Was RPK’s Malaysia Today hacked because of Tajudin Ramli
Malaysia Chronicle
It looks like Malaysia Today may have been a victim of the latest government crackdown on the Internet. The popular political blog operated by the controversial Raja Petra Kamarudin is now up again but for most parts of Tuesday, it was locked out – disappointing its hordes of followers.
“Our admins are still trying to resolve the issue. MT has been down for 13 hours now,” was the e-mail reply to a query from Malaysia Chronicle at 8.32 pm last night.
Indeed many of Malaysia’s politically-addicted ‘netizens’ were disappointed at having to forego their daily dose of the latest and the hottest from RPK.
The 60-year old has been in the headlines of late after BBC’s HARDtalk cancelled a much-anticipated interview with him at the 11th hour. Although BBC denies it, speculation is rife it may have bowed to inter-governmental pressure not to proceed.
RPK has been the source of most of the damning news related to Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife Rosmah Mansor. In particular, he has exposed their alleged roles in the murder of Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu and the purchase of two over-priced Scorpene submarines from French arms giant DCNS. Both Najib and Rosmah have denied any involvement in either of the cases.
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| Mahathir and Tajudin |
But the latest attack on Malaysia Today is likely to be related to RPK’s most recent scoop on fallen tycoon Tajudin Ramli, the former chairman of national carrier MAS. Last month, RPK published a 7-page detailed report that MAS had lodged with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission in 2009 after failing to get the authorities to act despite having lodged police reports in 2002 and again in 2005.
The trail of events showed the involvement of two former prime ministers Mahathir Mohamad and Abdullah Badawi as well as former finance minister Daim Zainuddin in helping to cover up for Tajudin, who was the MAS chairman from 1994 to 2001.
In the MACC report, the airline alleged that Tajudin was responsible for racking up as much of RM8 billion in losses due mainly to several chunky deals that favored his family and proxies.
MAS is a government-linked company and therefore a vessel of taxpayers’ wealth but despite the staggering losses, neither Mahathir, Badawi or Najib has taken any action.
