Why expose now, Pakatan?
Malaysia Today editor Raja Petra Kamarudin questions why Pakatan MPs are exposing attempts to buy them over now when the move was made in 2010.
(FMT) – Malaysia Today editor Raja Petra Kamarudin questioned the motives of Pakatan Rakyat lawmakers in not exposing Barisan Nasional’s alleged attempts to buy them at the time when the offers were made in 2009 and 2010.
“This was supposed to have happened in early 2010. It is now mid-2012. Why did they keep this a secret for more than two years?
“Who is the one who made this offer? Who are all the PKR wakil rakyat that they tried to buy off?
“They refused to tell us. It is still a secret,” said Raja Petra who is better known as RPK in an article entitled “Melayu dan bukan Melayu mudah lupa” (Malays and non-Malays forget easily), published in his Malaysia-Today portal.
He said this in response to the revelation by Indera Mahkota MP Azan Ismail that the latter was offered more than RM5 million at a meeting in a five-star hotel in Kuala Lumpur on Jan 27, 2010.
Azan said that he had turned down the offer on grounds of integrity but did not divulge details of the meeting and the person whom he met.
The revelations come in the wake of Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad’s so-called mini-series of videos on alleged attempts by BN, particularly Umno, to buy over opposition MPs in 2010.
The video clips allegedly showed two “BN agents” attempting to strike a deal with representatives of a PKR MP.
Raja Petra, however, does not believe that Azan did not take up the offer out of a sense of personal integrity.
He speculated that Azan and some other Pakatan MPs did not take the bait probably because the amount offered was too small.
“Is it because all these people wanted to keep their options open in case they still needed to accept the offer of RM5 million to jump? Or is it because RM5 million is too low an offer?”
RPK also suggested that the PKR MPs did not accept the offer because Jelapang state assemblywoman Hee Yit Foong was allegedly paid RM25 million to cross over in Perak, which led to the fall of the Pakatan government in 2009.
“Since Hee was (allegedly) paid RM25 million, then why offer them only RM5 million? Why not they too be offered RM25 million, just like Hee?
“So is it that they did not want to reveal the offer of RM5 million because they were trying to negotiate for a higher price, say, RM25 million just like Hee?” RPK asked.
