Too much partying by Najib’s PR guru Paul Stadlen?

By admin-s Last updated Feb 12, 2015

Stadlen has been responsible for an even worse faux pas in recent days, with respect to his own boss’s direct reputation, owing to an incredibly mishandled response to a series of questions, again by the New York Times.

Sarawak Report

The ex-APCO Malaysia boss, Paul Stadlen, who now manages Najib Razak’s massive press operation, appears to be losing his touch.

Many are asking if his well-known party lifestyle, fuelled by what seems to be an outrageous income courtesy of the Malaysian taxpayer, could have something to do with it?

Yesterday was a bit of a classic, with the issuing of a Government statement by the Prime Minister’s Office (where Stadlen controls communications) which maliciously stuck the knife into the opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, just controversially imprisoned for alleged sodomy.

Stadlen’s short statement sanctimoniously referred to an “exhaustive and comprehensive due process” in this case of blatant political persecution and then went on to describe the plaintiff as the “victim of a serious sexual assault”.

Ooops! ……

As commentators as far away as the New York Times pointed out, even the Malaysian prosecutors had had to give up on their attempt to convict Anwar of forcing sex upon his burly young aide, who had long since changed his story to one of consensual sex between the two men:

“..the statement read. “As the victim of a serious sexual assault, he had every right to have his case heard in court.”

That characterization, however, was at odds with the case brought by the prosecutors, who used a section of the law that deals with consensual sodomy” [New York Times]

So why was Stadlen falsely accusing the opposition politician at this very delicate moment (in a formal Government statement) of committing brutal rape?

Was it because he was seeking to find sympathy from an international audience, which is largely shocked at the primitive decision to imprison someone just for being allegedly gay? If so, surely this experienced PR operator would have realised that too much is known about the case for such false accusations to gain currency?Or had Stadlen just being doing too much partying the night before and not really been on the ball?

Because, to misrepresent the situation in such a vicious and deceptive manner can only bring opprobrium onto his boss, who presumably had hired him (at huge cost) for his supposed understanding of the international press and how to manage it.

Partying and a bloody beating for fun-loving Stadlen

Stadlen is known as a man who is pleased to party and enjoys his late night drinking in a wide selection of KL’s top night club venues

There has been considerable bad feeling around Putrajaya about the continued prominence of Stadlen in Najib’s office.

After all, APCO itself was dismissed from its advisory role some years back, on the admittedly reprehensible grounds that the company was ‘Jewish’ and Malaysia is hostile towards Israel.

However, the boss Paul Stadlen kept his position and has continued to manage to get reportedly enormous sums of money as a consultant, effectively supervising all the Prime Minister’s communications.

Insiders have told Sarawak Report that his company, which is located just a few doors down the corridor from the PM’s own National Communications Team in the Menara BRDB office block in KL, is retained for at least RM 3,000,000 per year’.

As one journalist who is a close observer of the team, explained to Sarawak Report, this retainer is:

“..for some main activities. That is for doing all work for the PM – from normal things like speech writing to arranging interviews with foreign journalists. Also for this money he does many things like defaming Anwar to foreigners, smearing Dr M and such like secret projects.

“He hires other people to do all this work for him – usually he has 2-3 people he gets to do all the work… but he pockets the vast majority of monies.”

Stadlen has also worked with FBC Media after his APCO role, who were in turn linked to vicious online campaigns against Anwar by the now discredited US blogger Josh Trevino and his company Rogue Communications.