lawyer’s plush apartment in the heart of the city.

“They hunted me day and night. They came in cars, waited for me with engines running, waiting until midnight. The security guards at my apartment can vouch for this,” he said.

“Once the ACA visited my house and my office at the same time. When they found that I wasn’t there, they harassed my youngest son and threatened to take him away,” he said.

Loh said that once while he was travelling by car to Singapore, he was intercepted in Malacca by two ACA officers.

“They wanted me to immediately return with them to their headquarters in Putrajaya to take a statement from me. I told them I will not follow them and got them to let me talk to their superior,” he said.

“I told them I can cooperate but it must be properly done, and that I am given proper notice,” he added.

According to Loh, he did not know how the ACA knew that he was involved in the matter.

“Maybe Lingam had told them that I and my son were at his house on that day,” he speculated.

Plan to catch him unprepared

Loh suggested that the agency was perhaps badgering him to give a statement as they wanted to catch him unprepared instead of having him come with a prepared statement.

The businessman said that he feared for his life. “That is why I am going public now,” he said.

“I wrote to the PM seeking protection but I didn’t receive any assurance from him. Do I fear for my life? I won’t take anything for granted,” he said.



“Going public is the best option that I have.”

Loh also said that he was willing to appear before the royal commission which will kick off its inquiry on Monday to probe the Lingam tape.

“I will go before them in the interest of the public, but it is up to them to find their own answer,” he added.

The royal commission, formed after the panel tasked to probe the clip’s authenticity ended up empty-handed, is to further investigate the matter.

Israeli Judiciary Independence

From the people who gave the world Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Albert Einstein, George Soros, David Marshall, Karl Marx amongst many other Noble Prize winners and achievers, Malaysians can learn about judicial independence (as guaranteed by the Malaysian Constitution). No one is above the law in that democratic country.

Here is the latest hot news from Israel courtesy of YNet News.

Attorney general Mazuz orders criminal probe against Olmert

Attorney general orders criminal investigation against prime minister over suspicions he purchased Jerusalem flat for discount price in exchange for granting construction company illegal building permits. PM's Office: Police investigation unnecessary

Aviram Zino

Published:

09.24.07, 14:32 / Israel News

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz ordered a criminal investigation against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert over suspicions that a friend bribed him by selling a Jerusalem house for a discount price.

Olmert is suspected of purchasing a Jerusalem flat from a friend for a price $320,000 cheaper than the property's market value in return for helping the construction firm that refurbished the apartment block gain illegal building permits.

Leumi Affair

Olmert aides: Probe will come up empty / Ronny Sofer Prime minister’s aides say he is proud of Bank Leumi privatization, process was supervised by top Finance Ministry officials; Meretz MK Cohen: This is the beginning of the end for Olmert Full story

The prime minister is also suspected of helping the company acquire a license to build on 750 square meters (8,073 square feet) as opposed to the original permit for 350 square meters (3,767.4 square feet) approved by the Jerusalem Municipality.

The Prime Minister's office said in a statement Monday that it was "confident in the steps taken by the Olmert family prior to purchasing the apartment on Jerusalem's Cremieux Street… We regret the decision to open what we are sure will prove to be an unnecessary police investigation."

The statement also said that the prime minister would cooperate with the investigation.

Olmert. Another investigation (Photo: Reuters)

The prime minister is already under criminal investigation in the matter of the privatization of Bank Leumi.

The allegations claim that during his tenure as minister of finance, Olmert broke the law for two of his friends – Daniel Abrams and Frank Lowy – with whom he conducted, directly and indirectly, a relationship plagued by bribes.

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The State Prosecution recommended on July 8 that Mazuz launch a criminal investigation against Olmert after State Comptroller Micha Lindstrauss pointed to irregularities in Olmert's purchase of the apartment.

The prime minister purchased the garden apartment on Cremieux Street for $1.2 million when the flat was estimated at over $1.6 million.

The flat was purchased in October 2004 from the Alumot real estate agency.

Woopie Vs. Watergate

Here's another funny satirical gem from Art Buchwald's book, I am Not a Crook. For other breaking in depth and even salacious news that most of Malaysia's intimidated cowardly local media is too chicken to cover, please drop by Malaysiakini and Malaysia Today, amongst many other blogs with balls. Though I do not agree with all that are in some of these outspoken courageous blogs, I recommend them because their sensible mature and honest opinions and views reflect the reality of what goes on in the country and make everyone realise how much of the rights and freedom that is so cherished by Malaysians under the Constitution have and continue to be eroded with the compliance of many of those whom ignorant or misled voters have elected.

By the way, it won't be long before I join the growing disillusioned and disgusted friends of mine who will be canceling our subscriptions to the local papers. We are not getting our money's worth
in papers that do not report the latest news but which merely serve as the Hitlerian propaganda mouthpieces of others with dictatorial mentalities.

Sex Vs. The Watergate

I don't wish to put down our own Watergate affair, but when it comes to a good government scandal, the British have us beat by a mile. A recent British scandal had to do with sex.

It is the type of intrigue that even a charwoman can understand, having for its major characters Cabinet ministers, lords, dukes and call girls.

While our Watergate investigation has to do with who bugged whom, the British inquiry zeroed in on who slept with whom and for how much. And while the senate drones on endlessly about what one lawyer told another lawyer in the Watergate break-in, the British scandal delved into the motives of why a man of title, wealth and position would pay for pleasure in the arms of a fallen woman.

What makes the British story different from Watergate is that all the major players kept a stiff upper lip. There was no begging for immunity, no taking the Fifth, no threats to implicate others.

When Lord Lambton, Prime Minister Heath's defense under-secretary, was confronted with compromising photographs of himself and a call girl named Norma Levy, he did not say he was doing it on orders from a higher authority. Nor did he explain he took his action to protect national security. He did not hide behind the Union Jack.

He explained it simply on the BBC, when asked by the commentator (and this is an exact quote, which shows you why British TV is so much better than ours), "Why should a man of your social position and charm and personality have to go to a whore?"

"Because," Lord Lambton replied, "I think that people sometimes like variety. I think it is as simple as that and I think this impulse is understood by everybody."

The main fear in the Lambton affair was that state secrets had been divulged during the liaisons. But Lord Lambton squashed that on his BBC broadcast. "Businessmen do not go with call girls to talk of private matters. If a call girl suddenly said to me, 'Please, darling, tell me about the new laser ray,' or, 'What do you think of the new Rolls-Royce developments?" I would have known something was up."

What also makes the Lambton scandal more interesting than the Watergate was that there was more than one lord involved. As a matter of fact, after Lambton, Lord Jellicoe, the lord privy seal in Heath's Cabinet, admitted to having affairs with call girls as well and tendered his resignation. There was also a duke mentioned, and nobody knows how many knights will eventually be involved.

I must say the British newspapers took it very well. They kept the public fully informed on every last detail of the sordid affair, interviewing the call girls in question, the friends of the lords, the wives and everyone else who could shed light on what became the best story since the Profumo affair. As far as British journalism was concerned, there would be no cover-up.

Some Americans in London believe that the British broke the story because they were jealous of Watergate.

"It was pure spite," an American State Department official told me. "Britain knew it couldn't be a major power without a first-rate scandal, and the only way it could top us was to find one with lots of sex in it. We consider the breaking of the Lambton affair at this time as a very unfriendly act."


The only bright side of the story, from the United States point of view, is that although Lord Lambton wiped Watergate off the front pages of Europe's newspapers, its hard to sustain a call girl scandal for very long.

Watergate on the other hand, will probably go on for years. Americans can take comfort that while Halderman, Enrlichman and Mitchell will remain household words for a decade, Lord Lambton, Lord Jellicoe, Duke what's-his-name and Norma Levy will soon be nothing more than a footnote in Britain's long and illustrious sexual scandal history.

BANNED IN BRUNEI!

This September 12, 1987 Asiaweek was definitely banned in Brunei. For the sake of its Sultan, (whom I admire for his generosity) I will not open this magazine for all of you dear visitors to read the juicy bits. Here's a tantalising glimpse though: